Two Poems
by Aaron D. Deutsch
A Confession:
At Exodus camp for boys
at risk of being girls,
I kissed Barry Farnstein,
Took him by the hips
Like they do in the movies
and pinned him flat
against the wet stall,
scared a scared apparition
would burn itself into my skin.
Last night
when steam strung itself
like damp sheets,
we were the world
and it was kind,
not the phantom cloak of shame
strung up around us.
Forgive Me, Father, For I Love Sin
Not just a bodily kind;
two boys showering,
flank to soapy flank,
wet and mammalian,
but taboos;
naked at the altar,
when all you want
from God
is
attention.
To know that as I drive
the slow roads may
unhinge themselves
because what I am
is worth taking back
to the Center's
boiling heart;
a starving bird
still digging
for worms
in the circuitry
of cold pines
when a willowy switch
from the side yard
was turned on him
like a weapon.
I wanted to believe
when you said
all I need to do
is relax.
I think that's a technical term, relax.
A word only doctors use
correctly;
Runners who cramp
in mid-sprint focus,
their deadbolt femurs
locking up like banks
for the night.
A name cuts a line
through space and time
only to barrel to a halt
hard as crested tombstone
at those who can't give it
to anything that's come
from a love so hot and red
it has nowhere to go
but into new life.
It can't relax.
The back of God is
the back of love
that creates nothing.
Not your father
and all he gives
—lapis and lessons—
but we sons of this
strange love
driving along
the oldest of roads,
no fissures in sight,
enduring all
we can't give back.
Aaron Deutsch is a recent graduate of the Texas State University-San Marcos MFA program, where he was awarded his degree with distinction. He currently teaches ESL courses at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX, and writes whenever he can. His work has appeared in The Smoking Poet, and is forthcoming in The Nine Online and Willows Wept Review. He has served as a poetry editor for Crab Orchard Review, Front Porch, and Grassroots. He has no pets.