Meditations 

in an 

Emergency

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after Frank O’Hara

            Am I to bring a child into this world? Or find one in the world already?

            Each time I look at a screen something new is aflame (sometimes the screen itself), but

 maybe that’s how people used to feel upon unrolling their morning paper.

            Why should I starve myself of this? Why don’t I take a forkful of someone else’s lavish

 cake?

            I am the greatest father who never lived. All I do is sit around and wait to take my child

to their activity.

            Even trees mock me! Good heavens, I’m allergic to their gametes, aren’t I? I’m just

attacked by breeding every time I leave the house.

            However, I have never tried to let myself be germinated by a tree. To hold in the sneeze

so that the pollen can find some flower deep within my guts and make a sapling. A tree is slow

to grow: I could live my life and then, when I am ready to depart, the crossbreed could erupt.

I’d get to live forever, my skull perched upon my child’s topmost crown of branches. And I’d be

dead, so I’d never have to worry about all the burning.

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To my colleague Ernest,

for his eyes only,

in response to his confidential queries,

1934

Your reading of this letter is predicated upon your having safely arrived home,

which is predicated upon the țuică not having completely overwhelmed

your ability to walk. The țuică also filled you with questions, which rendered me

uncharacteristically speechless. I’d like to blame the țuică, but I was

having such fun watching you imbibe that I simply

forgot to drink. No, it seems you’ve found a way to shut

me up, without having to stuff anything in my mouth. You asked,

and when you asked your eyes shone and I saw in them the earnestness—ha!—

the Ernestness of a younger you. You asked why I liked you, or in fact

you asked why I was wasting my time with you, and when I rolled

my eyes, you rephrased, but the reason I didn’t answer isn’t because I don’t

know the reasons. I know the reasons. I like you with all of my senses.

I like the way you look, your skin shaded brown with the persistence

of your pilosity. I like the way you look looking at me, your being brimming

with a hunger so different from the fanged appetite I’ve seen in other

men, more like the hunger of an old, old dog, if you’ll forgive me,

who has lost all his teeth, yet cannot wait to gum his meagre

meal. Moving down the face, I like the way you smell, onions

just beginning to sweat in hot butter, the gentle liquorice of dill,

and once your clothes are off, the forest moss after a rain.

I like the way you taste, your salty neck, your briny

cock, you’re blushing now if you weren’t already,

the sweetened dairy of each toe. I’m a gentleman, so I’ll

speak not of your jism. I like the way you sound,

especially when your lips are very close to my ear

and I hear so much in the silence of your breath.

I like the way you feel, like cornstarch mixed with water,

solid between my fingers but threatening to come apart.

The reason for my silence lies in the secret encoding of this letter.

It’s a very simple code in fact: simply replace each use of “like”

with “love,” including in the following phrase: I like you far too much

for any time we spend together to be anything near waste.

This would be a lovely place to end the letter, but I feel

compelled to answer your other query. Yes, I have been with gentile men.

I know you well enough to know there’s some reason that you asked,

but I don’t yet know you well enough to know what that reason is. So all I’ll say

is that there’s something about their foreskin that makes them seem

more masculine, at first, but then leaves you with the feeling that it’s quite

coquettish how they hide themselves behind a sheath of skin, like a schoolgirl

giggling behind her hand after sending a note to a boy she likes.

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