From the Fishouse

I dial The Number, punch a code
to enter the backroom,
where I create a profile,
with a deeper voice & the curt
monosyllables of attraction:
Cut, thick, top, hot, now.

Nothing seems more hopeless
than phone sex on Sunday morning,
early, around 5 or 6 am, when the phone lines
are crowded with club boys
tweaking home & middle-aged men
waking stiff & hungry & alone.

Outside the empty streets shine still
with lamplight & dew,
though in the city, it must be something
else—gutter water
spreading its stain under the slow
sizzle of random taxis.

As each man describes himself,
this must be like the early,
golden days of radio,
when voices were visceral,
each imagination shaping a different world,
more real than its listener.

I come here to connect,
if not in person,
then to needs that require anonymity.
At twenty, I needed to know
I could be loved. At forty, I need
to know I can be wanted.

I don’t last long, shuffling the profiles
like a deck of cards,
that spills, when gripped too tightly,
to the floor, where a boy
crouches against a PHILCO, its voices
beating against his heart.