You are standing above a kneeling man
in a rented room forty miles outside
the coal and filth of Pittsburgh. This is a story
about the man you collar and drag
through mudpuddled streets every day
of your customer service life, the mundanity
of Liberty Avenue almost suffocating
you. Denounce beauty. You don’t mind
that the hotel is economy. The exorbitant thing
is the man, blindfolded, giving himself up.
You’re going to punish him clean.
You won’t be kept waiting. He can’t be kept
safe. Order the tongue outstretched. Strike
a match on it. The thin stick of flame
—hold it close to the earlobe, so he can hear
the little hairs singe down to soot. Pat the head.
Box open the sore jaw. Tell him to bite,
he’ll hold the live match between his teeth
while you light the votive candle.
What happens next, I can’t watch—the mouthful
of hot red wax splashed on his lips, cooling
solid, before he can utter a cry,
before he knows what’s happening.
This is how you learn a language: sound
and function before sense. You’re giving
him a foreign tongue. Don’t stop until
he cries, until that stops too, until he knows
how to take off his tears for you. A man kicked
past human is beautiful. If I were writing
this poem, I wouldn’t stay to witness pain
of voluntary, frivolous kinds, to see men
bonded by wounds, making love in a language
marked by slur and Sir. But I’m not writing this,
I’m in the room with you, a hot scald
coating my left cheek. Kiss this mouth made
raw and thick from burning. I’ve remade
myself, a thing of fire. I can choose between
him and you. I’m taking back myself, that abject
art. I tender pain when pain is due.