Reading Queer: The Spin

The Spin 
Mr Anthony

Like the booms of ships in harbour 

Jutting arms, money fisted, pushed 

For drinks and winks from barmen thick 

With muscle, backs like riverbeds 

Seen from the sky, swollen with heat,

Whilst endless spinning mirrors broke 

Our faces. His forearm softly grazed 

My own. I thought of fawns, their new 

And trembling noses rubbing flanks 

To learn which bodies one might trust.

His eyes too close to see, they skimmed

My cheek like breeze; I arched like weed

In shallow water drifting, bumped 

By currents mountain sent but faint 

At first, and leaning further in 

I felt him leaning too: two struts

Combining, willing weight to bear

Upon them of a weightless kind 

As, smiling, breath was synchronised: 

Ellipsis pulse that held me as 

I watched his thighs in denim twitch 

On eager feet; such fidgeting 

Below the water line churned earth 

In me, made surface hidden weeds 

With sudden thoughts to flower. Lust 

Means seeing only fragments of 

A thing and bridging gaps with hope 

(Full moons, like love, are rarely seen) 

And all I saw on turning was 

A grin: a cheeky slap to pull 

Me in. I flickered, sensing farce: 

His grin announced his rugby heft, 

A game show gift through dance floor smoke – 

He knew he was and I was not 

And yet his shoulder, rolling once,

Like taking off a dressing gown, 

Was nudging me towards the dark, 

In which he let me stroke his arms, 

Like avocados not yet ripe. 

I moved to kiss, instead he grasped 

My waist and lifted me above 

His head as music surged. I laughed, 

Was spun, and then he placed me down 

Elsewhere. His eyes had gone. Lips given, 

Within minutes, to someone else. 

What I mistook for cinema, 

Proprietorial semaphore, 

Lust’s elevated disco host, 

Was movement of an ornament 

For dusting, or for clearing space. 

I saw him drinking later, drunk: 

Wet-necked, conspiratorial, as 

Shadows, lurching, lapped a boy 

In golden trainers sitting bent 

To catch a voice I never caught. 

A fawn had stumbled, checked itself 

And looked straight through me like a fence 

Screening midnight fields, diamonded 

With dew, spurred on by whispered talk 

Of antlers, ever growing, yearly new.