First Plaboy

             First Playboy

Stowed between coffin lid

mattress and frame
as if tucked in a church pew
I waited long past the hyphen of light
diminished in a whispered
 horizontal slant
beneath the door of
my parents’ bedroom down the hall
the room where I was conceived
grade school autumn, sixth grade
counting the follicles of adolescent
fur sprouting like a dried holiday
wreath around the nest of my anatomy

 stationary white of my torso

 body a stiff peg on a hat rack
 that has never been used
Confirmation bible on
 chin of nightstand
prayers supplicated
 offered two hours earlier

on caps of knees

 How I remember kissing the minty lips

of Renae Howard in the rain
in Westlake parking lot
freshman year,

her body, taller than mine

walking as if on stilts,

 being unable to refrain

from trying to enter her shy
smile like a voyeuristic

keyhole

watching as her eyes hush close
 an automatic garage door

not being to understand how wet

he mouth felt inside

wondering what would happen

if I got her alone on the leather chariot

on her living room couch

long past the rectangular tongue

of the rented VHS tape had protruded

and self-ejected at us in envious scowl

the blizzard scratch and static

allegro accompanying us

imagining what she would look like

with a bunny tail and ears

wondering if the sun porch

could pass for a grotto

groping the glossy bulletin

\scrolled kaleidoscope

The center flapping out
in a trinity of frames

 guts a stain glass drape

bannered over an athletic stadium

heralding a pennant

the windows of author profiles

 blurred comics, dimensions, busts sizes
fetishes, Hef with his pipe
trying to find the Easter rabbit on

the front cover as if with a monocle

 I groped my flesh

 a relay baton,

a diploma from a  commencement

ceremony that somehow would never arrive.