A Man of My Own Sex
Weston Richey
I ask it of the aliens with voice long
& angry as the cornfields off I-
43, throat rattling like my Ford’s
ol’ V8 driving down it when the fuckers
stole me away. I want but one man,
I hoarse toward their heads gray & far
too smooth: Only one, with body alike to this
what can piss as I piss, chew tobacco, spit
the leftovers into empty Mountain Dew bottles,
throat sturdy to holler soooooie pig pig
to the sows or belt country road ballads
at the stars, whiskey on one side, rifle
on the other in my flatbed—no need
to think of inhuman eyes, jellied black,
peering on the same salted dark expanse.
The aliens don’t say shit. Tiny
mouths don’t quiver, no burbling, faces
blank, just them dim washed-out
dockets beating at my skull
like claw hammers. Screaming now, I beg:
You never fell a deer what you don’t kill
or release! Not even God need be
cruel enough to deny a being a shape
it craves! Withhold every breath, every
breeze I’ve known! Each inch of wheat field,
my amber! My squelching tires against fresh-
boiled blacktop! Burn my country, my state,
the whole of the big blue, all of it
from my brain! A world empty without
the men I could love but never be—
no lung packed with tar nor
finger dexterous with poker cards
ever got my veins to flow with right
blood! Them bodies I loved,
what stuffed Wranglers full with man,
their muscles were made with some-
thing I could know but never feel—
alien, alien! Show me a dark curl,
generous thigh or haunch, a smile I might
have myself, a boot what might
fit on my own foot! Only this
& your mothership would be home!
The aliens close in but still
they’re aliens. I cry, tears bitter gas
station coffee—I cry, oh I wail, I
wail as a banjo. Still silence only,
beer-can eyes, probe whirring mean
like a drill, the finest Black & Decker.
