HIDES

There, past the blazing green
and kicked-up, scalded dust,
behind the monkey bars that hung
like the ghost-bones of astronauts,
where the shade curled by the split-wood fence,
that’s where we hunched, furtive
and hot-breathed, scouring the sick mystery
of older kids: smashed beer cans and the rain-stuck pages of old porn mags,
cracked and dried like animal hides in the grass.

We fought over their furtive, glossy limbs,
brought back tatters to stick in our desks. We glanced at them between science lessons,
where we studied half-finished men
in crinkling, plastic text book diagrams, peeling back a hazy lung or spleen,
like we were digging down to the heart
of some Colorforms murder victim.
I knew the secret wound of my body.
I knew what was worth hiding.