The Wild Boy Of
Aveyron Reaches Puberty, 1802
At first the doctors
thought his sexual organs
abnormally small due to
the years of isolation
the boy suffered in the
forest, for as everyone
knew, “social
development hastens their growth”–
but when he began to
stare at girls and touch
his crotch they felt a
second look might be in order:
a series of sex
experiments would prove whether
homo ferus could
fuck on his own or learn
to finger a whore while
the scientists watched–
whole groups of them were
brought for the savage,
who’d stand gawking in
the circle for a while
before lurching toward
his favorite, at first
placing her hand on his
head while he crouched
and moaned. Gradually in
time his technique
evolved: he’d take her
to a corner of the room
where again he’d try
with his hands, only to fail
in getting her to do what
he wanted. For her
it must’ve been equally
frustrating: unable
to help him even a little
or show him
what he demanded to know
about himself–
her instructions were to
stand there passively,
submit to his
explorations without a word.
The Arousal
Awakened by people
fucking below my window,
I get up to look but
can’t see them in the shadow
of the building.
Listening to their moans I too
become aroused as one of
them comes. But then
the lovers leave and
despite the silence that returns
I lie with eyes open,
unable to sleep.
Next morning I inspect
the place
but of the act itself no
trace remains,
no condom, no earring, no
article
of clothing, not even a
hair.
The ground feels bare and
cold, identical
to so many other patches
of earth,
ordinary lawns, sterile
surfaces
where life, if stubbornly
present,
holds no evidence of the
erotic.
Lament
for Roy Sullivan, the “Human Lightning Conductor”
The
first time the sky reached down,
you
were knocked from your bicycle
and
thrown–hair on fire–into the thorns.
A
second bolt singed your skull to the bone.
When
a third took your eyebrows away,
you
learned to listen to the weather.
Meanwhile,
a man must attend to himself,
set
to work. You were a park ranger:
at
least there were black bears to consider.
But
deep in the woods the light found you
a
fourth time as if you, not the trees,
were
the highest point around.
Nine
strikes you survived before taking a gun
to
your head. Were you tired of the attention,
the
way lightning touched you each time
almost
intimately, making sure you’d live
to
feel it again? Or is the Record Book right
to
report you died over an “unrequited love”?
The
photo shows you in your prime–
big
and bald, eyes dark. Five down,
four
to go: you’re still in uniform,
working
the woods, not yet ready to retire,
poking a finger through the hole in your hat.
© 2005 David Francis
Click here to leave a comment on
any of these poems
