“Body Language” by Michael Broder

Author: Poetry Editor

May 26, 2015

This week, a poem by Michael Broder.

 

BODY LANGUAGE

 

I couldn’t stay hard for you,
no matter how many times we tried

to make you a boy or me a girl,
your hole into my hole,

you what I wanted.
Why did we keep at it?

Good that you were soft and milky,
but I wanted you lean and lanky,

faintly stubbled, and you wanted me to be
more of a man, the kind of man

only a woman could be.

——

MICHAEL BRODER is the author of This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press), a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Assaracus, BLOOM, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, Painted Bride Quarterly, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, among other journals and anthologies. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, and a colony of feral cats.