Spotted
By Kwame Dawes
the wounds of a walk foot man ii
On a flight from perpetually clogged and flatly bright LA
to the proudly humble and satisfyingly depressed
St. Paul, a thin and fit leather-clad older man, his knees
bent and bony shoulders dropped, searched for his phone
with his cell phone light, patting, spinning, peering with
increased panic and frustration, before the softly embarrassed
realization. Settling there for the flight to slope into
the smoky air of the land of Great Lakes and the noble dead.
We fear our revenants, I say, but mean I fear
my revenant in these bodies—I am comforted by my envy
of his thin legs and elegant fashion sense—I was never
taught the epistemologies of fabric and leather, of taste,
and it’s too late now. I was never seeded with the lie
of beauty, never the cute one, more the disappearing one,
the one arriving with the clamor of nose drawing, sneezing
and the glorious reddening nose, the one dripping eyes
and constant flow. My limbs were spotted with the scarring
of scabs picked and re-picked for the strange pleasure
of pain and blood, the pussing and pink pigment of bared
skin, soon I would hide the spotted skin in trousers, as child
and deep into adulthood, consider the calculus of exposure
at sea and at pools, my tongue the trained distraction
so that I would be heard for wit and distracting brilliance,
the mastery of the grace that would haunt those I hoped
would like me—all an illusion, of course, I know
this now, though then I crossed the city as a wounded
man, in constant limp for the deformed ankle,
with the flaming itch of chafing thighs, the burnt
flesh scent rising, my stomach churning within the burn
of desire and hurried meals—I walked flagellated
by a constantly betraying body, that I pushed on, through
sweat and labor, not in search of beauty, nothing such
but for ease—the ease of self-love, the hope in finding
desire in another, the hope of triumph on the field
such modest ambition. The artist I knew could make beauty
with concentration and the gift of the hungry eye, so I learned
the pleasures of deep silence, the sinking into absence
in the charcoal’s scratch and smudge, hours slipping by
and before me emerging a pure grace, the magic
of beauty. It was my comfort—where I would walk toward,
entering Hope Gardens, armed with pads and pencils,
to find under some secret seclusion the sweetness of darkened
fingers, so familiar, so holy, so necessary and precious.
