Emerging

We exist, I suppose, in cliche,
more often than we’d like to say.
Emerging now at thirty-one,
not just “out” among my friends
both furtively and filled with shame,
the inner self and sense of sex
relaxes to allow a slow accumulation of
objects that please my eye. The bit of roof
that’s mine decked out with what
my baser self takes pleasure in.

Like gay men of a certain age, who on
encountering themselves start to fill
their studies with the evidence, of whom
they always really were. Today the cliche
came for me: I hung two calendars,
one of redhead male nudes, the other men
in boxer briefs. Together with my book
of short stories by queer writers, the self
is turning inside out, relaxing, expanding.