Prelude to Bruise Read online

  Boy was so busy concentrating, he took only one note: The black paper body shuddered, then offered up its throat.

  “Here,” the body said.

  Boy made a perfect shot. Boy’s father called over the other fathers to look at the perfect little hole in the black paper body.

  Boy made note of how many times his father looked at him and smiled. Three. The number of times the other fathers patted him on the back. Five.

  Boy was so excited he did a little hop. Boy noted that his father’s smile dimmed then, but only for a second.

  Boy’s father has had that black paper body hanging in the garage ever since.

  6

  In tonight’s dream, Boy kneels on the floor while D sits in a metal chair.

  A bare lightbulb shines above them like a lynched moon.

  (Boy takes note of this.)

  Boy’s heart is a grenade in his chest. Boy rakes D’s body with his eyes. D is all muscle and blood. D has on a dirty white shirt; faded jeans; and a black hood.

  The lightbulb turns red and Boy’s hand trembles as he reaches for the fly of D’s jeans. He pulls the zipper down slowly and reaches in.

  Under his black hood, D moans. Boy holds onto him a moment longer—so much heat, Boy notes. Instead of a dick, hard with blood, the long end of a rifle juts out of D’s fly.

  Boy opens his mouth, leans forward, and flicks his tongue along the barrel.

  7

  In gym, Boy and the Boys sit on the floor while the coach models how to make a free-throw shot. Boy stops taking notes on form long enough to look at K out of the corner of his eye.

  K sits with his legs wide open. K is wearing loose soccer shorts and, under them, loose plaid boxer shorts.

  From where Boy is sitting, Boy can see up K’s shorts.

  Scratch, scratch, goes the pen in Boy’s head. The size of K’s thigh, the scar on the left side of K’s thigh, the muscles flexing in K’s thigh, the curly hairs that begin on K’s inner thigh—

  K throws out a word like a stone. Boy yanks his eyes from K’s thigh and looks up. K’s eyes are as narrow as knife wounds.

  “Fag,” hisses K.

  All of the Boys are staring at Boy.

  8

  Sometimes Boy writes stories inside his head. The story Boy writes while crying in the restroom stall is about a kingdom where, every year on the same day, boys fall from the sky like dead birds.

  9

  Boy’s English class is reading The Iliad. When Patroclus is killed, the Boys and the Girls don’t understand why Achilles goes mad with grief. The teacher talks about male friendship.

  “Fags,” hisses K under his breath.

  “Fags,” hiss the rest of the Boys in agreement.

  Boy is in the middle of writing a note about Achilles holding Patroclus’s cold body when a spitball hits his forehead. The Boys laugh. Boy doesn’t look up from his notebook. Boy’s eyes are stinging.

  10

  A second war, in addition to the first war, has started. No one calls them “wars” anymore, but no one has bothered to come up with a new name either.

  Boy watches the evening news with his mother and father. The newscaster talks about the two wars without actually using the word war, then he moves on to a story about a man found dead this morning. The body was in the alleyway behind a gay bar. Baseball bats were used.

  When the newscaster says that police found the word queer etched into the victim’s forehead, Boy’s father shifts in his seat and changes the channel. Boy’s mother asks if everyone is ready for dinner.

  11

  Notes on names Boy gets called at school: fairy, pansy, fudge packer, pillow biter, cock gobbler.

  12

  Boy reads about the myth of Ganymede. One moment, Ganymede is just a beautiful boy standing on a hillside. The next, Zeus descends upon him in the form of an eagle and takes the boy to live among the gods. The book uses the word abducts.

  Boy wonders who wouldn’t want to be abducted.

  13

  Boy makes an online profile. He says he is nineteen even though he is sixteen. Boy logs into the chat room and clicks on the profiles of other users. Boy makes note of different ways to say hello.

  Boy: Hi there.

  CollegeBoy78: Sorry, not into black guys.

  Boy: Hey. What’s up?

  TNJock24: Not my type.

  Boy: What’s up?

  Hot4Mouth: [this user has blocked your profile]

  Boy does an experiment. He finds the picture of a white boy with a similar height and build and uses it to create a new profile. Boy finds the profiles of the same users he tried chatting with before.

  Boy: Hey.

  CollegeBoy78: Hi. What are you into?

  Boy: What’s up?

  TNJock24: Not much. Nice picture. What are you into?

  Boy: Hi there.

  Hot4Mouth: Hey, sexy.

  14

  One afternoon, Boy gets home from school and goes to his bedroom to jack off. When Boy opens his bedroom door, he sees the gay porn magazine he has kept hidden under the mattress laying open on the bed. Boy’s father sits beside the magazine.

  Boy notes that his father’s eyes are as narrow as knife wounds now, just like the Boys’.

  Boy is a deer caught in headlights, a deer that could kill everyone in the approaching sedan simply by not moving. Boy’s father holds his gaze like a driver who refuses to swerve.

  All of the sentences in Boy’s mouth come out broken:

  “It isn’t—” Boy says.

  “I—” Boy says.

  “I swear I—” Boy says.

  Boy’s father rolls up the magazine into a baton and stands.

  Boy opens his mouth to say “Father.”

  Boy’s father’s fist comes down like war itself.

  When Boy comes to, he’s on the floor. A pistol rests on the bed where the magazine had been.

  15

  In line in the cafeteria, at his favorite table in the library, on the last block before the block he lives on, the inside of Boy’s head is one blank notebook page after another.

  16

  One night, while Boy’s parents are asleep, Boy steals his father’s car. The entire drive, Boy prays the car doesn’t break down. Boy doesn’t know how he would explain his dad’s car breaking down in the gay part of town.

  This is Boy’s second trip to the Throckmorton Mining Company. It’s not a mining company, of course, but a gay dance club. Inside, it looks like an abandoned shaft and is lit with fake candles. A dead canary lies in the cage by the entrance.

  The canary is not real is Boy’s first note in weeks.

  Boy feels eyes on him the moment he steps into the black light.

  Boy has on a white shirt. He likes what black light does to his black skin. Boy feels the eyes on his body turn into hands on his body and the hands on his body turn into bodies against his body.

  Boy hardly talks all night. There is a tornado inside Boy’s silence. Hades is not hell, Boy notes.

  The Stranger is old enough to be Boy’s father. He has the body of a soldier. The Stranger’s shirt is unbuttoned to show off his six-pack. Boy feels the Stranger against him before he sees him.

  When they dance, Boy looks up into the Stranger’s face for a moment. The Stranger has an easy smile. Boy makes a note: Learn how to smile like that.

  When one song bleeds into another, the Stranger takes Boy’s hand and leads him into a restroom.

  Hades is not hell, Boy thinks again, this time with a man inside his mouth.

  17

  All of the lights are on in the house made of guns when Boy eases his father’s car back into the driveway. Boy does not rush. Boy makes note of the number of steps from the garage to the living room. Fifteen.

  Boy walks into the living room and walks right up to his father. Boy wonders if his father can hear the tornado ripping up the notebooks in his head.

  Boy looks for his mother for a second, only sees the bottom of her feet at the to
p of the steps, then holds out the car keys as if to drop them in his father’s hand.

  Boy’s smile looks like it has been cut into his face.

  Boy’s father’s fist comes down like a war no one bothers to call a war.

  18

  In the biology lab, in the bedroom he is not allowed to leave in the evenings, at the dinner table encased in silence, scratch scratch scratch go the furious pens inside Boy’s head. Scratch scratch scratch.

  19

  A third war starts and it doesn’t even make the news. The same night that war begins, Boy walks down the hallway, cracks open his parent’s bedroom door, and steps inside. He has been holding the pistol for so long it is warm in his hand.

  Boy stands just like Boy’s father has taught him. Boy raises the pistol and takes aim.

  Seconds are years in the almost-dark.

  Scratch scratch.

  The dull heat of the gun.

  The vague smile on Boy’s sleeping mother’s face.

  The way Boy’s father murmurs for a second, then snores.

  Boy stands beside their bed until his legs begin to ache. Boy brings the pistol down for a moment.

  Boy has a name.

  Boy whispers it once in the almost-dark,

  smiles briefly, then takes a step back.

  6

  LAST PORTRAIT AS BOY

  It’s not barking, but the sound of teeth

  just shy of sinew, taut insides of my thighs.

  I’m in the woods again.

  Branches snip my clothes into feathers, each step farther

  into my own silhouette. Or

  is this the locked room of my body?

  A grown man called boy

  gone inside himself,

  the circle of wolves blinking gold

  just beyond the trees.

  I am not a boy. I am not

  your boy. I am not.

  NOTES

  “Don’t Let the Sun Set on You” is a found poem inspired by a February 21, 2006, Washington Post article by Peter Carlson titled “When Signs Said ‘Get Out.’”

  “Cruel Body” takes its title from a description of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

  “He Thinks He Can Leave Me” borrows its first line from Edinburgh, by Alexander Chee.

  “Blue Prelude” references the song as performed by Nina Simone.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe so much to the insight and care of my editor Erika Stevens, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Tayari Jones, Cynthia Cruz, Patricia Smith, Bryan Borland, Tom Hunley, Anna Journey, David St. John, Jericho Brown, Syreeta McFadden, Angel Nafis, DeLana R. A. Dameron, Isaac Fitzgerald, Roxane Gay, Tom Healy, David Groff, William Johnson, Ellen Claycomb, Duval Bodden, Ryan Henneberry, and Sally Squibb. I wouldn’t be here without these people, nor would these poems.

  I’m also incredibly grateful for the support of Western Kentucky University, Rutgers University–Newark, the NYC LouderARTS project, Cave Canem, and Queer / Art / Mentorship.

  I would also like to thank the editors of the following publications, in which many of these poems have appeared, sometimes in earlier forms and under different titles: West Branch, Guernica, Best Gay Stories, Jubilat, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Blackbird, Weave Magazine, Vinyl Poetry, Muzzle magazine, Ishaan Literary Review, Spillway, Connotation Press, Line Break, Esque magazine, Naugatuck River Review, the Rumpus, and Bloom Literary Journal.

  SAEED RECOMMENDS THESE BOOKS FROM COFFEE HOUSE PRESS

  SHOULDA BEEN JIMI SAVANNAH

  Patricia Smith

  978-1-56689-218-6

  “Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah is a stunning and transcendent work of art, despite, and perhaps because of, its pain. This book shines.” —Sapphire

  ANGEL DE LA LUNA AND THE 5TH GLORIOUS MYSTERY

  Evelina Galang

  978-1-56689-333-6

  “Evelina Galang is a masterful storyteller and through her brilliant voice and craft, Angel and her family become ours too.” —Edwidge Danticat

  HOLD IT ’TIL IT HURTS

  T. Geronimo Johnson

  978-1-56689-309-1

  “Transcendent contemporary American literary fiction, a rich and passionate story rewarding enough to be read again.” —Kirkus Reviews

  COFFEE HOUSE PRESS

  The mission of Coffee House Press is to publish exciting, vital, and enduring authors of our time; to delight and inspire readers; to contribute to the cultural life of our community; and to enrich our literary heritage. By building on the best traditions of publishing and the book arts, we produce books that celebrate imagination, innovation in the craft of writing, and the many authentic voices of the American experience.

  Visit us at coffeehousepress.org.

  FUNDER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Coffee House Press is an independent, nonprofit literary publisher. Our books are made possible through the generous support of grants and gifts from many foundations, corporate giving programs, state and federal support, and through donations from individuals who believe in the transformational power of literature. Coffee House Press receives major operating support from Amazon, the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts—a federal agency, and from Target. This activity made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Support for this title was received through special project support from the Jerome Foundation.

  Coffee House also receives support from: several anonymous donors; Mr. and Mrs. Rand L. Alexander; Suzanne Allen; Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation; Mary & David Anderson Family Foundation; Around Town Agency; Patricia Beithon; Bill Berkson; the E. Thomas Binger and Rebecca Rand Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation; the Buuck Family Foundation; Claire Casey; Jane Dalrymple-Hollo; Ruth Dayton; Dorsey & Whitney, LLP; Mary Ebert and Paul Stembler; Chris Fischbach and Katie Dublinski; Fredrikson & Byron, P.A.; Katharine Freeman; Sally French; Jocelyn Hale and Glenn Miller for the Rehael Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation; Roger Hale and Nor Hall for the Rehael Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation; Jeffrey Hom; Carl and Heidi Horsch; Kenneth Kahn; Alex and Ada Katz; Stephen and Isabel Keating; the Kenneth Koch Literary Estate; Kathryn and Dean Koutsky; the Lenfestey Family Foundation; Sarah Lutman; Carol and Aaron Mack; George Mack; Leslie Larson Maheras; Gillian McCain; Mary McDermid; Sjur Midness and Briar Andresen; the Nash Foundation; Peter and Jennifer Nelson; Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, P.A.; Kiki Smith; Jeffrey Sugerman and Sarah Schultz; Nan Swid; Patricia Tilton; USBank; the Archie D. & Bertha H. Walker Foundation; Stu Wilson and Mel Barker; the Woessner Freeman Family Foundation; Margaret and Angus Wurtele; and many other generous individual donors.

  To you and our many readers across the country, we send our thanks for your continuing support.

  A 2013 Pushcart Prize winner, Saeed Jones is the author of the chapbook When the Only Light is Fire (2011, Sibling Rivalry Press). His work has appeared in Guernica, Ebony, the Rumpus, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and West Branch, among other publications. Jones received his MFA in creative writing at Rutgers University–Newark and is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and Queer / Art / Mentorship. He works as the editor of Buzzfeed LGBT and lives in New York.