For Some Slight I Can't Quite Recall

FOR SOME SLIGHT I CAN'T QUITE RECALL
Ross Gay

Was with the pudgy hands of a thirteen-year-old
that I took the marble of his head
just barely balanced on his reedy neck
and with brute tutelage
of years fighting the neighbor kids
and too the lightning of my father's
stiff palm I leaned the boy's head
full force into the rattly pane of glass
on the school bus and did so with the eagle of justice
screaming in my ear as he always does
for the irate and stupid I made the window sing
and bend and the skinny boy too
whose eyes grew to lakes lit by mortar fire
bleating with his glasses crooked
I'm not an animal walking in place
on the green vinyl seat looking far away
and me watching him and probably almost smiling
at the song and dance I made of the weak
and skinny boy who towering above me
became even smaller and bizarre and birdlike
pinned and beating his wings frantically
against his cage and me probably
almost smiling as is the way of the stupid
and cruel watching the weak and small
​and innocent not getting away.

from Ross Gay's Bringing The Shovel Down
recommended by Lynne Procope

FOR SOME SLIGHT I CAN'T RECALL
Adam Stone

My first taste of flesh
in a backyard pool
birth metaphor
sexual awakening
and he screamed
to my mother 
of my crime
betraying the betrayer      
but he didn't move out of range
of my unpredictable mouth 
victim blaming
confusion of abuse and love

The next day
his father smoked out 
a yellowjacket nest
soothing the predator
to make them prey
explaining the difference
between wasp and bee
classifying the enemy
how a bee's sting kills it
but a wasp lives to sting again
a single shot is self defense
semiautomatic gunfire is attempted murder

When a few weeks later
I stepped in a different yellowjacket nest
new scene
old crime
I ran faster than the boy I bit
yet I was stung and he wasn't
the enemy of my enemy dispenses justice to me

Of course
I've always considered myself 
more victim than wasp
identity confusion
martyr complex
presumed my barbed tongue
would kill me if unleashed even once
cross-species appropriation
over-reliance on metaphor
which is why I was a teenager
before I became this sassy cliche
internalized homophobia
we hate what we most fear we'll become
why I grew up privately
biting what I didn't understand
but never publicly stung

​