Midge Hartshorn
people-watching on commercial street during bear week
As many bodies as you can imagine,
bare tanned flesh, bald heads, beards,
cock rings, couples, dogs in baby carriages, families in the candy store--
Does the pizza at Spiritus make
everyone want to suck a dick—or
fuck, does that mean something? The fashion is
g-strings and short-shorts and cabana shirts and
hair, everywhere, growing through and around harness after harness.
I have never seen men so at home with each other’s
joy, the way they move, the way they smile, the way they
kiss in the street, hands roaming along biceps, caressing nipples,
leaving nothing uncherished. And there we are, with our
mixed up bodies and mixed up dreams,
nervous that maybe we’re the
only ones who can tell in all of
Ptown that we aren’t three butch lesbians, or a teenaged boy and two girls, or a handful of twinks; but
something else
queer, in-between the elderly gentlemen with interlaced arms, the
rainbow-bedecked babies and drag queens and
salt-and-pepper dykes holding hands, and leather daddies reaching out
to smack an ass, or wave down a pedicab with some hot young thing out front.
Under the cover of signs selling
vodka and oysters and malasadas, we whisper
wide-eyed at the strength on display, hoping that an
x-ray of our souls would reveal us
yearning to see and be seen, not as
zoo-watchers, but as men who belong here too.
bare tanned flesh, bald heads, beards,
cock rings, couples, dogs in baby carriages, families in the candy store--
Does the pizza at Spiritus make
everyone want to suck a dick—or
fuck, does that mean something? The fashion is
g-strings and short-shorts and cabana shirts and
hair, everywhere, growing through and around harness after harness.
I have never seen men so at home with each other’s
joy, the way they move, the way they smile, the way they
kiss in the street, hands roaming along biceps, caressing nipples,
leaving nothing uncherished. And there we are, with our
mixed up bodies and mixed up dreams,
nervous that maybe we’re the
only ones who can tell in all of
Ptown that we aren’t three butch lesbians, or a teenaged boy and two girls, or a handful of twinks; but
something else
queer, in-between the elderly gentlemen with interlaced arms, the
rainbow-bedecked babies and drag queens and
salt-and-pepper dykes holding hands, and leather daddies reaching out
to smack an ass, or wave down a pedicab with some hot young thing out front.
Under the cover of signs selling
vodka and oysters and malasadas, we whisper
wide-eyed at the strength on display, hoping that an
x-ray of our souls would reveal us
yearning to see and be seen, not as
zoo-watchers, but as men who belong here too.
Midge Hartshorn (he/they) is a genderqueer poet and astronomer, raised in Idaho. Midge is a graduate student at Wesleyan University. Their work appears or is forthcoming in The Mount Holyoke Review, Zeniada, and Thimble Literary. Midge lives with his family in Massachusetts.
