You wash yourself clean

in the toilet bowl. Boys

outbragging showers, compare

bodies, study what they will take.

What can be given. You want

to see them rust-soften

to turkey ham rolls. Boys

are towelling hair. Sound:

geography class erection.

You pick half-time pith

from gums, tangerine the air.

Boys dress skin in attention,

trombones pulled up to knees.

A loudness you can’t match.

You dry yourself, and hope no-

one cares you resemble peeled.