The Beauty of Boys Is

By VIEVEE FRANCIS

that they are not men,
that they have not settled into their beards and
remorse, their crow’s feet and givens.
There is not yet an investment in houses
settling onto their foundations, hair, or
yesterday. The boy senses his time is precarious,
growing shorter as he sprouts up, so he spends
time believing, in everything,
he climbs and
he tumbles and tunnels and spills and
puts to good use his stones and his quarters,
penknife and book, even the stick he uses
to defeat his awkward shadow. He will dream
into existence a raft, a rocket, a fort of mud.
From a cloud
a gift of horses.
From the sand
castle and moat,
kingdom and cause.
Every boy knows he is a lone king,
that above hover dragons
from which he cannot withdraw, and so he must
pull from his quiver the makeshift arrow,
so he must draw the bow, and not yet divided
from his body all is possible.
He looks up
toward a darkening horizon, certain. So certain.

 

Vievee Francis is the author of Forest Primeval, Horse in the Dark, which won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize for a second collection, and Blue-Tail Fly. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including PoetryWaxwingBest American Poetry 2010, 2014, and 2017, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African American Poetry. She was the recipient of the 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

The Beauty of Boys Is

Related Posts

October 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems By Our Contributors

NATHANIEL PERRY
It’s funny how words can contain their opposite, / pleasure at once a freedom and a ploy— / a garden something bound and original / where anything, but certain things, should thrive; / the difference between loving-kindness and loving / like the vowel shift from olive to alive.

Image of laundry hanging on a line.

Real Estate for the Blended Family (or What I Learned from Zillow)

ELIZABETH HAZEN
Sometimes I dream of gardens— // that same dirt they kick from their cleats could feed us, / grow something to sustain us. But it’s winter. // The ground is cold, and I dare not leave this room; / I want to want to fix this—to love them // after all—but in here I am safe.

Dolors Miquel and Mary Ann Newman

Dolors Miquel: Poems

DOLORS MIQUEL
In the ravine the river roars / the rocks seem made of glass, / the snow swaddles it all, / icy hands on the reins. / In the ravine time demands / in a deep invisible voice / just one human life / to turn into flesh and be free. / Just one human life. // On the cliffs of my soul