If The World Were Sexual Today

If the world were sexual today –
and let’s decide it is –
then it must be much like
the raven-haired improbably sweet
lean young dancer whom I saw this
morning on the subway – keen black

irises and alabaster skin and ebon
eyebrows like two painted wings –
Egyptian iconography made blood-
warm flesh: it would have dipped as
freshly, deeply, gracefully as the plié
with which he entertained his rush-hour

audience astride a silver pole
obligingly provided by the MTA:
it would have played the role he played
as he engaged my eyes as we got off
our ride at Twenty-Third Street –
and I told him how delightfully I thought

he’d danced for us – and he asked in
the accents of some middle-eastern
country I could not decipher
what I did – and I forbade myself
to answer that my occupation
was to linger sinisterly everywhere

to find such finds as him – so I just
smiled as he stood waiting for a cue –
which I denied him: ah, my New York City! –
yes, I knew of course I had to minister
instead to you. Everybody sighed:
he pirouetted out of view.



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