UNSPOKEN IN AN UNDATED PHOTOGRAPH

by Lee Colin Thomas

 

 

Of these five boys in black and white
one stands alongside the joke
the others make of their cable-knit
sweaters and thigh-cut shorts.
Some October Saturday, off to
scrimmage, they smirk and pose
for this photo. Later captioned
Sophomore Antics in the campus paper.

Did he, the one, find a strange education
in his boarding-school study
of jawline geometry? Maps made of veins
in the topography of a chapped hand.
The politics of the mouth, as lips part. Latin
vocabulary in another boy’s lashes.
Grass-stain art worn on kneecaps  
and the mechanics of knuckles, cracked?

After the match, the engineered way
those bodies took up space
on the sidelines must have felt
dreamlike or dangerous. A step inside
a rescued season, at home
on alien turf, another reminder
that living in a body
and living in the world
are two different lessons
in sweat.

 

 

 

 

 

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