Man in Provincetown

 
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BY STELIOS MORMORIS

Morning in the gym,

and echoing clinks

of weights hammer

the low cloud cover

outside even closer.

 

Snowless winter, and

I crave the empty

picket-fenced lots

baring their burned

out patches of grass,

 

the cut-off straw

stalks of blue and

pink hydrangea—

once as bushy as

drag queens’ wigs.

 

I take in the molten

snarl of dead weeds

in the residual, un-

loved spaces, slip-

ping through slats

 

of peeling fences,

prying chasms of

broken bricks, a

lyrical tracing of

summers past: sex-

 

crazed, druggy, fun.

One relic is the man

in the lifting rack

beside me, proffering

a mechanical smile

 

and bleached tan

tainted—or tinted?—

by rumors, like

a buoy studded with

hooks. Whose friend

 

or husband did he

fuck, and where, why?

Wisteria spreads—

ultimately engulfs

the whole lattice

 

like gossip. I linger on

the bleached ridged

shingles of the closed

corner liquor store,

and bury summers.

 

Down the channel

of shuttered houses

one boat is turning

on its mooring no faster

than the second

 

hand of my watch, a

din reprieve from my

circuitous chatter:

I spawned with men

in the turquoise surf

 

until you towed me

to love’s estuary.

I behold this built man

finishing his squats

who starts punching

 

out texts, quicken-

ing my heartbeat.

The crows agitate

on wires, mocking

the arranged stillness.


Native of Boston and Martha's Vineyard, MA., Stelios Mormoris is CEO of EDGE BEAUTY, Inc. He has published work in The Fourth River, Gargoyle, Humana Obscura, Midwest Poetry Review, the Nassau Literary Review, Press, Spillway, Sugar House Review, Verse, the Whelk Walk Review and other literary journals.

Process Note: The poem I wrote "Man In Provincetown' was a meditation on the various seasons of Provincetown, MA., where I was struck by the starkness of winter, and how it kindled the memory of summer. I think it is also a sort of view of the danger of anonymous sex, and the search for intimacy. I was conscious of keep a strict tight form to the stanzas, with short line lengths, and driving the narrative through hard, clear imagery.