Africa again— a poem

At the Fashion
Square mall,
back
of Waldenbooks,
I saw my younger self
haunting
the magazine rack.
Ripping out pages
of Blueboy,
tucking them
in a Trapper
Keeper.
Turn back.
His eyes met mine,
animal
and brittle,
a form
of gratitude
that a man
kept his stare.
Any man.
I half-smiled
some admission,
and though
he couldn’t
see it coming,
I excused him
his acid jeans;
two Swatch
watches,
two guards.
He, I,
must have been
nineteen:
sex was “safer”
then—
scribbles
on the mall
men’s room stall;
malaise
of saxophone
and PSAs.
How
did I
even
learn how to live
in 1991?
Landlocked,
cock-blocked,
Spanish moss
festering.
I forgive him.


_{@muftii made this signature for me.}

“I was recently in a mall bookstore, and as I watched the men shift and avert their eyes in front of the porno mags, I remembered doing much the same thing in Nigeria , the desolation and excitement of trying to get a glimpse of something illicit and queer—and I felt an overwhelming sense of tenderness toward my younger self. The epigraph and, to some extent, formal structure of the poem come from GRA Road.

_{photocredit: respect to Adriana Velásquez on unsplash}