Lessons in Solitude from Men
1.
To be okay alone is to treasure time
like a lode in the stone day, but I can’t
figure out how the strong do it, fuse skin
to ore against loss that rains like rusted
bearings, like the recluse Geryon, the suit
he poured his frame into each day, the sheets
of impracticable iron he wore to make rounds
among sheep, a warrior’s carapace that could not
have been his nor do I think the loot of some
conquest, but, I suspect, a shepherd’s grief,
the weight to him of a lover’s solid clasp,
the weight to him of loss.
2.
I learned about solitude from men like Aaron
in Parry Sound, rasping at canoes with his heart
in his heels, from Oliver after Saugatuck stunned hard
and heart sick, the timing for us ill, from Matthew
the summer I left Harlem naked and dumb to a chill
that would singe, and with each it was as though every
fraction of space each made in each day was always
more than each could spare, so that alone now
and shouldering my own heavy hull I hope,
as every Geryon since Hesiod must hope,
for the wind to die and keep love home.
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Roy Pérez lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches Latin@ literature and performance studies at Willamette University. Three of his poems were recently included in the Best of PANIC! anthology by Fire King Press. He is a founding member of the birdsong arts collective and small press in Brooklyn, New York, for which he serves as contributing poetry editor. He is currently working on a book about sex, race, and art entitled Queer Mediums. Born in Los Angeles, raised in Miami, and fashioned in Brooklyn, Roy has now lived in all four corners.
