Stealing Men’s Magazines at 11
It was an ancient springhouse—brick
over a rivulet—and we had discovered it.
And my friend Gary fed the rope and me
down into our tiny clubhouse-as-America,
territory we shared with the neighborhood.
It hurt being trussed up of your own free
will. And I felt as if I were being impaled.
Oscillating, I had to release the Ray-O-Vac
camping lantern I had appropriated. Stolen.
Hand over hand my friend paid out the sack
of me petitioning for the hard work to end.
Then I was standing on a dirt ledge. Then
holding a Playboy from 1965. Hugging it,
my cargo of futurehood older boys had left,
I rose. In the dark the centerfold fell open.
From a blue sky, Gary called out. Pulled
and pulled some more. I was overjoyed.
I felt hands. Then breath. Then the day
or that portion of the hour mostly boy
as secret sharer—if by “secret sharer”
we mean what a soul weighs in Ohio,
given that blackness is where we go
before being conveyed to the surface
with dubious, light-struck treasure.
About Roy Bentley
