Charles Atlas.

SHERRILL, JAN-MITCHELL

He is young in the photograph

and naked, staring off to his left

in a pose. Brown edged and soft,

his hair gleams back from his Roman face.

One curl, as it dangled by his

nautilus ear of perfect eros, makes

him touchable, fits my fingers

on his placard ribs, pulls me

over his stomach, down

his rounding front thigh

back up to the nipple and the

sky-wide chest, the clefting throat,

his lowered eye.

My God, the panting

Brooklyn, Coney Island of the man.

Skin musk cradled in the soft pouch

beneath his thunder-lidded eyes. He is

the nakedest man in New York, target

to the beating of my pointed heart.