Deviants

By Peter Kline

Ich allein

lebe und leide und lärme.

I alone

live and suffer and howl.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Blindman’s Song,” trans. Stephen Mitchell

1

Having been a lurker in dark corridors’

half-open doors,

a malingerer in booths, a swiveler of stools,

a cocksure cruiser of bad-liver bars in borrowed clothes,

I go where everyone goes

and I go unseen.

Here—take my hand and shake it.

Only I know where this hand has been.

2

I could have asked for it straight out, and got it.

I took the crooked way.

Now I see it sidelong,

and pay for it on credit.

Till the pander-man knock-knocks

I prick my ears for come-and-get-it.

Don’t let him cash me in

till I collect.

3

I was worried, so I watched.

Watching was a thing to do

to bring me a little bit closer to you

whether or not you knew it.

(Oops. You missed a spot.)

Where you’re rough I feel rough.

Looking’s not enough. I want touch

that separates who’s touching from who’s touched.

4

I understand the way the killer works,

on three-week clocks.

A little itch, a little urge, a little ticklish hypothetical

then I splurge. And hustle to mop up.

To me it’s not just stroke. More

than sore knees from keyhole-peeping

the pussy floss its teeth.

It never happened if I don’t get caught.

5

To keep me in I had to keep it out.

And I needed to be kept:

a risky secret,

I had more power the more I went unsaid.

Then I put it to my lips. I was pronounced

emphatically. My syllables were set.

Now I’m a byword, passed

mouth to mouth to mouth.

6

While others get turned back, I pass,

but, passing, I grow less,

a blond john doe with a flinch and a wasted face.

I want new ways to be erased—

a righter lie, a stranger’s cut-or-kiss.

Someday I’ll pass right through

to someone else.

Peter Kline’s poetry has been honored with a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, the Morton Marr Poetry Prize from Southwest Review, and residency fellowships from the James Merrill House, the Amy Clampitt House, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and other journals, and have been anthologized twice in the Best New Poets series. His first collection of poetry, Deviants, is forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin State University Press in the fall of 2013. He can be found online at www.peterklinepoetry.com.