Ache

after an untitled Joseph Sterling photo, taken between 1959-1962

I want to be one of Joseph Sterling’s boys,
a gelatin silver printed edge of
strapped possibility
stiff maybes
flexed promise
youth cuffed quickly into short shirt sleeves
bright white collar calla lily kissing at my neck
and you stand beside me, looking nearly the same,
wondering if anyone would notice if
we reappear buttoned in each other’s cottons.
You could grease me with that comb you keep in your pocket
and I’ll bulge the way your biceps do as teeth scrape across my scalp
(it’s okay if my hair gets pulled).

Us Sterling boys are
clean cut cool calloused calm cored and cocky
intimate yet detached
backs pressed to walls,
hands crammed in pockets,
jean seams tugged taut with one boot angled against brick,
folds of denim licking across pelvis.

Once
I saw you stub out a cigarette on your belt buckle
and I ashed along with it,
burning all the way up and out and through.
You said this pack would be your last and
for three days I snuck singles into that cardboard case,
desperate to find out where you’d end the next one.

I’m sorry,
I should say,
but I’m not.

Us Sterling boys want like neon “closed” signs,
rebutted buzz of tubes,
burning after hours when your withhold feels right and good.
See us cross-armed on the corner,
the vertical pull of my neck a measuring stick
counting the inches of yearning
between you and me,
the lobe of your ear the only meal I need,
wrists still circumferenced with the pale of your eyes,
my watchband a ricochet of cinched silver

and when you ask for the time
I say
“all of mine”
and drop
hour after hour
into your open mouth,
panting.