Kent Leatham

Kent Leatham is a poet, translator, and educator. His work has appeared in dozens of journals and anthologies in the United States and abroad, including Best New Poets, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Fence, Able Muse, and Poetry Quarterly. He studied poetry at Emerson College and Pacific Lutheran University, taught writing at California State University Monterey Bay, and currently facilitates the Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium. He is proudly pansexual. His work can be found on his website: kentleatham.weebly.com.

Myth

It’s good to have a firm command
of imaginary animals:

Whether the sandpaper of dragon scales
is forty or four-forty grit to the touch;

Whether the pitch at which the phoenix squeaks
and whistles as its bones cool can be
heard by children or only by dogs;

Whether the griffon sharpens its beak
on puddingstone or obsidian, or if it needs
something tougher, carbon fiber;

Whether each lip on the kraken’s suckers
can feel the difference between “f” and “l,”
can taste the change between anise and fennel;

Whether the stalk of the vegetable lamb
can only support one bud at a time;

Whether the hoop snake retains its ring
when resting, and whether the water panther
purrs as it pours through rapids and falls;

Whether the selkie is stitched to its skin
and must tear, or slips it off and on;

Whether the hairy man regrets each
glimpse we catch as he pursues and seduces
the snowblind moon with his bamboo flute…

After all, someday you’ll play this game
to entertain your children or theirs,
to distract from the heat and soot and ache.

Try it now: explain the elephant,
rattlesnake, giraffe, or quail,
the unfathomable ark of the singing whale…

Sebastian: Penetration of the First Arrow

We were six.
             Arnold was Conan.
                           You were my first

sleepover guest,
            Adonis of the
                           handball court.

Pizza and movie done,
            my mother rolled out
                           the trundle bed from

beneath my own.
            Giggly and quivering
                           in the bathroom, we

brushed our teeth,
            then started to
                           strip for pajamas:

yours, He-Man;
            mine, Turtles.
                           You, I think, were

the first to pose,
            bare-chested,
                           the sticks of your arms

flexed to impress.
            And I was impressionable:
                           your mirror, mimic;

you, my muse.
            We traded the stage
                           until, with a flourish

worthy of any soubrette,
            I dropped my shorts and
                           froze, glorious:

for you,
            god,
                           I became pure flesh.

Don’t ask
            if it was hard,
                           that stupid little thing.

Don’t ask if it
            stretched desperately
                           toward your hand.

What mattered was
            transparency. What
                           mattered was the sacrifice.

Your smile shriveled.
            Your eyes fled.
                           You crawled back into

your grassy jeans,
            your Stüssy shirt,
                           asked to call your dad,

went home.
            We didn’t speak
                           at school again.

Shame isn’t
            knowing why
                           we’ve sinned.

For a week, I kept
            your bed pulled out,
                           made and waiting,

clenched myself
            to sleep above the
                           punishment you’d left.