Hair
for M
1.
who conceived that ravine
or
the contour
of those slopes
Torbay
—washing
over
him as he swims—
is trying to say
don’t let
the barber
shave
below
his collar
2.
I love
breathing
him in
my fingers
raking
his chest
a cub
wanders
the forest
after Andrés Montoya & Francisco X. Alarcón
Copyright © 2018 by Francisco Aragón. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 29, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘The arcadia of queer desire.’ It’s a phrase I’m borrowing from the poet/scholar/translator Roberto Tejada to describe this spare meditation. That and channeling the late Chicano poets Andrés Montoya and Francisco X. Alarcón informed the scaffolding of the first and second parts of this poem, respectively. In this regard, I’m situating the poem within a particular and deliberate Latinx lineage.”
—Francisco Aragón
Francisco Aragón
Francisco Aragón is the author of Glow of Our Sweat (Scapegoat Press, 2010) and Puerta del Sol (Bilingual Review Press, 2005). He is the director of Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.