Dakota Garilli writes of boys, their mothers, and “how we learn /of love.”
—
Mater, Maritatus
Little queer boys, maybe all boys
promise their mothers marriage
sometime around the age of six,
which was the year I learned of lust,
leather jackets, and Kenickie:
the erotics of musk and a thick coat
of grease. I meant to tell you
that this tendency is not Oedipal, despite
the Freudians; this is how we learn
of love. Jesus once said to his mother,
“Mary, I promise that one day
we will wed.” And he was right,
perhaps twenty percent so, but didn’t
know that the book would hold five Marys.
That one would call him Teacher and,
some say, bear his lamb. I believe it
was Thomas who writes that the Virgin laughed
at her son then, his childishness,
said, “Boy, we know not what we are in for.”
Like my mother, who feigned astonishment
in my teenage years when I told her
who I’d really like to marry. Spoke
But you always and but I wanted,
talked of women and of children,
something white.
***
Dakota Garrili has published here before. Read “Because He Reads the Bible” and “The Snail Poem.”
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