Vitruvian Boy

I used to lie
on the bathroom floor,

slip the smooth side
of a toothbrush into my hole.

I needed to know. I needed
to lie on the floor

for it to work.
When I was done, when I’d get up,

I couldn’t wash away
my body’s chalk

outline. Each one added to the others,
layered, multi-limbed,

a Leonardo sketch
of boyhood conscience.

It moved like stop motion,
flip-book cartoon

convulsing,
swaying arms & legs.

I did it so much it became
a filled-in circle,

a white moon I knew one day
I’d have to lift like a city manhole.

All that silence
trapped underneath.

The tunnels
I’d have to go through,

return to,
concrete twists & turns

like the stomach
of an unknown god.

Grant Chemidlin is a queer poet living in Los Angeles. He is the author of What We Lost in the Swamp (Central Avenue Publishing, 2023), selected by Cathy Park Hong as a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. His other works include the chapbook New in Town (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and the illustrated collection He Felt Unwell (So He Wrote This). Recent poems can be found in Palette Poetry, Quarterly West, Iron Horse Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Atlanta Review, among others.