Proto-

Several times we sat
silent over an hour, scared to breach
a barely kept frontier. Mobster,
menace, man altared
in the image of father (more
than his fatherhood called for)
in the image of orbit expelling us—
dashed, Kuiper belt objects
with chunks taken out.
Someone whose planetspeak
shut us up so—why spin his way?
It’s all you get. Spawn,
revere and refer to him,
waste no time becoming in-lawed.
Mutable. Off-course and oblong
by a 5-iron’s loft. Lands how it hits.
That’s one way to look at it.

Be Each

I give one concise cymbal:
a tried tide crash

in the rift in the wave.
Nothing more direct.

Surf creeps up the shore, doubt
closes in. Father it. Minimize
what it lengthens on.

The ocean lets one current in.
Embattled, just one wins.

One current waves
to another heard here.

Dude O’Clock

Scrubbed bubble foam and lather
scatter filth and shell untended tile.

Muffin-topped bands over fleshy middles,
nothing’s jagged. Undressed

undone and rebuilt, loose tied
shapes opaque and ordered.

I’ve caught dude o’clock, nude crowd
roused in discrete steam. We’d shared

etiquette, lanes soft inches
from slick skin and flattened bulges.

Speedo, jammer, box cut—
drawstrings slack and hit the ankles.

Suds, pamper, wait your turn,
brush, lotion, edge in, linger.

Will Russo is the author of two chapbooks: Dreamsoak (Querencia Press, 2023) and Glass Manifesto, winner of the 2023 Rick Campbell Chapbook Award from Anhinga Press. He is poetry reviews editor at Another Chicago Magazine and received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Find him at willrusso.com.