I’ve always known my outside does my inside
little justice. I’ve had hairy legs since
the seventh grade. In class the unavoidable
silence from the students who sat beside me
made me cross my legs. There have been times
I felt my brain is at war with my skin,
the need to be comfortable invaded
by the need to look good. We were reading
the history of mankind in anthropology class.
We studied the structure of the big-nosed
Neanderthals who half-crawled the earth
with hairy bodies, a build less superior
to Homo sapiens, and my teacher
took the liberty to say, “They’re like Arthur,”
and I was filled with the laughter of the classroom.
I have never known a god to be a Neanderthal
nor Homo sapiens, a she a he or an it,
I have never known a god to cross the borders
of skin to show me who I am,
I just hope God is anything but that.
is a poet and MFA candidate at San Diego State University. He is also a contributing editor at Poetry International and a poetry editor at Magee Park Poets. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Northridge Review, Chapparap, Taproot Literary Review, The Food Poet, Confrontation, San Diego Poetry Annual, and Rufous City Review.