DOMINION 

by Daisy Fried

Castro naked guys have gone too far…
SF Gate headline
…fire-fangled feathers…
Wallace Stevens, “Of Mere Being”

Kouros at the corner of Market and Castro
wears only Nikes. We decelerate. 

The pubic hair’s clumped below his belly
like bay laurel on the biceps of Parnassus,

like live oak on roadside buttes
between here and LA. You’re showing me around, 

taking me to your friends. “Photo?” you say. 
The fog’s name is Karl. “Some tech bro bullshit.” 

You say that a lot in this city your wife left you 
alone in when she died. Kouros sways 

his man-tits and medicine ball belly 
side to side, like me rating my new frock 

in the mirror after we showered. To be naked, 
says Kenneth Clark, is simply to be without clothes, 

whereas the nude is a form of art. I buzz down the window 
for permission to photograph, which he grants 

with eye-snap and hair-flop. My iPhone makes 
its ersatz shutter sound. “You’re beautiful,“ I say, 

inapt word I pay out like a tip 
now I’ve turned the naked man nude, 

and he enters my storage among sunsets, selfies and kittens. 
I starburst my fingers—enlarge! enlarge—

to discover Kouros has removed the hair from some parts. 
Oiled silver, his member jounces “live” 

like a luge about to be released to its half-pipe.
At dinner, friends (parole officer, poet) 

compete to crop him. I deepen darks, heighten shine. 
“Look,” friends say, pointing out: more sneakers 

by the light-pole, fleshy gobbets of succulents 
poking through curlicues of the iron fence. 

Lump on his jaw, monitoring cuff 
locked to his ankle. 

I summon successive abstractions: 
Shame. Harm. History. Sadness. Dominion.

Later, late, over the limit, heading back 
through the Castro, there’s another naked man,

this one white, made more so 
by pale light leaking from the chicken shack, 

straps of his bra hanging off his shoulders, 
architrave of his backside propped on skinny legs 

that lower him to crawl in the gutter, 
a feather jaunty behind his ear. 

He stares back as we cruise by. 
For sale? You shrug, accelerate…

Or only evening crumbling.
Abjection as resistance...I’m trying 

not to turn him nude, or name him
Staphylus, Methe (that’s me), or Botrys.

Ass spread like wings on water or on wind.
Worn parts dangle down. 

Daisy Fried is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Year the City Emptied and Women's Poetry: Poems and Advice. A member of the faculty of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, she occasionally reviews poetry for the New York Times, Poetry Foundation and elsewhere, and is poetry editor for Scoundrel Time. She has lived in Philadelphia for over 30 years, but is moving to San Francisco next year.