A Boy Can Wear A Dress

by John Bosworth

 
A boy can wear a dress
    by cliff or by
creek, by God or by
   dark in the caul of the devil.
 
A boy can wear a dress
    bought with a tin-
can full of cherries on the
    day of his daddy’s dying.
 
A boy can weep in his dress—
    by boat or by plane, he
can sleep in his dress,
    dance in his dress, make
 
eyes in his dress at the
    flame at the hotel bar.
Goddamn it all to graceland,
    how stunning he looks
 
in his blue cotton dress,
    just stunning! Nothing can
keep him from
    losing our minds, sluicing
 
my heart in that way he does.
    Nothing can keep him.
On the walk to his daddy’s wake,
    persons of rank may
 
question his dress,
    raise their brows at his dress,
so he twirls and twirls
    till his dress is its own
 
    unaddressed question, un-
veiling the reasons he
    wakes every morning, like an
x-ray for colors beneath
 
    your colors, your
zygote soul, your naked twirl—