Hugo Schwyzer

My body doesn’t look the same as it once did. It’s not just being 41, it’s being 41 with a lot of scars, a lot of running in the wind and the sun, a lot of hard living when I was younger. And though my wife is the only one who touches me and sees me in my vulnerability, I am prone, when I’m not careful, to making self-deprecating remarks to her about my skin and my flesh. But she loves the familiar ruts, the turns and the textures of the imperfect and interesting body with which she shares a life. Jeanetta Calhoun’s poem captures this nicely.

Mapping Desire

“i look like a roadmap,” he says,
intending, i suppose, to deflect
any unrealistic expectations of
the power of passing time on
a face i haven’t touched in years
but he is forgetting
how i love a road trip
sometimes screaming down the freeway
at 2 am, the bass thumping in the speakers
like the pounding of my heart
most often, though, i like to
take the side roads
roll the windows down
inhale the sweet smells
sheltered under the arching
bowers of trees linked
together like fingers of two hands
spanning what separates them
i like to slide into
a roadhouse on the county line
have a beer, some barbecue and
a slowdance to the blues
then unfold my beloved roadmap
run my finger along a chosen course
imagine all the s-turns and heaves
glory in the forgotten lanes
and remember that the end
of one journey is the
beginning of another