Dorianne Laux
POETRY-August 2010
Poem by Dorianne Laux
Edited by Christopher Seid
Photograph by Sean Alonzo Harris
“Boys in Summer”
Their bodies like violas cast on the sand, some still damp
from the ocean, salt grains clinging
to their skin, etching the cuticles
of each tan toe, all brown
as toast, crisped from long days
at the sea’s blue lip, the favored,
the kissed, an arm draped over
a surfboard, an ice chest, legs spun
from a lathe, a pantheon of them
fallen to a scarf of beach, each delicate,
unique, complete, asleep, as if each
had been sculpted from a single tree,
their weedy hair, their driftwood knees.