Loving David

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, David, 1623-24, Marble, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

In his face I am silenced, Goliath all but forgotten,
lulled into this shepherd’s crook. Exhumed so finely
from stone and scripture he stands, marble flesh
over marble armor, vulnerable in violence undertook.

I’ll urge him to don the king-gifted mail—even if hampering,

it bears protection—and don’t you know, David, the harp

laid at your feet could be trampled? Do not sacrifice

your delicacy; let me hold it, while you fight, and after, you.

It’s the way this one-day king of stone not skin looks past my eyes
unbreathing to my breathless self. With strangers, in good taste,
we stand before him. On synagogues or street corners it matters
not, only that we don’t speak the secret chord; we must sustain the art.

He’s unmoved, hearkened by heavenly words no man can’t heed, God-honoring

while I lie God-fearing, untrusting of hands above. David, if I could hold you

back I would, but none rewrites the Word of the Lord, rivals your love of Him,

least of all men who are worshiped, and worshiped by, other men, unashamed.

It is said Bernini carved David’s face as his own while a future
pope held before him a mirror. What does it take to cast yourself
as the Lord’s champion, promise-fulfiller? How is this the act of a man
who ordered his lover disfigured? To think I feared my flavor of love.

Your aim will be faithful; divinity doesn’t falter. You step forward
to sling stone to flesh, and for a moment, in a whirl of skin and cloak,
before you thrust and bloody and behead, I only see you as the boy
who saves sheep from the lion’s maw, not the lion itself. But then I see true.

To the old man I didn’t come out to on the north observation tower at Weedon Island Preserve

I would have stopped on the penultimate landing
or turned back to the boardwalk
if I knew you were there, sketching, four stories
up. I’m sorry. I was afraid to startle you,
that your knowledge of me could push you
over the edge. But it didn’t. You looked at me
and smiled. Unexpected. You said you don’t often
see high schoolers here in the winter.
I didn’t tell you I have one more semester until I graduate
college, only nodded. You said your grandchildren
don’t like to come up here anymore.
You don’t know why.

You asked me if I’m close to my grandparents.
I told you I am. Especially my grandfather, the one
on my father’s side. We play chess together on Sundays,
after church. I told you that I just recently managed to beat him
for the first time.
I couldn’t say that all my grandparents are dead.
That I’m not good at chess
because I protect my pawns as much as my king.
Or more so, sometimes. That after church
I drop off my boyfriend a street away from his parents’ house
before driving home because even though his parents know
seeing is different than knowing. I was gripping the metal railing
because I’m afraid of heights and would have walked down
five minutes ago, after taking a picture, if you weren’t there.
You, sat in your beach chair, kept on sketching.
I think you’d only looked at me twice. I liked that.

I lie more these days. I’m sorry.
At first I thought I lied because saying
my life’s equivalents of you had been buried
long ago felt wrong. But maybe
it’s because someone believing
that I could be the sort of kid who goes to church
with his grandparents and not his boyfriend
is something I still want.

I was going to walk down, pictureless,
when you asked if I wanted to see what you were drawing.
I said sure. I thought it would be a landscape,
a graphite depiction of the acres of scrub in front of us,
pressed against the horizon.
But it was a self-portrait, half-finished
but recognizable, done without a mirror.

Nursing Home #4

The boys sit in the garden, politely burning
their tongues on watery cocoa. Their mother
and the man murmur, minds inside on grandfather.
Why does he keep falling, this is the third fall.

After a time, they stand, abandon their metal
chairs, knowing if they sat long enough,
watched until the marshmallows it’s not
unreasonable to expect melted, they won’t

be missed. They explore, touch untamed
plants, trip over cracked stone, and meet
the hungry eyes of the elderly. One brother
spies a flash—My father is being grossly

mistreat—and they advance, curious: a door
knob. They twist the brass and disappear.  



M.J. Young is a writer and MFA student at Florida International University, where he is a graduate instructor and the Poetry Editor of Gulf Stream Magazine. His poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, phoebe, The Penn Review, and elsewhere. In his free time he enjoys listening to Philip Glass and exploring bookstores.

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