Poem for My Mole
after Joseph Legaspi
Summers
growing up, I tugged
my shorts over my legs
to cover the mole
stuck to the flat of my
upper thigh. Walking
to the pool, I cupped
my hand over it, ashamed
at 13 for not noticing it first.
I wanted to stifle the way
it smoldered from stares,
exacting and blood-shot
from chlorine.
I wanted to scrape it off when
my mother clicked her tongue
at the pinprick full of poison,
possible cancer, a mark
blooming after birth.
Years later,
this is where my lover
pressed his thumb,
stroked it like an onyx
rosary bead, called it
my dark summit,
the sunspot flaring in the
astronomer’s eye,
and before parting my legs,
the pearl before approaching
the sea.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 