“Ode to My Prepubescent Penis” and Other Poems

By Miguel Barretto Garcia

Ode to My Prepubescent Penis

Tiny dancer, you grew 
up learning the steps to A Chorus Line 
in your bedroom. That you forgot
about growing
pubic hair and your voice
to a lower octave. You forgot 
the boys in middle school
will be checking whether 
your penis is ripe enough 
to harvest in the boy’s locker room.
You take a shower with the boys
after playing dodgeball.
They noticed the Tiny Dancer
tucked between your thighs. 
Afraid. As if the curtains 
haven’t been drawn to open Act One.
As if dodgeball wasn’t over.
Game over on the floor. 
Teeth still intact. Ribcage
rattling a little. A tiny
cut behind your left eye.
A tiny bit of yourself
gone. Shower water draining 
all that threading blood. 
But Tiny Dancer is playing
Liza Minnelli playing an undefiant
Roxie Hart. Your baby fat jiggling, 
screaming to Defying Gravity, 
reaching that coveted high E6 note.
Of course— You were a boy
left in the shower. Only the chorus
of running water wanting an encore.
The Tiny Dancer is a flower
bud waiting for that spring 
we call puberty—
The girls are blooming
with a noticeable cleavage
and hushed sounds about tampons.
The boys shooting up
like bamboo and proud to be shooting
load. You spent the summer
in theatre camp. Excited to find
your “tribe” of Tiny Dancers
tap-dancing and Sutton-Fostering 
to Everything Goes. You were 
away from the middle school boys.
You were far away from the middle
of your parents fighting
about you. You raised a girl, 
father said. But you were a boy
with a Tiny Dancer.
You were a boy who was just
a bit late 
in the testosterone growth-spurt
and far too awkward for sports.
Everyone around you appears 
to be too impatient for you to grow up.
You eventually will. Too caught
up to pass exams. Driving tests.
College. Graduation. Travels to Europe.
Backpacking around Southeast Asia.
Capitalism. That job. The dating apps. 
Marriage. Family. Kids. 
Everything 
seems to be passing from 
one flaming hoop to another. 
Passing 
as a show-animal instead of a boy
with a Tiny Dancer and a high E6 note.
Your boy is growing 
to have a liking for those red tap shoes.
Afraid, you hold his hand 
and walk along the yellow brick road
while wearing your Kinky Boots.
Your boy is growing
up to be a talented Tiny Dancer.
Your boy is the boy 
you wanted to be—that one spotlight
that refuses to dim.

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Empire

In the dream, milk fresh from my wolf-mum gave me bones
That could cross Rubicons. My hands are stolid as Romulus,
My mouth echoed, I will build Empire. I am Empire.
My ambitions, far too great than the knife behind Caesar’s back. 

But this is all want: A desire of the body. A flame, weight
Above Empire’s neck. A crack, sound of bone.
The inflammation of burning joints, muscle, and skin.
You know a body is wear-wolfed when butterfly wings
Span an entire face, leaves, then is scarred by the sun—

God, oh God. I am your son. Shunned. The body enshadowed.
My father bought my steroids from the drugstore,
Then stuffed a wishbone inside my throat.
He wishes for my mother’s ziplock to enwomb me,
His disappointment, this immunodeficient. 

Lupus is the villain of lambs and herons. The disease
Is my father. But my mother is my mother.
She brings me to a butterfly garden. There, I am no wolf,
but butterfly. I watch the chrysalis turn to winged empires.

---

An Exercise of Mishearing Words

like pear. The acidic tingle in my tongue.
Soft orange-blush rind touching teeth
before I clench my fists.

 Reap the pear harvest on October morning.
Cold dew sweats a mothering
fruit to reap. What I deserve is a clean

break. Drape any warm blanket on a cold
naked body in aftermath. Not even
the bluest star in our neighborhood can thaw

the shudder. Clenched teeth. Thick musk.
Hands frozen in a sliver of past
that should have slipped past me.  

Hands raised surrender
if I could stand. My body parallels horizon
and his weight. I wriggle like a child.

But I am a child running. To mother
but a dark room. Explodes expanse. Echo
empty. The room is hollow as the hollow

covered up by my soil skin. What is in me
he was adamant to penetrate. To break
ice when it is so quiet. The cold wilderness

of a worn body. A quiet witness to blood
water falling from my ears.
Between my legs.

  Repair the leakage.  Repay the damage.
Pray for me, my repose but I only hear
is prey.

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Miguel Barretto García is a poet and spoken-word performer from the Philippines. Their poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, RHINO, Palette Poetry, harana poetry, among others. Their chapbook, soft innocence, was runner-up of Palette Poetry's inaugural chapbook prize (judged by Chen Chen). Their manuscripts were also finalists of the 2021 and 2022 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize. They currently live in Saint Louis, Missouri.

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