Teenage Boys

Victoria Spires

You’d forgotten how it is with them—this

Narnia moment of discovering themselves

a Cervitaur, the last simple joys of fawnhood

turned like marbles out of pockets that are only

for hands, now. How all that is small in them, all

that still trembles must remain on the other side

of a wardrobe door and here on this side

the improvised assemblages of man. Is it

something in the smile that changes first? Less

open, more guile. This is what we teach them—

the law of antlers, the squaring of shoulders

and jaw. Only in sleep do you glimpse a softening,

when they think they are not seen. Hear them pawing

a hoof at the portal, trying to find

a way back in, to what they were cloven from.

VICTORIA SPIRES’ work has been published widely, including in The London Magazine, iamb, The Interpreter’s House and Atrium. She has placed in various prizes, including Third in the Rialto Nature and Place Competition, and Winner of the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. Her pamphlet Soi-même is available from Salo Press.