When you find my body hanging . . . with a tight noose around my neck,
do not look for a murderer.--Note found next to a strung-up, bottom-
half-naked body of a young man
His haunting could have begun in the text
of erotic history from four hundred years ago
When men hung publicly
grew erections with the tightening rope
And wet spots appeared on wool knickers
right before the snap
Observed by physicians
who applied the concept to impotent patients
Writing the second entry on autoerotic asphyxiation
in a saga continued now in recreation
of the sexually bored
Like Him, after sex with a Playboy page
the cutest cheerleader, the steady girlfriend
and a call girl or two
An addict after the first euphoria with himself
a rope and Russian roulette
When he got harder with each obstructed breath
And release burst the seams of need
that even two women at a time only bulged
Before the police came
the attorney parents who found him
would have removed the black crotchless panties
fallen from his hand
and puddling the carpet beneath him
Would have rewritten the slur of perversion
into the clear print of suicide
Author's Note: Up to 75% of children 9 to 16 know how to play "the choking game" . . . 25% of parents know what it is.--Dangerous Adolescent
Behavior Education Foundation
______________________________
Previously published in Cultural Weekly and in the chapbook collection, RED FOR THE FUNERAL, winner of the 2010 San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Chapbook Contest
