1.
          The young boy in Sodom is smiling because
          he is drunk and
          	he is in a stranger’s bedroom and
          		he is feeling loved for the first time
          pinned onto a mattress by a man who
          could not care less about what happens to him
          but the soft rouge of his cheeks, lips pressed
          against another fresh body for the night.
          When the man finally goes to sleep, the boy
          lays still on top of the blanket, looking at the roof
          and pretending it is made of stars. The vodka will
          wear off sometime that night and he will 
          walk home, climb into open window, and fall
          into his own bed, waking up alone, again.
          
          2.
          The young boy in Sodom stares at the boy
          sitting next to him in second-period algebra and
          examines his soft chin and the crook of his elbow, where
          tanned skin fades into a pale pink and sun has not touched
          the body.	      He remembers algebra comes from 
          the Arabs, al-jabr (الجبر) from jabara (جَبَرَ), the reunion
          of broken parts.
          
          3.
          The young boy in Sodom feels his heart through
          his chest and wants to jabr his soul, mend his ways of thinking
          that lead him only to heartbreak. Beside a strange man
          in a strange man’s bed, he looks out the window to the moon,
          perpetually content being alone.		      The sun’s light
          touches the moon, touches the skin, touches everything 
          the boy wishes that he could, everything except himself.
          Not the ivory skin that is broken		      every night.
          
          4.
          The young boy in Sodom picks up the wedding band
          left on the bedside table by the man sleeping next
          to him. This is the last time, he says. This is not
          a new story. The boy slips his second finger into
          the band and feels the gold’s weight,
                the cold creeping down his hand.
          Poor wife, he thinks, poor, poor wife. The boy leaves
          the bedroom with the wedding band, 
          a piece of his past, of his future to come.

          5.
          The young boy in Sodom watches as the men
          get turned into pillars of salt and the stars
          fall down, one by one. Their mouths agape in
          horror. Good, the boy thinks. Good. He does not
          get spared by a jealous God.
          
          6.
          The young boy in America is smiling because
          he is drunk and
          	he is in a motel bedroom off I-95 and
          		he is lying in bed with a man he met
          not two hours ago. He is feeling loved for the first time in
          a while, in a long, long time. The boy feels blood pounding
          through his head and chest and lips pressed to lips
          outside of the man’s matrimony. The wife must know 
          about the boys. They always do. This is not a new story.