McKinley Johnson
​Before He Leaves Me There 

        after Auguste Rodin’s The Athlete 



at the river  
a man sits across from me  

on a large stone  

we spend many hours there  
without word  

or signal we begin  

to undress 
his back and stomach  
like the stone  

mine  
the rounded pebbles  
of the river floor 

the water begins  
to rise and heat  
runs slow  

and uncanny warm over my bare feet 
his narrow ankles 

for weeks we stay opposite  

each other 
our breathing and the breeze  

the sour wine  
of his fingers  
the wild fruit of my wrists  

the river simmers by the time  
it wraps gentle around  

our waists  
in guly silence 

the rise of his neck  
the smooth ripple  

of his forearm flex  
the hair  

of our armpits  
my chest wets and curls 
the water boiling now 

bubbles along  

his worked jaw  
slides thick down my  

cobbled throat  
brightens  
his earlobes 

his acorned cheeks  
a violent splattering mess  
the water  

crowns us both 

through the hot murk I see him  
stand  

dripping and sunlit 

his skin cherries  
in the bitten air  
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Image by Gary Meulemans from Unsplash
McKinley Johnson (he/him) is a poet from the foothills of Appalachia. He is an MFA student in Poetry at George Mason University, the assistant poetry editor of phoebe, and a teaching fellow for Poetry Alive!. His work can be found in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Award Anthology Pinesong, Neologism Poetry Journal, Carolina Muse, and elsewhere.  
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