This Is Not A New Story

patrick keedy brown

In the House of Sin in the City of Sin in the Time of Sin

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.

Patrick Keedy Brown is a junior at Ransom Everglades School in Miami, FL. He has been published in Jelly Squid Magazine and Muse Manifesto, and attended the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop at Kenyon College in Ohio. A four-time Gold Key winner in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for both poetry and novel writing, he has also earned three Silver Keys and several honorable mentions. His favorite form of poetry is free verse. Additionally, he has received a first-place award from the Barnacle Society Poetry Contest and the grand prize from the La Plume Young Writers’ Contest for his novella “Deliver Us.” He enjoys writing essays, lyrics, and short prose.