My First Response Poem

This poem is a response I've cobbled together for Sean Patrick Conlon's poem "Something Else," which can probably be found online somewhere, though you only need to know that the repeated sentence is the first line of that poem as well. And yes, this beast is memorized. At least, hypothetically.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog.
I was on my way home from school,
tracing the daily route from my first grade classroom
to my family’s apartment with my younger sister
and her friend Stefi walking with me.
We stopped in the nearby park
to swing on the swings.
I took the opportunity to throw away my math assignment like I always did
so that when the babysitter later asked me
if I had any homework I could honestly tell her I had none.
I was a bad student,
more concerned with the chocolate milk they handed out at snack time
than with my grades.
I learned that trick from my best friend Max, whom I will always admire because
he once told that he lived on a farm and owned a pet fox.
I still wish I could have a pet fox.
I’d probably even name him Max
though I can’t remember what he looked like
except for the mole on his left cheek.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog
After launching ourselves in the air repeatedly,
we were tired and ready to head home.
Stefi, on the other hand, seemed hesitant to leave
and when I asked her about this, she told me
that she had found something cool, would we like to see it?
Yes! We enthusiastically shouted.
After quickly scanning the area to make sure no one was watching us
Stefi led us to a thicket of bushes
that were twice as tall and three times as wide as we were.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog
There it was in the underbrush:
a tattered magazine
out of which someone had ripped each page,
its leaves were scattered among the roots of the bush,
wrinkled and covered in dirt,
like they had been used up and thrown away.
A man stared at me from the ground.
He wore nothing but a gold necklace and tennis shoes.
Not even socks.
There was something extraordinary in the image that
I could not look away.
I could not help but think it strange that someone
forced him to run naked and oiled like an ancient Olympian.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog.
There was something about his smile that made staring down at him feel natual,
almost as if it invited me to look at him,
to hold my attention while I recognized every single detail of his display.
I was inexplicably mesmerized.
Noticing this, Stefi told my sister that she thought I liked it.
They both giggled.
I mumbled a shameful no while keeping my eyes on the man’s body.
It would have been useless to try to look away.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog
before I had ever heard the word cock
or known what it meant.
The V of his legs drew my eyes in
to a mass larger than my fist.
This was weird sculpture put on display for ignorant eyes.
What would the photographer have thought,
seeing his trade on sale for the wrong audience
and watching it be misinterpreted as something
far more innocent than was intended?
This was an athelete; I could not explain why he was naked
nor why it stirred something in me.
It was safer to keep staring than to think about what was happening.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog
on my way home my heartbeat returned to its natural pace
and the blood left my flushed cheeks
asI began to look forward to watching afternoon cartoons
and to not doing my homework.
Sometimes, the miracle lies in the fact that nothing has changed.
Now I remember it as a Fall day with gray clouds,
a day when my younger sister, her friend Stefi, and I
went to the park to swing on the swings
before walking home.