He Would Take You

When he sinks his heels

into the sodden courtyard grass,

the muddy leather skin of his Oxfords

smells of death — vulgar and earthy —

and he rather likes it.

The stench summons

in him distant visions;

Young men crossing the university’s

red-brick corridors,

the academe’s dark walls

whispering secret knowledge to them

that only much older men

possess and protect.

His rubber heels

crack hard against

the waxed floors of the commons,

pounding out an archaic chant

once clapped by paternal hands.

Take. Take. Take. 

He would take

the smooth summer legs

now littering the hallways 

and break each heart-shaped pelvis

at the throbbing axis of

its golden pillars.

He would take them apart

against the Bridgeport bricks,

alternating his thrusts inside them

with hot waves of disgust and desire,

ravenous flies circling the carnage of

broken bodies and innocence lost.

The musky air of

these stomping grounds

floods his nostrils beneath

the sliver of his faint mustache

as he walks from class to class,

waiting to reclaim the antique pages of

a history he felt owed to.

Abby Mangel is a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas in San Antonio. She is an Honorable Mention for the Saturday Evening Post's 2021 Great American Fiction Contest.