David Banach is a queer philosopher and poet in New Hampshire, where he tends chickens, keeps bees, and watches the sky. You can read some of his most recent poetry in Isele Magazine, Hooligan Magazine, Evocations Review, Terse, and Amphibian Lit. He also does the Poetrycast podcast for Passengers Journal.
boy touch boy touch time
time is broken by the touch of skin on skin
the feeling of yourself being felt by another
pulls the present back behind itself remember
the first touch the way it felt like going home
the discovery of the meaning of your fingers
in the touching of something not you not here
not ever when but always before and the side
of my hand brushing yours knee against your
thigh and impossible to meet your eyes knowing
you know but never admitting sameness and
difference and it was always there waiting
and it was like opening a present I had
made for myself wrapping myself up in it
as if I was always there waiting under your skin.
I remember love
I think I do, the pulling yourself inside
out feeling of someone grabbing you
in some place you didn’t know existed
and tugging until all of you lay exposed
the fixation on fingers, theirs, what they touch
how they rest on air, like sunlight on snow
like pollen on petals, like a mountain on
the horizon, light and heavy, heaving your
heart as cargo wherever they reach.
I have memories, can conjure up, images
of lips and hips curves and contours
enterings and being entered, eyes
in which I saw myself and did not look away
but just as in dreams, I will see a figure
distant, and not know if it is you, I wonder
if these things are love, or the entrance
to the house where love lives, doors
sometimes locked or open, doors
the passing through of which, empties
you out and leaves you
no place at all.