By Christopher Soden
There are two men in the photograph.
If not the same age they are very close.
Their voices have dropped in pitch.
Scales of manhood try fugues
and nocturnes on their bobbing throats.
There are two men in the photograph.
Maybe it appears in a magazine,
newspaper, or on a website.
Perhaps it stretches seamlessly
on a billboard you pass
on your way home from work.
Sparkles from your television.
Perhaps it dozes in a shoebox.
There are two men in the photograph.
They share an attachment. You can guess
the nature of it but you might be wrong.
There are all kinds of attachment
and all kinds of men. They do not touch
but that is only a clue if they understand
they’re being watched. And maybe this
is the moment just before. I cannot show
you what they might do when the sun
recedes. When liquor makes their blood
tick moment by gorgeous moment
down to the last follicle tip. When they
take an extra second to learn about the other
as they change for a swim in the glimmering
eventide of late July. There are two men
in the photograph. We do not know what
they want. Maybe to try everything
together they’ve never done. Maybe just
another green and geeky hoptoad to jostle
when insufficiency swallows them
like locusts. Maybe a taproot to Spring.
I cannot show you the skittish glee
of two men no longer afraid to merge
in the salty nook of trust and discovery.
Tingle of wishes revered. No longer afraid
of the flocks that despise their own
unthinkable cravings. You might say it is
the Great Queer Lie: what any two men
might create, given opportunity and privilege
of irrevocable gender. Glorious prickle
of whisker against whisker,
testicle sac, crevasse. Sweet leakage
mingling.
Christopher Soden has his MFA in Poetry and writes film critique, performance pieces and dramaturgy. His honors include The PSA’s Poetry in Motion Series Fourth Unity and The Dallas Public Library’s Distinguished Poets of Dallas. His work has appeared in Gertrude, Windy City Times, The Chiron Review, Sentence, Borderlands, New Texas 2002, The James White Review and Best Texas Writing 2.