The undeniable desire for physical contact among boys of a certain age

They can’t keep their hands off each other, irresistible,
the hard, narrow barbs of their hips, the feet
long, having already outgrown the body
in a fit of physical genius. New muscles are forming
like buds every night in the seams of their flesh
‘til they wake to a flower that still lacks a certain
metronome for the glory of its bloom. These boys
scoff at the idea of desire, punish those who succumb
to its hum, but the thin beams of their fingers fall
in searchlights on flanks and sweat-filigreed brows,
they brush lips to an ear and out tumbles breath
they know they can’t hold. Every nimbus of laughter
encircles an incomplete touch, a hand on a knee, a tongue
in the air, the divining rod wending one from the other.

“The undeniable desire for physical contact among boys of a certain age” first appeared in Faultline, Volume 15, Spring 2006.