Not Everything Is Sex

Okay

Tell that to the palm

of this Black man’s hand

ever so slightly cupped

and carrying in its bend

the finger tips of another

Black man, both of them

arms stretching upward

toward the sky, measuring

their reach against one another

on a basketball court

in Brooklyn, in spring

Okay

Spring

And when I say spring

I mean bee-buzzing-near-a-pink-bud-

almost-bursting spring

tantric spring

everyone-outside-in-three-

quarter-sleeves-despite-the-virus-

buzzing-near-our-tongues

spring So you can’t tell me

it’s not sex Cause it’s not not sex

The risk of all this tenderness

all this giving of ourselves

all this inside on the outside

open, vulnerable I know sex

when I see it and I see it

everywhere: lips on the nipple

of a soft serve, an arm fist deep in

a grocery store shelf, digging

for the last can of garbanzo beans

It’s not not a ménage à trois

these three men snuggled

in the front seat of a moving

van, singing bachata

dancing from the hips up

in the window, open

throats open, their whole necks

to the wind, reckless

reckless, I tell you, full on

abandon So say what you will

about transmission

about fluid, skin to skin

about the necessary things

that make the deed the deed

I don’t care cause it’s spring

and I’ve never seen anything so intimate

as this touch still taken

in the face of an apocalypse