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    AC Benus
  • AC Benus
  • Author
  • 05/08/2023
  • 256 Words
  • 379 Views
  • 8 Comments
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 93. ...the trove of tenderness within...

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“ . . . the trove of tenderness within . . . ”

Two Love Poems

 

Poem After Dinner

for Tim

 

some things never run out:

my poverty, for instance,

is never exhausted

sandwiches for dinner again

 

your blond hair, for instance,

even if we’re both exhausted

soothes me when we go outside

you and the forsythias

 

I get so excited

I think I’ll read the Susan Sontag article

in Partisan Review

I want to walk beside you in the drizzle

 

and say you can move in with me

tonight, right away, even though

this time they’ll probably evict me

and although I’m moving out in three weeks anyway.

 

 

 

Sleep Like Spoons

 

There is a bed on 83rd

which like a Gileadic balm

can soothe the soul. I lay me down

to sleep there, and to find the calm

 

that lives within your shoulder blade,

beneath the cool and freckled skin

that makes my midnights white as those

in settings Scandinavian

 

where cry of loon and forest sighs

not car alarms and salsa beat

drift upward through the window cracks

and mitigate the summer heat.

 

No way to mute the blaring horns,

nor open hearts that don’t discern

the trove of tenderness within

the tangled postures lovers learn

 

in sex and rest, in limbs juxtaposed,

exhaustion mingled with delight.

We close our eyes and sleep like spoons

inside the silverchest of night.

—Timothy Dlugos,

1970s

 

 

 

 

_

as noted
  • Love 3
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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AC Benus

AC Benus 36,631

Posted (edited)

2 hours ago, Parker Owens said:

These are amazing. They’re intimate and yet speak volumes to so many readers in their images. Sleep Like Spoons just blew me away. 

Thank you, Parker. I thought so too and just had to share.

These two come from an anthology of Gay poets I had quite a hard time laying my hands on. It's not available on Archive.org as a scan, and used copies seldom show up to buy online. The title's been on my Amazon "Shopping List" for about five years, and the only hits have been paperback listings for hundreds of dollars  -- a new phenomenon, LGBTI2S+ titles now limited to billionaires. (um, why?) 

Also, this book only came out in 2009, but I guess the publishers took it off their "in print" list almost immediately.

Thanks again for reading and commenting :)

Edited by AC Benus
  • Love 2
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