Friday, February 11, 2011

'Kissing' by D.C. Gonzalez-Prieto

 
 
Things which do feed upon the mouth devour, not nourish.
                                                                                              If you want to be
so cute hipster-hair Nueva York
that you make everybody else cream themselves right at the bar
in Sophie's, sipping martinis from plastic cups,
the always trick is:
                 just take a step away from them.
Then the perfect kiss, and they think of you
                 when standing in the middle of the Rothko room
        the right very next day.

I always think of you in the uncomfortable places.
Even thousands of miles away, I still think again,
think of the bank lobby Whitney where some very small frames
hung. As-yet-unknown painters had painted tiny
unknown paintings along tiny canvasses.
         (You must squint
         to ride along in the back seat of the 1949 Roadmaster.)
         The day before, by the by, I was
                 in the Rothko room thinking of you before
               I ever knew who you were; small scenes
                         of a long child hood. Oh, we all know

          how we imagine people before we know them. We don't know
          how to: we all know how we make them,
                       even before they
          are real to us. Once they are manifest real
          they become such a pain to deal with.
                       Dearest, my tongue

grazed the edges of your lips, tucked under the delicate epidermis
and bud like of April. And I forgot
                  about xanaxes and metal beds and plastic
                     bedpans filled with tocsins emptied from
                      my intestines:

                               in that touch, tongues wound
                and contracted as my intestines became your intestines.
             Soft and round and squishy warm, like the Bar-B-Que sausages
that the Pope ate in San Remo.
                           Tongues writhe and collide, lips turn
      like the back of a hand does a page:

     so-keep-on-it-now, and just talk sin to me, hmmmm...?





(published in Sonora Review, Vol.24/25, April 1993)

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