Kisses

KISSES

All the kisses I’ve ever been given, today I feel them on my mouth.

And my knees feel them, the reckless ones placed there

through the holes in my jeans while I sat on a car hood

or a broken sofa in somebody’s basement, stoned, the way I was

in those days, still amazed that boys and even men would want to

lower their beautiful heads like horses drinking from a river and taste me.

The back of my neck feels them, my hair swept aside to expose the nape,

and my breasts tingle the way they did when my milk came in after the birth,

when I was swollen, and sleepless, and my daughter fed and fed until I pried

her from me and laid her in her crib. Even the chaste kisses that brushed

my cheeks, the fatherly ones on my forehead, I feel them rising up from underneath

the skin of the past, a delicate, roseate rash; and the ravishing ones, God,

I think of them and the filaments in my brain start buzzing crazily and flare out.

Every kiss is here somewhere, all over me like a fine, shiny grit, like I’m a pale

fish that’s been dipped in a thick swirl of raw egg and dragged through flour,

slid down into a deep skillet, into burning. Today I know I’ve lost no one.

My loves are here: wrists, eyelids, damp toes, all scars, and my mouth

pouring praises, still asking, saying kiss me; when I’m dead kiss this poem,

it needs you to know it goes on, give it your lovely mouth, your living tongue.

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grazie—for their generous criticism of this manuscript, and for being my love-dogs: Susan Browne, Cheryl Dumesnil, Lisa Glatt and David Hernandez, Dorianne Laux and Joe Millar, Ruth Schwartz. For all their support: Steve Huff and Thom Ward of BOA Editions. Much gratitude, for asking: Jill Bialosky. And for being my corner man, Rob McQuilkin.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following journals where many of these poems were published, sometimes in different versions: American Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Bloomsbury Review, Chelsea, Cimarron Review, Connecticut Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Points, Iowa Review, Margie, Pearl, Poetry, Poetry International, Runes, Salt Hill, Threepenny Review, Water~Stone.

“Miniatures” was awarded first place in the Davoren Hanna Poetry Competition and first appeared online.

Also by Kim Addonizio

ALSO BY KIM ADDONIZIO

POETRY

Mortal Trash

My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits

Lucifer at the Starlite

Tell Me

Jimmy & Rita

The Philosopher’s Club

FICTION

The Palace of Illusions (stories)

My Dreams Out in the Street

Little Beauties

In the Box Called Pleasure (stories)

NONFICTION

Bukowski in a Sundress

Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within

The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (with Dorianne Laux)

ANTHOLOGY