How To Kiss by Allegra Mira

You had to learn to ask

to find a way

to ask, but not with words:

Indirectly and usually

not aloud

was how you asked.

If the person said yes, you’d

know because suddenly you’d

be doing it:

Mixing streams that connected

parts inside of you,

like an internal

marionette, your lips

suddenly strung

to your crotch,

skin to your heart – Oh

how the kisses pulled

in new ways, Oh

how the kisses changed

everything. How high

the stakes became,

by which I mean the losses,

by which I mean

those who you wanted

but could not have – sometimes

because the asking went wrong,

sometimes

because you spoke different languages.

But remember those

times when it worked out:

How you got the asking

right, how perfectly indirect

by which I mean, direct

you were, how directly

understood, directly accepted,

How the moment before this kiss

a faith --

Remember the strings’ quake,

tangle, remember

remember

And how for weeks

you were knotted inside

How

did we ever walk

when we were like that,

and Do we ever come

untangled?

boulders by Dan Wagner of Hamburg, PA

wait while the ghosts of dead families decide my sentence—
the judge is out and the jury sits in the big chair with a mallet
and pounds little birds into the woodwork

please! duct tape my heart to the inside of my head!
turn my skin inside out, maybe then, maybe then
clara barton will run away!

i dare you! look away from that cancerous dance in a box,
look me in my eye
and oh! how our insanity shall multiply!

do you feel it? the creeping madness?!
the hurtling stone in the heart, the bitter sneer of the lip
the excrement of a thousand subconscious lusts tingling in your toes!!?

and i will kick and kick and maybe finally, finally
my foot will fly off and land on the boardroom table,
and the moldy beasts with their black leather briefcases
will shrink back in terror while i hop to the kitchen to get a bagel

but oh! my love! if you read this will you still put my head on your heart?
will you still kiss my neck, run your hand down the appalachia of my ribs
and smile?

lightning! make me your mistress, we will find electric pleasures in the angry clouds
and i will hide in the forest when the sun comes home from work!

don't look! don't look! don’t look to the sea!
for salt and spray have betrayed you and me
and our boat's beams are made of bones

i am but a stone's throw from the chains of the sane—
thank god there are only boulders here.

Dan Wagner is a human being of eighteen years. He lives in Hamburg, PA. He writes poems and songs and takes pictures. lemmingtree.blogspot.com/lemmingtree@gmail.com

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