(The Sensitive Male Chapter)
Awkward and dry is love.
A moist kiss simmers as cherry pie.
A peck reddens into poppy.
Several feed like birds in your hands.
The first kiss carries history. The customary roses,
a bouquet received by two.
On the right side of her mouth, she is your mother.
On the left side, she's the sister you never had.
If delicate yet firm, a kiss can resuscitate the drowned Ophelia;
hurried and open-mouthed, moths flutter out of her body.
A kiss that glides smoothly possesses the pleasant lightness of tea.
If it smudges, prepare yourself for children.
A kiss that roams the curving of the lips,
the tongue still tracing the slopes even
without her near is a poet's muse.
When bitten on the lower lip—I am your peach—
if she’s left there biting, dangling, she'll burn the tree.
When she's sucking your lips as if through a straw
she wants you in her.
Never quite touching, sky and earth bridged
by clouds of breath, speak in recitation:
Because I am the ocean in which she cannot swim,
my lover turned into the sea.
Or cradle her in the cushions of your lips,
let her sleep in the pink.
From Threshold (CavanKerry Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Joseph O. Legaspi. Used with the permission of the author.