Oh, how I hate my mind,
all those memories
that have invented their own memories.
Take my first love, for instance,
how after Mass we'd kneel
underneath the back stairs
and kiss and kiss and kiss and.
Were her lips like peaches or plums?
She was Catholic and she wanted
to be bad, and I loved her
more than baseball,
but all the other days
divided us, carry the one,
nothing left over. So strange,
only to kiss on a Sunday,
to hold my own breath again
for a week, another 10,022
minutes of wretched puberty,
until she moved to Iowa
or Ohio or the moon.
Oh, I can still remember
nothing about her,
only kissing, and the impossible
geometry of the descending stairs
that rose to the church kitchen,
her breath like hot nutmeg
and a little like the ocean;
and once, oh my god, she bit me,
a first taste of my body,
blood in her smile.
2 comments:
It's not that I like poems about teenage romance memories--but the language is startling...the first line grabbed my attention. I often think, "Oh how I hate my mind!"
I really, really like this one, too - very attention-grabbing, and so raw and honest and passionate, but viewed from an older, more mature perspective... remembering the feelings rather than discarding them or mocking them... maybe "treasuring" is a better word than "remembering." At any rate, it really connects on a human level... very cool. Thanks for sharing!!! :_)
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