The Kiss

She pressed her lips to mind.
—a typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.

- Stephen Dunn

I JUST HAVE TO GET THROUGH THIS

Summer stayed no longer than a sparrow.
Medication is passed over a trembling lip.
The postcard arrives one day too late.
A man notes he’ll get an Asian hooker if
he’s dying, maybe if he isn’t. A spider
in the woodpile ends up in the fire.
One beggar spits in the air at another.
The field of sunflowers holds on as long
as it can, but dies before the gentle old lady
passes on the train. Babies are placed
in planes and carried to cars. A good man
is murdered in his house. They leave
his body, pass his son on the lawn, reach
out to ruffle his hair, and he watches them go.

For some reason we all wait for something.

- Alex Boyd