Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.
The First Kiss
the first kiss was memento mori the second one aspiration the third
audition
the fourth a posture the fifth a neurosis the sixth was
submarine mining
deep grottos of coral the seventh atavistic the eighth kiss a czar in
a serialized novel
the ninth kiss was a lagoon warm as piano the tenth kiss was a month
of travel abroad
we gotinto the globular edge of the lit horizon the house was
empty
for the eleventh we were alone and aligned our shoulders
tattooed with scratches
the twelfth a drawn-out molting a virtual hammock your partisanship
the thirteenth
-Carmen Giménez Smith
Read the Rumpus Review of Carmen Giménez Smith’s The City She Was.
