Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I am reading an article about high crimes in the south of France. The couple next to me at Gate C23 in the LaGuardia airport is gently pecking each other with kisses. It’s sweet. They must be mid-twenties, both in hikers’ boots and gear. Backpacks rest at their feet. This seems normal and fitting behavior for a relationship that appears in its early stages. Most of us look away — except for one woman nearby; her face says she’s repulsed by this public display of affection, this explicit performance of fondness. She’s not alone, though; many people do not want to be subjected to other people’s deep passions, then again, many people do not care.

Personally, I am not bothered. There’s enough malice going around. A little public doting paints the air with a tenderness, one that reminds me that other positive forces are at work in our world. In an earlier time, we called it necking. Others prefer the phrases canoodling, smooching, making out, and the less dignified yet funny, sucking face.

Today’s poem reminds us that kissing is universal, but also something that is not taught, and so, we fumble our way through until we get it right.

First Kiss
by Rooja Mohassessy

I wish someone had explained 
how wide to open for that French 
kiss, how to keep my front teeth
out of his way, angle my nose,

breathe and let the tip of his tongue
probe like a feeler. I dodged it
to make room, rolled mine
into a morsel, nursed it
inside a cheek and swallowed
my growing need to spit.

If he entered too far I stifled
the gag, when he slid under
I drew back. When he relaxed
it thickened and slugged 
in my crammed mouth, sloshing
through the excess saliva. He’d pull
away then quickly resume, kiss me again
and again as though he had yet to get
what he’d come for.

With each brief lull I came up for air,
wiped my mouth and downed the buildup,
the hard taste of liquor laced with the scent
of a day-old ashtray.

I told myself with time
I’ll get this, the way I’d learned to swallow
without chewing a tough cut of a sirloin steak.

No, I wish someone had explained this
was an invitation of sorts. I’d been invited
to la dance des langues:

I wish he’d curtsied and waited 
for the first note, a custom 
to commence a menuet
á deux mouvements. 

I wish he’d lingered at my lips,
the rounded doorway,
then bowed a little to enter
and greet Marguerite, the pearl
of daisies, damp at dawn,
not a dent de lion, a common sedge,
the bucktoothed teen, her breasts
only just budding. 

O how I would’ve looked upon him then,
with my dark eyes. 
I would’ve danced, taken the heat, the burn
of the new day. My mouth young,
O so eager to please.

"First Kiss" by from WHEN YOUR SKY RUNS INTO MINE © 2023 Rooja Mohassessy. Used by permission of Elixir Press.