Poetry Elizabeth Austen — August 4, 2015 9:53 — 1 Comment
I Had My First Kiss! – Elizabeth Austen
My niece’s text arrives as the newscaster
announces a bomb landing just outside Jerusalem.
Was it what you hoped for?
I text back, delight
battling instant anxiety
(don’t get pregnant!).
The voice on the radio intones
a preliminary body count.
She’s eaten from the Tree of Knowledge
and all I see is the garden gate
closing behind her, her holy city
bombed, the harvest burnt,
every olive tree uprooted.
Write down what happened
and how you feel,
I text to a 14-year-old who reads
little more than status updates.
What am I thinking? Celebration
in the refugee camps
the voice reports, but already
jets overhead, childhood
scrambled by a mother bent
on drinking away her own
damaged youth—maybe my niece’s
childhood’s been over for a long time
or maybe I’m the one who’s stuck
in the old story, the one
where any taste of sweetness is paid for
with years of bitter herbs. Look twice
before you cross that border,
I’m begging, while she’s tasting
snowflakes on her tongue.
Learn to tell your own story,
I want to write
(to her, to me?).
Put what’s delicious
in your own words
so you can keep it. No matter
what comes next.
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What am I?
Bioluminescent eye
That sees by the shine
Of its own light. Lies
Blind me. I am the seventh human sense
And my stepchild,
Consequence;
Scientists can't find me.
Januswise I make us men;
Glamour
Was my image then—
Remind me:
The awful fall up off all fours
From the forest
To the hours…
Tick, Tock: Divine me.
-- Richard Kenney
Hello Ms. Austen,
My first kiss by your writing is this poem. I am grateful to you. The title had me ready for saccharine sighs or patronizing pubescent prattle. While reading I was reminded to keep my mind open when I know not of what I judge. It is still in my throat as I write. That rare feeling of LIFE in bloom so pure we are raptured within and close to overflowing. The need to nurture their newly found magic but immediately also think to protect the young life from our knowledge and the world around us. Even as the young life gains the only knowledge that will truly sustain. I am very proud that we have you as our Laureate. I think your niece is probably proud to have you as well.
Robert Mize