POETS’ CORNER: “KISSES” FOR VALENTINE’S DAY

11 Feb POETS’ CORNER: “KISSES” FOR VALENTINE’S DAY

Editor note: About now you should start sweating, then grab your wallet and be ready for bolt out the door to buy your sweetheart a little something, at least a bouquet of roses or chocolates from Telluride Truffles. Why you ask? Because WEDNESDAY IS VALENTINE’S DAY.

Author/poet/recently retired teacher-writing instructor David Feela is, like Wordwoman Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, a regular contributor to Telluride Inside… and Out. And like Rosemerry, is brilliant and very very quirky. Witness his poem to put you in the mood – and put a smile on your face –  for the upcoming holiday.

(Oh, and David’s new book of essays, “How Delicate These Arches,”  a finalist for the 2012 Colorado Book Award and is now available online. ( You can also find the book at or through Between the Covers bookstore, Telluride.)

All Kisses Suck

You’re not doing it right
if the lips don’t pucker, a fleshy
forward thrust designed

to extend your reach, but
that’s where the presumption ends.
I don’t have to remind you

how Hollywood has made a mess
of such a perfect thing, an actor’s maw
wide and gaping, clamped over

another actor’s mouth
so that their tongues churn and writhe
like eels in a sea of saliva.

That’s not a kiss.  It’s technique
like a procedure used in resuscitation,
a medical emergency resolved,

but not a kiss.  What follows
the pucker should be a short discernible
intake of breath, as if a spaghetti

noodle is slipping from the lip,
and if you open your eyes fast enough
to see a smile reshape those lips

you’ve just kissed, well then
whatever happens next will tax
the limits of any description.