Gardner McFall: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gardner McFall. Photo by Susan Unterberg.

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First Kiss

 

When Raymond glided by me across the playing field, I chased him

     like a jet off radar

to plant the ultimate sting on his cheek: a kiss that burned him

     to a blossom of tears.

"What drove you to that?" the teacher inquired, pulling us both aside,

     his small shoulders heaving,

my eyes scanning the air for a reason. It sprang from the boys'

     chanting, "Girls have cooties."

If I had them, why shouldn't he? After school, Mother's withering

     look met me at the door.

She forced me to confess the recess affair to my father,

     the squadron commander,

God's right-hand man, my prank now promoted to a top-ranking sin.

     Love and sex dove under-

ground, buried deep as my spinster great-aunts, though I recall once

     during my college years,

when I came home too late, Mother asked if she should screw a scarlet

     bulb in the front-yard lamp—

Did I plan to turn our street into a red-light district?

     Raymond, wherever you are, whatever your last name is,

you are the pyre on which I throw each guilt-ridden kiss.

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Gardner McFall is the author of The Pilot’s Daughter and Russian Tortoise (poems), an opera libretto entitled Amelia (commissioned by Seattle Opera), and two children’s books.  She edited Made with Words, a prose miscellany by May Swenson. She has poems in Norton’s 2018 anthology, Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees, edited by Laren McClung, with a foreword by Yusef Komunyakaa. Her 2018 chapbook, On the Line, was published by Finishing Line Press. [“First Kiss,” from Russian Tortoise (2009), is reprinted by permission of the author]

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   Roy Lichtenstein, Kiss II, 1962.

Comments

[lally]

bam!

[Jody Payne]

The vulgarity of insects buzzing to and fro, “like a jet off radar”. Maybe our hearts can open when we become a spec of stardust within a handful of soil.

[Anne Harding Woodworth]

What a delight. Raymond, come out from your hiding place. Olly Olly in Come Free. You have someone to thank.

[Grace Cavalieri]

oh the shame we did not deserve becomes wonderful poetry.

[Howard Bass]

This terrific poem brought back a vivid memory from my own elementary school years. In 4th grade (or thereabouts) we were taught to make candles by dipping our wicks (ok, there's a vulgar image for you) into a big vat of melted wax. We'd file into the school kitchen, dip, and go out, circling in and out of the kitchen as the wax hardened and our candles thickened. So some students were in the kitchen, others outside waiting to go back in. A couple of the boys kissed Lynn Kaiser and they dared me to do it, too. So I did, kissing her on her forehead, just at the moment when the teacher looked out at us from the kitchen (no doubt we caused something of a commotion). So while Larry and Mark got away with it, I had to stay after school and receive a stern lecture from said teacher. I was not, she declared, a gentleman! I took my punishment like a gentleman and did not implicate the other kissers. Poetry can have a powerful effect on memory--this one really worked for me! Many thanks for posting it, T.

[David Lehman]

Wonderful poem and kiss, Roy L.'s and Gardner's "kiss that burned him to a blossom of tears."

[Terence Winch]

Howard: thanks for that comment. You should turn it into a poem.

[Eileen]

This is a trip down memory lane. I chased Connie McCarthy around the corner and planted a kiss on his cheek. His mother told my mother but it was worth it. I was in the first grade of elementary school. I love poems that help us recall an adventure even a small one!

[Terence Winch]

Thank you, Eileen, for that comment.

[Gardner McFall]

Thanks to all of you for your generous responses! Gardner

[Peter Kearney]

The poem is suffused with the author's guilt, expanded by her teacher and her parents, but there is a marvelous freedom at the end when Raymond's burning cheek becomes a pyre that burns the guilt away, like a biblical holocaust sacrifice.

[Linda Hickman]

I love the poem First Kiss. I guess because it resonates so completely with me. Thank you Terence for sharing this.

[Terence Winch]

Linda: thanks for the comment.

[Mary Stewart Hammond]

This poem is a delight with its lovely light touch about guilt and first love, and the poet's need, like our own, when we are very young, to cover up the true reason for the kiss.