Rachel J. Fenton
The Kiss
After the sculpture by Rodin
We learn in hard earned comfort on rue de Bourgogne
via a discount warehouse in Blockhouse Bay
and Takapuna library: tourists. Wrapped in matching throw,
for once we share the same page, twin voyeurs
to view two lovers embraced the way love should be made.
Though I am circumspect you have more trouble keeping
your thoughts in your head and as if to emulate you slip
one arm, smooth as a chisel, round my waist,
apply force the way you did that early time at my place
only, then, it was the cushion. I should have confessed sooner.
As then, your fingers sink in effort to make flesh
the marble of me. A one-sided crush
revealing deeper physics. Érorché,
hand on heart, I want to shout, we are not in love,
this muscle’s solid rock, and rise up, a contorted Proserpine
like Bernini’s but this is monsieur Rodin’s work,
only the sentiments are mine and my lover’s ears are stone.
He is as stubborn as Pygmalion and persists in his attempts
to manually resuscitate for ever after, until I close the book,
declare our marriage a cadaver, we its monument.
Page(s) 20
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