This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment.
Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. Many children will exchange heart-shaped cards and Hershey’s kisses. But for those of us who are a little older… well, forget Hallmark and chocolate. Tim Seibles’ poem “First Kiss” sets the mood for romance.
Tim Seibles was born and reared in Philly. The author of many poetry collections, including two from Cleveland State University Poetry Center: Hurdy-Gurdy (1992) and Buffalo Head Solos (2004). His Fast Animal (Etruscan Press) was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award and winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize. A former Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellow, Tim was Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2016 to 2018. Most recently, he published One Turn Around the Sun (2017) and Voodoo Libretto (Etruscan 2021), a collection of new and selected poems.
In his iconic photo “V-J Day in Times Square,” Alfred Eisenstaedt captures a jubilant US sailor kissing a total stranger. In that moment, it seems as if the world stops.
In his painting “The Kiss,” Gustav Klimt portrays a couple’s intimate embrace. Only these two, cloaked in gold, seem to matter.
And so it is with Tim Seibles’ joyful, intimate, and celebratory poem “First Kiss.”
Here’s “First Kiss” (for Lips) by Tim Seibles
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Her mouth
fell into my mouth
like a summer snow, like a
5th season, like a fresh Eden,
like Eden when Eve made God
whimper with the liquid
tilt of her hips—
her kiss hurt like that—
I mean, it was as if she’d mixed
the sweat of an angel
with the taste of a tangerine,
I swear. My mouth
had been a helmet forever
greased with secrets, my mouth
a dead-end street a little bit
lit by teeth—my heart, a clam
slammed shut at the bottom of a dark,
but her mouth pulled up
like a baby-blue Cadillac
packed with canaries driven
by a toucan—I swear
those lips said bright
wings when we kissed, wild
and precise—as if she were
teaching a seahorse to speak—
her mouth so careful, chumming
the first vowel from my throat
until my brain was a piano
banged loud, hammered like that—
it was like, I swear her tongue
was Saturn’s 7th moon—
hot like that, hot
and cold and circling
circling, turning me
into a glad planet—
sun on one side, night pouring
her slow hand over the other: one fire
flying the kite of another.
Her kiss, I swear—if the Great
Mother rushed open the moon
like a gift and you were there
to feel your shadow finally
unhooked from your wrist.
That’d be it, but even sweeter—
like a riot of peg legged priests
on pogo-sticks, up and up,
this way and this, not
falling but on and on
like that, badly behaved
but holy—I swear! That
kiss: both lips utterly committed
to the world like a Peace Corps,
like a free store, forever and always
a new city—no locks, no walls, just
doors—like that, I swear,
like that.
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This poem first appeared in Tim Seibles’ fourth book, Buffalo Head Solos, which was published by Cleveland State University Press in 2004.
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That was “First Kiss” by Tim Seibles. Thanks for listening.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
