After Rodin’s Sculpture, The Kiss, 1901-04, by Arya F. Jenkins

12/13/2017

The Kiss, by Auguste Rodin (France). 1901-1904.

After Rodin’s Sculpture, The Kiss, 1901-04

I feel your hand on my hip
Your hand speaks to me
Is the story of our finding one another
The story of the moment
And never letting go

The story is in the hand
That held the book
In which you read
The story of Francesca and Paolo
In Dante’s Inferno
Our story

My breasts come into being
Full of you
Remembering you
My kiss feeds you all I know
My strength in the
Face of knowing they will
Kill us for this
And send us to hell

And still we dare
To be as we are
Together
Here
All eyes on us
Knowing only what
They want to know
Only their story
Into which we disappear
By virtue of our eternal
Nakedness.

Arya F. Jenkins

Arya F. Jenkins' poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals and zines. Her poetry and fiction have both been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her flash, “Elvis Too” was nominated for the 2017 Write Well Awards by Brilliant Flash Fiction. Her work has appeared in at least three anthologies. She writes jazz fiction for Jerry Jazz Musician, an online zine. Her poetry chapbooks are: Jewel Fire (AllBook Books, 2011) Silence Has A Name (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poetry chapbook, Autumn Rumors, has just been accepted by CW Books and is slated for publication September 2018. Her latest blog ishttps://writersnreadersii.blogspot.com.

1 Comment

garth

12/13/2017 07:20:22 am

Marvelous poem, Arya. I wanted to pass along my work inspired by yours.

only the strong survive (said his headstone)

no kiss is going to bring us closer together, i see that so much of what we did was an illusion, that the flesh works its own magic in the mind, but now i see you tacking that yellow sign to the door and as soon as you catch sight of you in the act of doing so, all you want to do is run, and yet i am the one chasing after you with this shovel and instead of wanting to be as far away from you as possible, all i want is an answer to every single one of my questions, though i think i won't get any satisfaction from this either because now i wouldn't trust anything you had to say...and so you move away from the door with that family almost cordoning you off from me even when i do finally make it there...i get it, i do: they think i've brought the shovel to do you harm, to klo you and bury the body, but i'd have to be a fool to try something like that in broad daylight, and to have so many witnesses, well, normally i wouldn't have actually thought any of those thoughts, but i've become so unpredictable lately, i don't even know what i'm doing with this shovel, can you believe it?...but i'd never hurt you with this or with anything else however much i've already guessed what you've told them, that i'm a disappointment, that i'm not the man you thought i was way back when we first met and our kisses were tender and warm...what have they become lately?...hell, i can't even remember the last time we kissed, can't remember when things started going cold between us...sometimes when i try throwing myself that far back in the past, i recall with others instead...maybe it's because there wasn't so much at stake back then, but now everything is always for love eternal and finding the love of one's lifetime and on and on and on, and whereas i used to be in that mindframe when i was younger and hadn't understood anything about women or relationships, now i think people can only be grateful for whatever time they have with whoever they choose to be with because you never know when or how or even why something is going to just end...things change, people grow tired and bored with each other, and if you want to blame it on there being too many other choices out there, too many other people, i think it's a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't account for the big picture, but, whatever, it's not like any of this is going to help me feel any less rejected here and now...i'm being presented with yet another opportunity to move on and learn from this experience when all i really want is someone to be with who's fucking reasonable and realistic, someone who understands how life works, someone else who isn't looking for someone to solve all her unsolvable problems for her, problems that she had crated, problems only she herself can resolve...if only i had the energy and the patience to find someone like that for myself, i wouldn't be feeling so out of control and walking up to her, chasing her and never catching up to her with this damn shovel in my hand...but, no, i've settled for someone i knew wasn't quite a good match for me, and i'd done so time and time again because i said i could very well spend the rest of my days saying this one or that one wasn't good enough, wasn't suitable enough, and what would that leave me with? : regret, loneliness, depression...yet how much have i avoided any of that now?...why have i become so out of control, anyway, just because yet another woman has decided she'd be better off without me?...god, how many times had i come to the same conclusion about her, about so many of the others before her, and yet what had i ever done about those moments of clarity when i knew what i wanted and that i didn't want her, each of them?...i had been afraid of making a hasty decision, i told myself i didn't want to be the one trusting my instincts because maybe they were being overprotective, trying to protect me from whatever life was going to do to me in any case, and so i have always been the one to get the axe, and here i am all over again getting axed all over again, it's in her eyes, or at least the version of her she's presenting to them, the one who needs protection because she's just a female, after all, and what's she expected to do against some crazy fuck with a shovel who won't stop following her?...i get her game, but they don't and they might never...it isn't her i really want anyway, it's a composite of answers to all the questions no one but life can answer...she doesn't know why it's so difficult for me to find good women to be with, she doesn't care anymore and, anyway, it's just not the kind of question you ask to your supposed beloved...but that's where i was just now, in my head i mean, when i was saying how out of control and unpredictable i've become lately, i was back at the rodin museum looking at the doors which he'd shaped into the gates to hell, and the troubling "aban

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After Rodin’s Sculpture, The Kiss, 1901-04, by Arya F. Jenkins

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