The First Time A Woman Kissed Me
By Sosha Pinson

If I say it ended with someone entering
the bar bathroom to see me pinned
against a stall with my floor length dress
bunched up around my hips, would that show you
this is not a love poem? I’ll tell you
it started slow;
strange woman’s
tongue jammed
in my drunken mouth,
chest groped
by her kneading
hands & what was left
of my body– bourbon
blackouts, recurring dreams;
eye pressed to my front door’s
decorative glass window like a kaleidoscope
anticipating the beloved’s arrival– no–
I’m begging the fragmented image
of my birth mother always
walking away
because everyone’s first love
is the mother’s body.
& Maybe my married friend
who kissed me & left me leaning
drunk against the bright red stall door
will forgive me for telling you this & mistake
this for a love poem
for the first woman to open
my mouth & feed me a small piece
of her body since my mother first stuck
that sweet raspberry nipple
& made me drink & made me
live
because praise
starts here always:
tongue groping the word
breast
leaving behind
a shiny film of saliva.

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Sosha Pinson is an Eastern Kentucky poet. Her recent poems can be found in Stirring: A Literary Collection, The Wide Shore, Minerva Rising, Circe’s Lament: An Anthology of Wild Women Poetry, and Still: The Journal which nominated her poem “Re-entering The Garden” for the 2016 Best of The Net awards.

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Art by Cynthia Alvarez (calvarez.com).