
Pont de Arts Bridge in Paris, May 2010
In honor of National Poetry Month, here’s another poem:
French Kiss
Down the Champs Elysees
I fumbled
I was so nervous
blushing
unsure if the way I was moving was right.
Could anyone tell I had never done this before?
Everyone else made it look so easy.
Just a spark
and they were on fire.
It took me a few times past the Arc de Triumph.
I thought I had it,
but the light went out.
I fumbled again.
I pressed my lips down,
opened my mouth.
spark
Blushing in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower
I took a drag of my first cigarette.
This poem is from my book This is Paris, which I wrote during a week in Paris. The first poem in the book I wrote before I left and the last poem I wrote when I returned, but all the poems in between were written while I was in France. I greatly enjoy poetry books that have little factoids featuring the poem’s backstory, so I did just that for this book! Here are the notes on the poem above:
This poem came about by playing on the sexual energy of Paris and exploring my ignorance of how to light a cigarette. I had certain requirements for the one and only cigarette of my life: I wanted to be sitting at a cafe where I could see the Eiffel Tower while smoking it. I had purchased a pack of French cigarettes, Gauloises Blondes, and felt extremely self-conscious as I tried to light one. I had to watch people smoking around me to see what end to light. (Sometimes smart people are really dumb.) I keep the remaining pack, all 18 cigarettes (there were 19, but I lost one as part of my Janis Joplin Halloween costume), near my writing desk. I love to open the pack and smell them, it brings me right back to the Parisian cafes.
Very nice. You did some good work in Paris. Are you writing anything new this month?
Thanks, Bart! Yes, I have a few fun poems that involve fishing and keeping a relative in a Ziploc bag. Bet you can’t wait for the next workshop! 😉
I started reading “A Moveable Feast” again yesterday…Hemingway makes me feel cozy inside about the affliction of writing
Woohoo! Have you ever read Sontag’s “artist as exemplary sufferer”?
i have not. I will add it to my reading list. I have read some of her work briefly while studying Philosophy….about warztime photography and how it become a new art medium