Kiss and Ride
When Tiffin and Natalie laughed at the sign
they were implicating kisses,
those clammy undoings
native to the back four seats of the bus.
Only I understood
how ride was twice as dirty,
having read my father's
double stack of Mayfairs several
weeks before.
In the hours my parents spent
browsing at Magruder's,
I re-read the readers' letters, absorbing
new erotic verbs: ride, as in
to ride a hot rod, which requires
one to arch and writhe,
a repertoire of measures I would
later explain
and ultimately demonstrate
secluded in the den,
imagining the tartan slipcover
as a velvet quilt,
pleased I knew enough
to be the boy.
Cochlea
flush light cavity,
petal canal
I have built boats
dispatched them
down your
drowsy channel
swabbed in circles
at your innermost
wall, I have panted
out coordinates
disbelieved
resistance
fancied the tunnel
a constant conch
and tightened
and tightened
this
smallest screw
Veronica Fitzpatrick grew up in Virginia. She holds a BA and MFA from Michigan State University and the University of Notre Dame, respectively, and is also an alumna/apostle of the UVa Young Writers Workshop. She currently lives and teaches film in northern Indiana.
