1887 L. C. SMITHERS tr. Forberg's Man.Class. Erotology v. 122 A man who is in the habit of putting out his tongue for the obscene act of cunnilinging. 1897 H. Ellis Stud. Psychol. Sex. I. iv. 98 The extreme gratification is cunnilingus,..sometimes called sapphism.
--Oxford Dictionary of the
English Language, online
The gratification can be extreme. That’s true.
As I look at
this poem, I’m feeling good
about it,
but we both know that
the poem’s
language—yes, that’s right,
its
tongue—oughtn’t to degrade, devalue,
pornographize, evade, or abuse its
subject.
That’s been
done. The poem has opened,
chooses telling Showing happens, too.
The poem
does not advise discretion.
It decides to locate itself respectfully where
it believes it’s been invited. It chooses to be human
and hopes you’ll
understand. Now it proceeds
beyond the
play of preliminaries.
Her apartment was in a cheap, two-story
stucco heap—palatial
compared to my place.
We lay on
her bed in a close, hot room: Spring.
California’s Central Valley, deep between
Coast Range
and Sierra Nevada, had already ovened up.
She kept her window open. She lay
back.
The pillow-cases were bright red. She relaxed.
She opened her legs. I
went down on her eagerly―
I might say earnestly. Great erotic
generosity inspired me,
or so I
chose to believe about myself.
Wait. There’s no rush. We have time to
instruct anatomy,
biology, and pornography to go away, to leave us alone.
Believe
it or not, this poem
likes its privacy.
Hot, stuffy, small, and cheap, the room
transformed itself. She and I—well,
we took our time. There was no rush. Our time.
Her room. The heat. I took her
own sweet time
and gave some of it back to her.
It was sex. Obviously. We
devoured a ripe, wet, hot interval of
life. That’s all and not a little bit. When
she orgasmed (what a mash of syllables),
she seemed
to have nothing to do with
the
pseudo-scientific infinitive, to
orgasm. She screamed.
That happens to be right. Screamed. Yelled
and shouted, too. It was louder for
being privately public.
“Ecstasy”? I don’t know: That word
makes me nervous.
It belongs to romance novels and a drug.
There’s no rush to
use it. Anyway, her sounds
were so loud they startled me, and I lost my place.
I smiled while I was turning to cunniling
into a conjugated, tense
present. There was no rush
.
I found my place again, went back to work.
Play. It was sex, not poetry.
So far so good? I raised my head
from loving
work. It is,
can be, good work,—
cunnilingus. It shouldn’t be labor
but can be more than play. . . . I
raised my head to listen to her and to
watch the rest of her body and her face
and take in the holy scene of the room. Is
holy too much? Absolutely, so let’s
leave
it, posted on the stucco heap
like a notice from a landlord. I offered
her a pillow with which to muffle the aria,
if she so chose. She chose not so.
Well played!
I heard people giggling outside
in
California, on the black asphalt of
an apartment-complex’s baked parking lot,
no rush of breeze out there. I smiled, and I
went down
again into what had become
for her a
rich source of satisfaction, a fabled
California mine, a vein of golden
pleasure, a rush.
I’d
become a famously employed miner,
producing lavish treasure with simple tools,
tongue and
mouth and lips. I exhibited care
and the will
to give my head. Such a primitive,
post-modern afternoon
it was, whatever
that means. It
wasn’t history,
but it was the best we two could do.
She was the only person she’d ever be.
She wanted to be satisfied on a
rickety bed in a blazing, stucco apartment.
I knew her, and I showed up. I
gave her what she invited me to give.
It was basic and civilized, polite,
profane, sacred, and plain. It tasted
and smelled the
way it ought to. She became
immortally satisfied for an interval
of afternoon. I swear I still heard
people laughing at sex-sounds coming,
so to shout, from her open window.
I worked at loving, making a delivery,
freighting freedom and joy to the realm
of her body. That’s an overstatement.
I know the
names of body-parts,
and so do you. This isn’t about that,
but please see references to tongue, lips,
mouth, legs, and head above. The window,
her legs, my mouth, our lives were open.
You can’t rush these things, but it
ended. I was a sweating, naked man
with a sense of charity, accomplishment,
and
gratitude. And it was fun.
She was a contented
naked woman,
so I didn’t say
anything, and I didn’t
want
anything.
There’s
never been a rush to remember,
and it’s
customary to keep such things
private
unless your profession is
pornography
or politics. Oh, well,
this is a
poem, and poems get interested
in this kind
of thing. You know how it is.
Writing
this, I feel good about it.
I smile and
pay homage to her ecstasy,
which was
different from that word.
She
filled herself up. She
shouted, my
mouth pressed to her
self-possessed body, which thrilled.
I thrilled at fearsome pleasure. There’s
no rush, but
one must act. Communion
occurs so variously, mysteriously,
sometimes with stucco and asphalt
nearby, and the rent due. I remember
rubbing my face on her thighs and then
on red cotton sheets to get some wet and sweat
off, not
all. I licked my lips. I remember
peace, the
peace of wordless
afterwards. No rush,
no rush at all. If
this poem offends or bores you,
you know
why, and I hope you didn’t read
this far,
but if you did, it’s over now. Be well.
hans ostrom 2006/2022
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