The Cunnilingus Poem

 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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