.

Kissing Cousin

I see her every two years, usually
When someone dies or marries. And we kiss
As if we were old lovers, passionately,
Just as a silly spoof. She says I miss
These hot encounters! Prudish maiden aunts
Are duly scandalized, and start to talk.
I say Now ladies, I’ve kept on my pants—
When they come off, you’ve got the right to squawk.

The family laughs, we smile, the joke is done—
The business that’s at hand takes our attention.
At dinner, while conversing with her son,
I learn that there’s a knot of fierce dissension
Between her and her husband. And my blood
Rises like rebel rivers in full flood.

.

.

To a Girl in My Ancient Comedy Class

Frankly, you could be one hot
Sweetie in a Plautine plot—
Part of the whole panoply
Of baggage in a comedy:
Braggart soldiers, pots of gold,
Dimwit fathers growing old,
Parasites and haunted houses,
Churlish cooks and jealous spouses,
Courtesans and concubines,
Suggestively erotic lines,
Long-lost siblings, clever slaves,
Columns, arches, architraves—
All those stage-props. As for me,
I’m just hankering to be
One of those young wastrel sons
Enamored of your tits and buns.

.

.

Eucharistic Ministrix

We meet by chance inside a subway car—
She’s off to purchase fabric, I to school.
We’ve never talked at length like this. So far,
A few words after Mass have been the rule.
She’s bright-eyed, tall and lithe, with grey-blonde hair
And milk-white Irish skin that breathes cologne.
Although she is a grandmother, I stare
And think of us in privacy, alone,
Our clothes unbuttoned and askew, our hands
Joined in a grasp that warms the friendly dark,
A current of arousal in our glands,
And we dry kindling ready for the spark.
I’m troubled now, and real disquiet lingers—
How can I take Communion from those fingers?

.

Poet’s Note

These three pieces were composed at different times, but I have brought them together here to illustrate not real sex, but imagined sex in three separate contexts: the Family, the School, and the Church. They are meant to be provocative, but no more so than a pair of high-heels and fishnet stockings.

They are products of fictive mimesis, though each one had its origin in a real situation: the first with one of my female cousins, the second with a student in an Ancient Comedy class, and the third after a chance meeting with the Eucharistic ministrix who serves at my local church.

Remember the disclaimer “No animals were harmed in the filming of this movie”? Well, no women were compromised in the writing of these three poems. The sex herein was totally imaginary, in that it all occurred in my head, and expressed itself verbally on paper, as metrical compositions. They are poems, not calls to fornication. I ask that they be judged solely on their aesthetic quality, and not by the standards of outraged morality.

.

.

Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide.  He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.

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14 Responses

  2. Mike Bryant

    Joe, you are a bad, bad, bad boy!

    Here I am, eating a ham sandwich at my kitchen table, minding my own business, and you go and hit me with kissing cousins, student crushes, and holy hanky-panky—all before I’ve even had a sip of tea.
    Am I offended? Nope…
    These are what SCP poetry is all about… rhythm, rhyme and rapture… sailing along like a smooth and sexy carhop on rollerskates!
    Great stuff…

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Mike, whatever happened to those cute female carhops, scooting up to your car with a cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake, and looking just as good enough to eat as the meal itself? What a loss…

      Many thanks for your kind words.

      Reply
  3. Roy Eugene Peterson

    The prude in me says castigate, and that I should not hesitate. Yet I must admire the rhyme that makes my mind work overtime. Salacious though these poems may be, they had a strange effect on me.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Roy, as long as my poems are interesting and compelling I don’t care if they are salacious. The root of the word “salacious” is salax, which means salty. A meal without salt is tasteless and boring, and that includes meals of poetry.

      Reply
      • Roy Eugene Peterson

        Actually, Dr. Salemi, I found myself in similar situations, but without kissing on the lips my beautiful cousin. When I taught American Government, my first few classes were mainly for teachers who often waited to take it their senior year. Sometimes I felt they were intentionally tempting me. My first girlfriends I dated attended my church. Thus, I had a lot of empathy with all three poems.

  4. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Joe, I love everything about these poems, including the hilarious poet’s note beneath – a much-needed disclaimer in these days of pearl-clutching piety and the “Me-Too” mob. I loved reveling in the sauciness and sensuousness of them, but much more than that, the craftmanship – the beauty of the art that brings your stories alive is to be admired. Joe, you are an inspiration, and I thank you for your gift to readers and your guts to write something edgy.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Dear Susan, thank you for your appreciative words. I try mightily to combine subjects that are intriguing with very carefully chosen English. These three pieces on my cousin, my student, and my ministrix were put together to show that sex is everywhere, even in the least expected places.

      Reply
      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        “ Eucharistic Ministrix” is a superb title for its musicality and its intrigue.

  5. Frank Rable

    Joe, love is certainly a complicated subject that has baffled men over the years, and good on you to tackle it. Good examples, really.
    I’m aware of the seven(?) types of love as distinct concepts, but don’t they overlap? So in the example of the cousins, there is family love that drifts into playful love, but it is stopped dead in its tracks by the maiden aunts before becoming eros , romantic love.
    Eros can be erotic behavior, but always with the good of other party put first. I think.
    Of course there is sometimes an overlap between love and lust, just as the brain is multitasking it’s different priorities.
    This is all me working this out for my own edification. I find this to be an interesting topic and I hope there is more discussion here.

    I liked the poems very much. Can you share what age the admirer of the Irish grandmother was as you wrote this? Was it perhaps a memory from the past
    that she inspired?
    You’ve gotten me to think of these folks as real people.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you for your comments, and I’ll try to clarify matters. The characters in the poems were all real people.

      My cousin and I were born seven years apart. Since these silly “hot encounters” occurred several times during family events, I can’t say more than that about our ages at any given incident. Let’s assume I was 45, and she was 38.

      The student in my Ancient Comedy class was in her late teens or very early twenties, while I was probably about 50.

      The eucharistic ministrix and I were, as far as I can guess, probably of roughly the same age (60 or thereabouts). I know that she had three adult children.

      Eros is frequently unconcerned with “the good of the other party.” It is often wildly selfish, or at least indifferent to its partner. This is why Eros was considered a dangerous and troublesome god in the ancient world.

      Reply
  6. Brian Yapko

    Joe, these are indeed edgy, ballsy poems which have a sexy, flirty quality to them rather than a deep and sensual one. This is not the Song of Songs celebrating the sensuality of married love but, neither is it the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition or a visit to Hooters. You’ve claimed a middle spot with all three of these poems somewhere in between romantic idealism and frank physicality. They are funny and there is a reality to them that is startling. Sexual fantasies and some level of inappropriate flirting banter are a part of life – and not just among the young.

    “Kissing Cousin” does push the envelope as far as challenging those prudish maiden aunts. Of course, in many cultures marriages between cousins are no big deal. And still there’s a slight “ick”factor underlying the poem – because the speaker and the cousin know that how outrageous that faux passion is. It is a joke and thus it remains. For some that’s unforgivable, but the fact of the matter is it makes for a funny situation and a highly entertaining poem with a hint of pathos and uncertainty at the end. With that discord between the husband and wife at the end, we have a reminder that we can never really know what goes on in other people’s relationships.

    “Ancient Comedy” is less complex and has no emotional Trojan Horse. It’s a situation comedy interior monologue which reminds me of the manic hilarity of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (which – no coincidence – was based on the plays of Plautus.) The comic elements of your poem are highlighted by the laundry list of various staples of Plautine comedy – a delightful demonstration of comic technique. And by the time we get to the “tits and buns” we’ve been well-eased into the speaker’s lascivious mindset so that anything goes.

    The “Eucharistic Ministrix” is to some degree the most shocking of the three poems for daring to allow sensual fantasy to intrude into the church. Or, more accurately, on the subway but with the knowledge that the speaker’s object of affection is a ministrix of the church – forbidden fruit, in a sense. Though I am reminded of the sensuality the Bishop speaker infuses with The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s, where he goes on and on about the woman he stole from a fellow clergyman. Forbidden fruit indeed. And yet we must note the astonishing number of sensual artworks in Italian churches. Michelangelo is unintelligible without the sensuality he brings to so many of his works, even though they are present in the sacred spaces of the Sistine Chapel, San Pietro in Vincoli and St. Peter’s Basilica itself. In Rome, even to this day they sell calendars of handsome, sensually-posed priests. Scandalous? Perhaps. Yet officially sanctioned. Suffice it to say that the fact that a person works for a church, in a church, or is part of the church does not in any way “unsex” them. Human beings are flesh and blood and there will always be religious-tinted fantasies. Your poem recognizes this. That final line questioning “how can I take Communion from those fingers” seems more rhetorical to me than an expression of angst. But the question itself captures a certain ambivalence which rings true and which also carries the shock of recognition. Many a parishioner has developed a crush on the pastor.

    Wonderful, thought-provoking and smile-inducing poems, Joe.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Brian, you always turn out to be the most perceptive of critics. You clearly see that I have tried to place sexuality into situations or contexts that are not normally congenial to sexual overreach, for the purpose of summoning up imagined sexual fantasy. And yes — a “forbidden fruit” theme runs through all three poems — sex between close family members, sex between teacher and student, and sex with a married lady who serves at religious ceremonies.

      In the first poem the maiden aunts are the only ones who are upset — perhaps precisely because they are physical “maidens.” In the second, the teacher-speaker represses his sexual feelings by immersing his thoughts into the paraphernalia of the Plautine comedies he is teaching. And the third is merely a fantasy imagined by the speaker as a result of a simple conversation with a woman on the subway.

      You’re right about the sensuous physicality that runs through much Renaissance painting, even when it is religious. By the way, this was noticed at the time, and we had some Comstockian types back then who objected vigorously to nudity in art. There was even one idiot Pope who wanted some of the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel to be retouched to cover up the private parts of some figures. Luckily for us, he was ignored.

      You are right about that last line: “How can I take Communion from those fingers?” It tries to capture an ambivalence, where what is forbidden oscillates with what is desired. Why shouldn’t the speaker take communion from the woman’s fingers? He has neither slept with her, nor even attempted to do so. All he has done is to fantasize, and create fictive mimesis out of that unfulfilled fantasy. All poets have the right to do this.

      Thank you for excellent analysis.

      Reply

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