The Kiss
She pressed her lips to mind.
⎯a typo
How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.
She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.
Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?
I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,
defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.
Hello Friends —
Some people I like a lot got married today. They are similarly touched in mind, and I think they’ll be happy together for a long time — which makes me happy.
For the most part, I’d say writers despise typos. But there are also very few things that delight a poetically inclined mind as much as a real-life accidental metaphor or word play — and every once and awhile, a typo comes along that belongs in that category. For a couple of my other favorite typo poems, see “Letter” by Natasha Trethewey and the spoken word piece “The Impotence of Proofreading” by Taylor Mali. You can find “This Kiss” in Stephen Dunn‘s 2007 collection Everything Else in the World.
Cheers,
Ellen