GIRLS I KISSED AT CAMM'S SCHOOL (A KISS AND TELL)

for JB

Kathryn Walker was my first in nursery
and again in reception, and once
in year three under a table on maths
rotation and three times in Lincoln.

I kissed Joanne Bainbridge at the same
time my sister and Andrew Bainbridge
were marrying each other via
a shoebox of plastic rings and letters.

Jessica Baines, Gemma Dodd, were both
girls I tongued under the weeping
willow in year five and Jessica Baines
invited me to her 10th birthday party.

Finally, Jenny, I think, at least once,
and Katrina Cooper and Rebecca Wright
and Sarah Bailey twice.

NECROPHILIA

for SJ

You have to be gentle and tender, more tender
than when the flesh lived and resisted your touch
with a bruise. And the lips could be kissed.
All you can do is hold them. Wash the body. Love.

LITTLE SIGHS

     I let my back rest for a moment on the wall outside Lion's Lair
and I sigh, as if he were pressing himself into me, my head tilted back
in a sigh and the sigh of a taxi's thin–hissing wheels on the wet tarmac.
I have given him my heart and he has put it in his pocket next to his wallet
and now I am heartless and drunk. The pub is like a secret and secrets
are kisses which gloss lips with spittle — how wonderful it is to be drunk
and to be thinking about him in the street and light rain. This street
is like a movie set for Brando or James Dean and footsteps are echoing
up Cole Brothers' wall like steam. Inside there is music, but only a beat,
         low and sonorous, escapes the brick
and neon windows and the laughter of boys plunged in close proximity.
         Together we generate so much heat
that we're found wiping hands over our brows or leaning against pillars
panting like bitches in season (How brazen some of these poems have become!
As if he were leaning into me and undoing my fly out here in the street —
I have so many teasing thoughts like these up my sleeves) The pleasure
of giving your heart to another to keep in the pocket of his jeans,
to have it slide round his bum like a wallet and be foetal-like, bent,
to be always sleeping in the back of his pants. I had to come out for a moment
     and catch my breath in the air. The door opens. You are there like a sigh;
     you are Radiant and Glorious, I'm Coming and Kissable.