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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2004 : Deborah DeNicola
THE KISS
inspired by the Holocaust paintings of the contemporary Russian artist, Maxim Kantor
She isn't troubled by the way his gaze lists into space;
her eyes are open too. Neither one flutters a muscle.
Her face could be his mirror. The same
sallowed skin, same tough contusion
of sorrow in the stare. Two chiseled skulls
under hats of hair. Her fork tine fingers,
grip the sagging horsemeat of his shoulder.
Which one is stronger? Which one older?
Both have lived too long to light erotic pleasure
from the flat fuse of their lips.
His hands are large arthritic spiders, knuckles bent.
Neither one becomes aroused.
They simply press each other's mouths.
They have survived like this.
This poem was a finalist in the 2004 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Deborah DeNicola
Deborah DeNicola edited the anthology Orpheus & Company: Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology, published in 1999 from The University Press of New England. She was awarded a Poetry Fellowship in 1997 from the National Endowment for the Arts, received the William T. Foley Award in 2000 from America magazine, the Barbara Bradley Award in 1996 from the New England Poetry Club, and a Special Mention from the Pushcart Prizes 1992. She is the author of Where Divinity Begins (Alice James Press, 1994) and two chapbooks, Psyche Revisited (1992), which won the Embers Magazine Chapbook Contest, and Rainmakers (Coyote Love Press, 1984). She does dreamwork and poetry mentoring from her web site, www.intuitivegateways.com.
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