Weston Cutter

A Defense of Kissing Despite Massive Evidence to the Contrary

Once when you said I’m hungry someone
kissed you as if tongues were ever enough food,
lips and intentions of bliss, low gutturals
broken because vowels seem so flimsy and how
many times will you say country instead of

the name you miss so, like the color green or
the number eleven or the gun you were taught so
well to fire, age nine, how when you sighted down
the barrel as you pointed at the sun you knew
you’d never hit it, ever, but you still had to try?

Last Prayer of Summer

God of lightning bolts and
butter churns these hands felt
the bread rise then broke the cantaloupe
and split the strawberries,
now teach the final conjugation,
the past tense of love and

God of cooking grease and
red thread share new parables
of wine and risings, you’ve taken her
from my touch, allow my heart’s summer
to finish as I eat this meal that tastes
of yesterday, autumn,

and God of stopped watches, the cup
empty of sugar, I don’t believe
it’s a shattered world despite these
songless guitar hands, the cold that knows
my name, all your heart-shaped fruit
so blood red and devourable,

dressed in finest thorns, amen.

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