there was a girl
whose breasts were scented
like French roses, her
Delta of Venus
a velveteen curtain
perfect for hiding in its
silken folds, away
from the tumult of the world

there was a girl
who knew my guy
from the painting class
where I sometimes figure
modeled, posed until the ache
crimped my shoulder, and after
one night a group of us
had a jug of wine, somebody
made frijoles, red beans
and rice, somebody passed
the holy smoke in a glass pipette,
we held it in, this miasmic burn,
and this girl said, I’m practicing,
you’d look gorgeous with a rosette
or letters or any fucking thing
you’d ever want,
and I wanted to swallow her hard,
like a whole boiled egg, like a jade marble
the shade of her eyes inside my body,
I wanted her to live inside my concave body
as a lush, uncontained seed

there was a girl
who laughed into my hair
with promises of sand and sky
and open car windows
we sang out, a girl who sometimes
forgot her canvas, or her toothbrush
when she stayed over
but never forgot a steady hand,
never forgot to make the French toast
for the guy and for me in the morning
and she liked to make up the messy sheets,
whatever you want, she said
and I whispered into her hair, I want you,
you want me, she laughed, and I nodded,
and her two little initials e
like ever and f like forever
dainty as the dots on dominos
in the hollow of my right armpit
where I laughed at the needle’s hurt
and we tumbled onto her studio mattress,
where she kissed away the hurt, a succulence
her hands through my hair,
her mark on my sleekest declivities.

ten years later, the waves pound the beach,
I raise my nephew in my arms as we sprint
back from the spume. what’s that?
he asks, and I’ve almost forgotten, the e, the f,
what’s that? he asks again, tipping his
strawberry curls. that was one of the best
afternoons of my life, I answer back
and we fall into the sand where we pile the wet
damp sand into a festive red bucket
we turn over and over again, the green of her eyes
washing back over me, through me,
now a part of me, a jade marble
already carrying without knowing I carried
another lush growing seed in my body.

about the author:
A bit more about me and my writing: Marina Kris’ short story “My German” was published in The New Urge Reader, Vol. 3, Erotic Fiction by New Women Writers. Another story, “Mother’s Milk,” appeared in The New Urge Reader, Vol. 2. Her poetry and other writing has also appeared in: Clean Sheets, The Erotic Woman, Cliterature, L’Allure des Mots, and the Hot Summer Nights anthology. She adores swimming, with or without a suit.