No one wants to know Vivien Leigh

walked off screen and complained about

Clark Gables’ bad breath. No one wants

to know an act of betrayal inspired Rodin’s

marble lovers. We want to believe in passion,

in moonlight and doorways, that slip

of the tongue we give so we may be taken.

But we must admit it. The famous post-war

picture of a sailor and nurse in Times Square

is really a photo of two relieved strangers.

Sometimes that’s what a kiss is for, to help

someone forget what they’ve seen, which might

be what you had in mind when you took my lip

between your teeth, softly, and for the last time.

Traci Brimhall has received the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.  Her work has appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, FIELD, The Southern Review, Indiana Review, and elsewhere.