Peaches or Plums by Alan Michael Parker

(I heard this poem on NPR this morning, read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. I particularly love the first stanza--the idea of memories inventing their own memories. That's about right... -w)

PEACHES OR PLUMS

by Alan Michael Parker

Oh, how I hate my mind,
all those memories
that have invented their own memories.

Take my first love, for instance,
how after Mass we'd kneel
underneath the back stairs

and kiss and kiss and kiss and.
Were her lips like peaches or plums?
She was Catholic and she wanted

to be bad, and I loved her
more than baseball,
but all the other days

divided us, carry the one,
nothing left over. So strange,
only to kiss on a Sunday,

to hold my own breath again
for a week, another 10,022
minutes of wretched puberty,

until she moved to Iowa
or Ohio or the moon.
Oh, I can still remember

nothing about her,
only kissing, and the impossible
geometry of the descending stairs

that rose to the church kitchen,
her breath like hot nutmeg
and a little like the ocean;

and once, oh my god, she bit me,
a first taste of my body,
blood in her smile.

"Peaches or Plums" by Alan Michael Parker, from Elephants and Butterflies. © BOA Editions, 2008.

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