Monday, November 8, 2010

Best Seller Title Prompt for Big Tent (The Last Boy)

For Dean

The last boy I kissed,
full on the lips, you turn
sixty this year like me.
Eighteen, we shared an
orange in a secret fairy circle
in hills covered mustard gold,
lupin blue, rode a friend's horse
on Pacific beach, licked cherry
brandy off each other's lips,
worried over colleges, parents,
different dreams, different coasts.
You let me down easy. I needed
you at home to receive my letters
so I could leave. You understood.
By nineteen, last kiss in my mother's
kitchen, you were no longer a boy,
told me you'd met someone beautiful
at the Renaissance Festival, that she
needed you in a way I didn't and you
needed that. I'd met someone too ,
wasn't honest enough yet to admit
he held my future, knew me flawed
and whole. I cried ten minutes when
you broke up with me, then we talked
hours, sweet friends, happy to be free.
I'm lucky you were the last boy I kissed.

Victoria Hendricks
November 8, 2010

14 comments:

  1. What a touching and beautiful poem this is, Victoria!

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  2. How beautiful this is. I'm swept away by the love and the desire here.

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  3. Such romance, such poignancy. Bravo.

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  4. Touching and real because it uses plain language and lets the narrative breathe.

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  5. Nostalgia put to good use, with the seasoning of hindsight. Enjoyed it.

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  6. I love the play on 'last boy kissed' rather than the first one we usually remember. Like the emoitonal levels revealed.

    Elizabeth

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  7. Tender and touching piece with wonderful revelations.

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  8. This is so poignant and sensitive. Nicely done.

    http://liv2write2day.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/worth-dying-for-big-tent-poetry/

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  9. Such sweetness and sadness in this poem. I really liked the ambiguity I found in the statement,
    "wasn't honest enough yet to admit
    he held my future, knew me flawed
    and whole."

    It leaves me wondering, which he? I also like the idea that forty-two years later, the narrator has remembered so many details, but remembers crying for only ten minutes.

    Fine poem!

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  10. The repetition of needing keeps the narrative beating, reminds me of my own last boy kiss. Thank you for that!

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  11. wonderful movement - like a long breathe. took me back to earlier times...

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  12. Very impressive, Victoria. Such a poignant poem!

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