The Empress of Kisses

Book excerpt: The Empress of Kisses explores the landscape of the human heart through free and formal verse. The poems chronicle a wide variety of relationships past and present, real and imagined, with family, friends, lovers, pop culture icons, mythological figures, historical events, and with words themselves. The collection features a special focus on the experiences of Generation X, the “forgotten generation.” "This book offers all the pleasures that poetry affords—sonic felicities, skilled wordplay, resonant insights, and unexpected destinations. This is a delightful and memorable book."—Beth Ann Fennelly, final judge, author of Unmentionables November 9th, 1989 For thirty years there is no kiss. Then there is the possibility of a kiss, like a rumble or a half-heard shout— did it come from this side or that side? When the kiss breaks through, we all struggle to register the impossible, how the wall came down, how their lips found each other, every obstacle reduced to rubble around their feet, the bright paint of her lipstick smeared, unintelligible graffiti all over the changed angles of his face.