Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.
Random Notes on the History of Kisses
by Gail Braune Comorat
I.
Darlings, I’ve known first kisses and stolen kisses.
I’ve given air kisses, kissed and made up,
kissed and told, but I have never been given
the kiss of life.
Fact: The science of kissing is called philematology.
Anthropologists believe a mother’s kiss
for her newborn comes from an instinct to bond.
I’ve bonded with kissing cousins, kissed them
goodbye—but never, ever with a French kiss.
Fact: French researchers have found
that waitresses who wear red lipstick
earn more tips than those who don’t.
II.
I’ve kissed the three ball off the six, thrown
kisses, once even kissed the ground.
I’ve been kissed in back seats and beneath
mistletoe, but haven’t yet kissed in a tree.
Myth: Kiss is a word invented
by poets as a rhyme for bliss.
I’ve given butterfly kisses,
Eskimo kisses, but never a Judas kiss.
Remember Michael Corleone’s kiss for his brother?
I know it was you, Fredo—you broke my heart.
III.
Paul Stanley named his band KISS
in ’73 after learning his drummer
had once been in a group called Lips.
Myth: KISS is an acronym for Knights in Satan’s Service.
In hope of acquiring the gift of eloquence,
tourists in Ireland kiss the Blarney Stone.
Fact: The Irish word for kiss is póg.
Fact: 80’s punk band, The Pogues took
their name from póg mo thóin,
an Irish phrase for kiss my arse.
IV.
Kissing began in India—it’s rumored
Alexander the Great’s soldiers brought home
the custom after that country’s invasion.
Fighting of the Tongue is one of over 30 kinds
of kisses listed in The Kama Sutra.
Fact: pucker kisses employ only two facial muscles;
passionate kisses require 34 muscles and burn
6.4 calories per minute.
Fact: it takes five minutes of walking or four minutes
of kissing to burn off the 26 calories in one Hershey’s Kiss.
V.
Fact: the first filmed kiss was recorded in 1896
by the Edison Company and lasted 23 seconds.
Notable cinematic kisses: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca,
From Here to Eternity, Lady and the Tramp.
Fact: the couple in Rodin’s The Kiss
is not actually kissing. Their lips do not meet.
Remember Life Magazine’s famed V-J Day kiss
in Times Square? Now, those lips connected.
VI.
Marilyn Monroe’s shiny, flaming lips
were so distinctive that Warhol silkscreened
her kiss over and over after her death.
Fact: Ruth van Herpen once was fined $1260
after leaving a lipstick smear on a museum’s
white monochrome painting.
She said she was trying to cheer it up.
My mother’s cherry red lipstick cheered
coffee mugs and wineglasses.
She wasn’t fond of kissing cheeks. All I have
of her now is a print of her lips
smudged on a crumpled tissue.
Fact: I keep it still, greedy for more.
Originally published in The Broadkill Review
Gail Braune Comorat is a founding member of Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild and is a co-author of Walking the Sunken Boards. She served as an editor for Quartet, an online poetry journal by women fifty and over. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Grist, and The Widows’ Handbook. She lives in Lewes, Delaware.
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