Sex 101 Poem by Michael Burch

Sex 101
by Michael R. Burch

That day the late spring heat
steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus
crawling its way up the backwards slopes
of Nowheresville, North Carolina...

Where we sat exhausted
from the day's skulldrudgery
and the unexpected waves of muggy,
summer-like humidity...

Giggly first graders sat two abreast
behind senior high students
sprouting their first sparse beards,
their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections...

The most unlikely coupling―

Lambert,18, the only college prospect
on the varsity basketball team,
the proverbial talldarkhandsome
swashbuckling cocksman, grinning...

Beside him, Wanda,13,
bespectacled, in her primproper attire
and pigtails, staring up at him,
fawneyed, disbelieving...

And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her,
as she twitched impaled on his finger
like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes,
I knew...

that love is a forlorn enterprise,
that I would never understand it.

Keywords/Tags: first love, sex, lust, passion, desire, school, student, teen, teenage, learning, bus, foreplay, fingering, odor, musk



Rehearsal Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

The wonder of a first kiss
is:
the next will be better,
if less memorable...

and what's unforgettable's
this:
that, somehow,
although you just met her,

in the exchange of eclectic eyes
love came, an electric surmise,
with the smell of cordite hair
on a warm wool sweater

more than amply bosomed.
Use
any excess static to light
the fuse.

Fumble-fingered, her bra strap's cinch
refuses to budge an inch
in either direction.
Who's

ever prepared to be so stymied?
Smile,
lean back, drag, "relax" awhile
from practice imperfect. I'll

leave you two jaybirds alone.
Yes, tomorrow she'll
answer the phone,
show up for your first real date:

late, breathless, and braless!
(WAIT —
before you celebrate:
still celibate) .



Reverse Strip
by Michael R. Burch

She cupped her breasts in cotton, wire-cinched,
pulled a pale taupe sheath across red-gilded toes,
across sun-auburned thighs, to midriff, rose,
paraded nimbly to her dresser, pinched
a winsome pair of panties—white with hearts—
between thumb and forefinger, just to show
how well she knew my taste. Then, bowing low,
she stepped into them (here, the music starts,
a vampish tune) , slow-wriggled them waist-high.
She used her thumbs to snap elastic to
its proper place. She chose a slip—sky blue—
then shrugged it on, and patted down each thigh.

She then sat down and smiled (there'd be no dress) ,
uncrossed her legs, shrugged free one talcumed breast...



Dawn Flight
by Michael R. Burch

for Martin Mc Carthy

What is it about love
that defies explanation? —

the weightlessness of being,
the long elliptic climb

into darkness
amid the world's constant uproar,

the sea's black waves crashing
incessantly like thunder beneath us,

the long triumphant soar
into thinning contrails of nothingness,

like meteors through ether,
seeing the earth's dark curve

outlined,
spinning softly beneath us...

gliding, suspended at last,
over the earth pliant and motionless...

feeling, suddenly, the vast
onrush

and illumination.



Of Transience
by Michael R. Burch

How many nights her vulnerability
leaned close and softly pressed its cheek to mine,
held fast by tiny buckled straps impressed
on shoulders white as swans' white eglantine...

And many were the marks which left their trace,
then soon were gone. The thinnest finest veil
of ashen hair revealed her breasts, betrayed
all that I wanted most, but still would fail

to keep me there till morning. For her sighs,
I kissed her lips in wonder; we became
one with the distant thunder. Love is wise
when it comes in flashes, streaking moonlit rain,

but leaves no mark—as transient, as bright
as the searing imprint lightning pens at night.



Domination
by Michael R. Burch

It was not for the feast of docile eyes
she shed her latex jeans, her vinyl blouse;
it was not for the catcalls that her thighs,
black-gartered, parted slightly, to arouse
limp dreams, limp organs as onlookers cheered,
revealing paunches belts could not belay.
She shunned their touch, as lepers to be feared,
swerved half-way through her dance, then waltzed away.

But something in her eyes—a mystery
as old as lust, half-veiled by raven hair—
bespoke this certain knowledge: love is free,
but sex must have its fee, transport its fare.
They pay for what they want, and in return
she teaches them what men will never learn.