by Sally Bliumis-Dunn
She has painted her lips
hibiscus pink.
The upper lip dips
perfectly in the center
like a Valentine heart.
It makes sense to me --
that the lips,
the open
ah of the mouth
is shaped more like a heart
than the actual human heart.
I remember the first time I saw it --
veined, and shiny
as the ooze of a snail --
if this were what
we had been taught to draw
how differently we might have
learned to love.
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ABOUT THE POET ~
Sally Bliumis-Dunn teaches Modern Poetry and Creative Writing at Manhattanville College. She received her B.A. in Russian language and literature from U.C. Berkeley in 1983 and her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002. Her poems have appeared in BigCityLit, Fishouse, Lumina, Nimrod, NYT, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry London, RATTLE, Rattapallax, Spoon River Poetry Review and Chance of A Ghost, an anthology put out by Helicon Nine in 2005. In 2002 she was a finalist for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize. Her manuscript, Talking Underwater, which has been a finalist for The University of Arkansas Press' First Book Prize in 2006, a semifinalist for The Kenyon First Book contest in 2002, the Bright Hill Press in 2005 and a finalist for the Richard Snyder Poetry Prize from Ashland Press in 2006, was published by Wind Publications in 2007. In 2008 she was asked to read in the Love Poems Program before the Library of Congress. She lives in Armonk, New York with her husband, John. They share four children, Ben, Angie, Kaitlin and Fiona.
Last updated December 13, 2011