How Easy It Was To Attempt To Mate | poetry by Susan Michele Coronel

How Easy It Was To Attempt To Mate

on Saturday nights, when my friends and I
made prank calls from my parents’ bedroom 

as they dozed downstairs by the flickering T.V. 
We were certain that our opening phrase 

Can I speak to your son? would yield a boy 
under twenty-one but over thirteen. We were virgins 

dreaming of interlocking tongues, hips 
that rocked against zippered jeans. 

On our end of the line, joy upon finding 
a boy named George just shy of sixteen 

who agreed to meet by the wetlands 
on our dead-end street. Laurie and I were lookouts 

as George’s fingers engulfed Val’s ebony mane. 
For a long time they sucked face behind a curtain 

of reeds, moonlight blue through opaque clouds. 
Like the clouds, they parted as quickly as they merged, 

pinpricks of light guiding us back to my room, 
where we opened a stash of mini-liquor bottles, 

French kissing the backs of our hands. All this practice 
taught us, years later, that boys still charmed 

like elephants—the long sway of trunk and rhythmic 
swish of tail, stroking and feeding themselves 

what they needed. Its magnetic pull was never enough, 
but we were never ashamed by the thrill and sway.