here, in a skinny creek
between dilapidated banks cleaved

and dark with clay, root-veins, your feet go numb; upwards,
his eyes grow bright in sky’s grotesque light—

your shoulders, cold, glow;
come to know his quivering palms, and then

his tongue is lapping into yours, summoning splash
and slap of sauntering stream

who teaches boys the vocabulary of body
anyway? cornea, cervix, thigh, but in truth

you too have unnamed yourself: aphasic
and dazed, goose-bumped beneath

sky unzipping, sky kissing mountaintops, (smothering
itself in their teeth,) and still

a boy’s eyes and hands down and up on you
his blood-pink lips whispering commanded

praise: stretch, spread, slip, a creek
turning surely to ice around feet

– Emma Karnes

Author’s Note: “make-out creek” seeks to address the anxieties, thrills, and confusions of girls’ early sexual experiences. Often both tender and terrifying, these complex moments can come to define a woman both sexually and otherwise. Therefore, this poem is an examination of female sexuality at one of its many roots.