"Sticky Fingers" by Christina
- Effigy Press Admin
- Mar 29
- 3 min read
Sticky Fingers
Wallowing
beatifically
in a moment full
of uncertainty
&
questioning
Like a perfect bite
salty, sweet,
balanced in pleasure
&
novelty
A new taste
broadening my pallet
finding new grottos
of flavor
So is this moment
this morsel
That could
make you instantly sad,
such a poignant moment,
so fleeting
It could
make you stop,
close your eyes,
recreate from memory
Each mundane detail
that somehow
comes together
to be sublime
When you look away
into the sun
you purse your lips
into a controlled smile
caverns surround your smile
I want to explore them
gently
with the tip of my tongue
Explore the salt,
the margarita,
the ocean breeze,
beads of your scent
Each its own
Each part of the
divine morsel
Your voice
it’s timber,
it’s deep leathery tone
I can sink into it.
The air that escapes
on each S
draws me in
Your round supple
Bum….
I digress
In this exercise
of imprinting
Tracing your soft skin
with tips of tongues
and fingers
Digging deep into
your silky main
Tasting every inch of you
like licking the last
dregs of flavor
Licking fingers
with golden juice
dropping decorum
forgetting proper
As you go,
become a ghost,
rambling around,
in my mind
I can return
here
&
remember,
feel
its warmth
spill into
my center
Leaving it there
allowing it to be
embracing the ephemeral
Allowing myself
to savor
&
decipher each morsel,
these crumbs
of you.
REVIEW
Christina’s Sticky Fingers aims to be a sensual meditation on longing, memory, and embodiment—rich with scent, texture, and emotional imprint. There’s a clear desire here to evoke something intimate and immersive, and in places, the poem succeeds in conjuring a lingering emotional atmosphere.
But, for me, the poem struggles to find its tonal footing. The title, Sticky Fingers, suggests something cheeky or playful—maybe even mischievous. What follows, however, is more languid, dreamlike, and emotionally serious. That tonal mismatch left me slightly unsure of how to enter the poem: is this a seduction, a lament, a memory, a fantasy? It gestures toward all of these, but doesn't fully commit to any one.
Word choices and imagery occasionally distract more than they serve. Phrases like “grottos of flavor” aim for lush sensuality but landed awkwardly with me, almost (sadly) comically. The phrase didn’t just feel anatomically odd—it disrupted the emotional texture that the poem is otherwise trying to build. Similarly, “golden juice” gave me an involuntary recoil. It took me out of the poem entirely. And then there’s “your round supple / Bum…”—which arrives abruptly, tonally out of sync with the surrounding lines, and for me was oddly in contrast to the poem’s more elegant aims.
There are also some mechanical slips: “main” appears where “mane” was almost certainly meant, and “pallet” should be “palette.” These may seem minor, but in a poem that trades on sensual precision, they matter. The early use of “beatifically” is technically correct but for me was stylistically jarring—it dropped me into a ecclesiastical register at odds with the sensuality that follows.
Perhaps most disruptive, though, is the subtle but unresolved temporal confusion in the middle of the piece. The speaker says “this moment lingers”—suggesting the memory is alive and present—only to shift abruptly into the retrospective. The result is a kind of narrative fog: are we in the moment, or are we remembering the fact that we once in the moment? The poem seems unsure, and that uncertainty weakens the emotional clarity of what should be its strongest passage.
That said, there’s real promise in the material. A memory of intimacy, when handled with restraint and precision, can deliver emotional weight without having to reach for baroque phrasing. For example, an (unasked-for) revised version of the “morsel” section, retitled Silence, for me finds that balance between sensuality and emotional resonance—without the tonal slippage:
Silence
Even now,
the memory lingers—
a morsel, so fleeting
it makes me stop,
close my eyes,
try to taste it again.
Each mundane detail,
suddenly divine:
the breath before a kiss,
the sun on your fingernails,
the way silence
didn’t feel empty.
For me, this version pulls back just enough to let the reader enter. It trusts subtlety. It builds atmosphere without tipping into excess. And crucially, it picks a narrative tense—and stays there.
Christina, I do see your poem as working to do something deeply worthwhile: explore the afterglow of intimacy and the quiet grief of ephemerality. If future drafts are willing to risk a little less lushness and a little more truth, Sticky Fingers could evolve into something that really lingers—long after the last line.
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