February 2012
28 posts
what lot's wife would have said (if she wasn't a...
do you remember when we met in gomorrah? when you were still beardless, and i would oil my hair in the lamp light before seeing you, when we were young, and blushed with youth like bruised fruit. did we care then what our neighbors did in the dark? when our first daughter was born on the river jordan, when our second cracked her pink head from my body like a promise, did we worry what our friends...
supposing i dreamed this)... (IX) | e.e. cummings
supposing i dreamed this) only imagine,when day has thrilled you are a house around which i am a wind- your walls will not reckon how strangely my life is curved since the best he can do is to peer through windows,unobserved -listen,for(out of all things)dream is noone’s fool; if this wind who i am prowls carefully around this house of you love being such,or such, the normal corners of your...
the mower | philip larkin
the mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found a hedgehog jammed up against the blades, killed. it had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. now I had mauled its unobtrusive world unmendably. burial was no help: next morning I got up and it did not. the first day after a death, the new absence is always the same; we should be careful of each other, we should be kind...
a little love poem | andy weaver
someone who hates scrabble.
someone who sleeps on her back near an open window in winter, her breath rolling like a river into night.
someone who wants me to wake her in the morning by reading ee cummings’ love poems, giving a small candle-flicker of a smile just before opening her eyes.
someone who appreciates the architecture of churches, but refuses to step inside.
someone who has hands...
love poem | richard brautigan
it’s so nice to wake up in the morning all alone and not have to tell somebody you love them when you don’t love them any more.
flames | billy collins
smokey the bear heads into the autumn woods with a red can of gasoline and a box of wooden matches. his ranger’s hat is cocked at a disturbing angle. his brown fur gleams under the high sun as his paws, the size of catcher’s mitts, crackle into the distance. he is sick of dispensing warnings to the careless, the half-wit camper, the dumbbell hiker. he is going to show them how a...
how is your heart? | charles bukowski
during my worst times on the park benches in the jails or living with whores I always had this certain contentment- I wouldn’t call it happiness- it was more of an inner balance that settled for whatever was occuring and it helped in the factories and when relationships went wrong with the girls. it helped through the wars and the hangovers the backalley fights the hospitals. to awaken...
before | mark halliday
before you were you, before your bicycle appeared under the street-lamp, before you met me at the airport in a corduroy jacket, before you agreed to hold my five ballpoint pens while i ran to play touch football, before your wet hair nearly touched the piano keys and in advance of how your raincoat was tightly cinched when you asked about nonviolent anti-war activity and before you said...
worthless | nick flynn
my fingers cling to your shoulder blades now until fucking becomes an urging, a way to shake you, gently. how can i tell you i don’t feel safe, when inside a man holds bars before his face believing himself into a prison, when parrots fly from his open mouth as he tries to speak, repeating worthless, worthless? i’m trying to love you but i don’t know how, & then i start to...
the orange | wendy cope
at lunchtime I bought a huge orange the size of it made us all laugh. i peeled it and shared it with robert and dave— they got quarters and I had a half.
and that orange it made me so happy, as ordinary things often do just lately. the shopping. a walk in the park this is peace and contentment. It’s new.
the rest of the day was quite easy. i did all my jobs on my list and enjoyed...
love rode 1500 miles | judy grahn
love rode 1500 miles on a grey hound bus & climbed in my window one night to surprise both of us. the pleasure of that sleepy shock has lasted a decade now or more because she is always still doing it and I am always still pleased. I do indeed like aggressive women who come half a continent just for me; I am not saying that patience is virtuous, love like anybody else, comes to those who wait...
this year's valentine | phillip appleman
they could pump frenzy into air ducts and rage into reservoirs, dynamite dams and drown the cities, cry fire in theaters as the victims are burning, but I will find my way through blackened streets and kneel down at your side. they could jump the median, head-on, and obliterate the future, fit .45’s to the hands of kids and skate them off to school, flip live butts into tinderbox forests and...
south | jack gilbert
in the small towns along the river nothing happens day after long day. summer weeks stalled forever, and long marriages always the same. lives with only emergencies, births, and fishing for excitement. then a ship comes out of the mist. or comes around the bend carefully one morning in the rain, past the pines and shrubs. arrives on a hot fragrant night, grandly, all lit up. gone two days later,...
oceanograffiti | adam robinson
grammatolatry:
let’s make the ocean quiet. or oh all life smells of rush. how about we stay in tonight and figure out nobility? probably there is somewhere where we were meant to be, but we discovered cars. invented, I mean. we were halfway to anti-matter when it all combusted. so now the best we can muster is a fumbling for touch, and I reach with my hand and you are there, your hand, face,...
you and sarajevo | bruce dawe
hearing the sound of your breathing as you sleep, with the dog at your feet, his head resting on a shoe, and the clock’s ticking like water dripping in a sink — I know that, even if reincarnation were a fact, given the inherent cruelty of the world where beautiful things and people are blasted apart all the day long, I would never want to come back, knowing I could never be this lucky...
the last love letter from an entomologist | jared...
dear sarah i’m sorry we have to get a divorce i know that seems like a really odd way to start a love letter but let me explain: it’s not you it’s definitely not me it’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do i love you… far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species i’m going to leave you now, while i still remember you fondly i saw the way...
pickup lines for feminists | lesley kartali
making the move at the bar the club the pro-choice rally or the conference on women’s rights in the 21st century is no easy task for feminists young and old. how do you subtly ask for digits while still making it perfectly clear that you are fine being alone and are certainly not buying into the idea that women are worthless without a significant other? just remember to smile. or not....
if i gave up | kelly-anne riess
I would have followed you to Edmonton found a job waitressing babysitting even though I have three degrees a temporary fix while you finished school near mountains where you climb I wish I’d known you when you didn’t know what you wanted then maybe you would’ve followed me to the Peg I could never live in Manitoba you said would feel bad if I gave up anything for you so...
good night | j. bradley
i wanted to write “stay” on your sides, surround your bed with oceans of salt. i hope he folds you into a fox, loves you like a splintered arrow, brandishes the kill of your lips. may the bouquet of your hips wither. may the wolves forget your name.
the kiss | marie howe
when he finally put his mouth on me—on my shoulder—the world shifted a little on the tilted axis of itself. the minutes since my brother died stopped marching ahead like dumb soldiers and the stars rested. his mouth on my shoulder and then on my throat and the world started up again for me, some machine deep inside it recalibrating, all the little wheels slowly reeling and...
the love poems of marichiko, IV | kenneth rexroth
you ask me what i thought about before we were lovers. the answer is easy. before i met you i didn’t have anything to think about.
it's almost my birthday don't tell anyone | wendy...
grammatolatry:
i go to sleep and wake up different. you make a lengthy drive across iowa to find the other end of iowa, its fields hung silent in iron sky. claims are always being made about precision. if i were a bird i would mean to be the small kind. what is going on in that room where no one lives? it might fill itself with delicate things, some very nice iron bowls, twelve miniature trees...
needing/getting | ok go
i’ve been waiting for months, waiting for years, waiting for you to change. aw, but there aint much that’s dumber, there aint much that’s dumber than pinning your hopes on a change in another. and i, yeah i still need you, but what good’s that gonna do? needing is one thing, and getting, gettings another. so i been sitting around, wasting my time, wondering what you...
this is how it will happen | tristan silverman
grammatolatry:
if a girl ever drives four hours alone in the dark wipe of 3am to meet you for brunch if you can imagine her being too young to buy beer, if she dances in the back without red lipstick watching your mouth if she links a forefinger through your belt loop, follows you to a home on a two-lane road over dead rocks and souls left to dry, past red...
the honest house | megan falley
in an effort not to crawl back to you, i crossed the 2 train off my subway map in blue ink, called it a river, sold my canoe. swept the soot from the chimney into a vase, scattered it all over manhattan. husband, i pretended it was your ash. spoke your name in past tense and still, when we found ourselves in the same bar, phoned a mystic. told her i was seeing ghosts. when you confessed your...
growing up | william stafford
grammatolatry:
one of my wings beat faster, i couldn’t help it— the one away from the light. it hurt to be told all the time how i loved that terrible flame.
things i haven't felt | emily lloyd
different, after losing my virginity. better, after the medicine i took. mosquitoes on my skin, before they’ve bitten me. profoundly changed, after i read that book. the call of the wild. the glow of pregnancy. guilty, after sleeping with someone’s wife. high as a kite, high even as a tree. the peace that passeth understanding. safe. god’s presence in the world, and that of the boy who thought i...
coda | michael lavers
grammatolatry:
from the garden rose the sound of bees that lurched and wobbled through the peonies. we ate eggs, french toast, drank milk that warmed in minutes in the sun while fat drones swarmed and looped like drunkards in the purple field. on the porch we heard their bodies yield to wills their fuzzy minds don’t understand. they smelled the stains of syrup on your hand and one, in...
