And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play’d deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say
That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.
This poem is in the public domain.
We are even more modern
we are free
not to know
pining pining
til the trees are in
their autumn beauty
who knows why
we are free
an LP of poetry
left on in the apartment
while I walk my love
to the subway
she turns to gold
in the light banking off
the ball-fields
and to have to think
of that small
pale body asleep
I return I take the stairs
3 at a time
and now my heart is sore
Copyright © 2016 by Matthew Rohrer. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 23, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
Twilight—and you
Quiet—the stars;
Snare of the shine of your teeth,
Your provocative laughter,
The gloom of your hair;
Lure of you, eye and lip;
Yearning, yearning,
Languor, surrender;
Your mouth,
And madness, madness,
Tremulous, breathless, flaming,
The space of a sigh;
Then awakening—remembrance,
Pain, regret—your sobbing;
And again, quiet—the stars,
Twilight—and you.
This poem is in the public domain.
I.
my lover is a woman
& when i hold her
feel her warmth
i feel good
feel safe
then—i never think of
my family’s voices
never hear my sisters say
bulldaggers, queers, funny
come see us, but don’t
bring your friends
it’s ok with us,
but don’t tell mama
it’d break her heart
never feel my father
turn in his grave
never hear my mother cry
Lord, what kind of child is this?
II.
my lover’s hair is blonde
& when it rubs across my face
it feels soft
feels like a thousand fingers
touch my skin & hold me
and i feel good
then—i never think of the little boy
who spat & called me nigger
never think of the policemen
who kicked my body & said crawl
never think of Black bodies
hanging in trees or filled
with bullet holes
never hear my sisters say
white folks hair stinks
don’t trust any of them
never feel my father
turn in his grave
never hear my mother talk
of her backache after scrubbing floors
never hear her cry
Lord, what kind of child is this?
III.
my lover’s eyes are blue
& when she looks at me
i float in a warm lake
feel my muscles go weak with want
feel good
feel safe
then—i never think of the blue
eyes that have glared at me
moved three stools away from me
in a bar
never hear my sisters rage
of syphilitic Black men as
guinea pigs
rage of sterilized children
watch them just stop in an
intersection to scare the old
white bitch
never feel my father turn
in his grave
never remember my mother
teaching me the yes sirs & ma’ams
to keep me alive
never hear my mother cry
Lord, what kind of child is this?
IV.
& when we go to a gay bar
& my people shun me because i crossed
the line
& her people look to see what's
wrong with her
what defect
drove her to me
& when we walk the streets
of this city
forget and touch
or hold hands
& the people
stare, glare, frown, & taunt
at those queers
i remember
every word taught me
every word said to me
every deed done to me
& then i hate
i look at my lover
& for an instant
doubt
then—i hold her hand tighter
& i can hear my mother cry.
Lord, what kind of child is this?
“My Lover Is a Woman” by Pat Parker © Anastasia Dunham-Parker-Brady, used with permission.
Tiger beetles, crickets, velvet ants, all
know the useful friction of part on part,
how rub of wing to leg, plectrum to file,
marks territories, summons mates. How
a lip rasped over finely tined ridges can
play sweet as a needle on vinyl. But
sometimes a lone body is insufficient.
So the sapsucker drums chimney flashing
for our amped-up morning reveille. Or,
later, home again, the wind’s papery
come hither through the locust leaves. The roof
arcing its tin back to meet the rain.
The bed’s soft creak as I roll to my side.
What sounds will your body make against mine?
Copyright © 2015 by Jessica Jacobs. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 8, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,
treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:
your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.
Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?
This poem is in the public domain.
This is not a poem about sex, or even about fish or the genitals of fish, So if you are a fisherman or someone interested primarily in sex, this would be as good a time As any to put another worm on your hook or find a poem that is really about fucking. This, rather, is a poem about language, and about the connections between mind and ear And the strange way a day makes its tenuous progress from almost anywhere. Which is why I've decided to begin with the idea of fish fucking (not literally, mind you, But the idea of fish fucking), because the other day, and a beautiful day it was, in Virginia The woman I was with, commenting on the time between the stocking of a pond and the First day of fishing season, asked me if this was perhaps because of the frequency with which Fish fuck, and—though I myself know nothing at all about the fucking of fish—indeed, I believe From the little biology I know that fish do not fuck at all as we know it, but rather the male Deposits his sperm on the larvae, which the female, in turn, has deposited—yet the question Somehow suggested itself to my mind as the starting point of the day, and from the idea of fish Fucking came thoughts of the time that passes between things and our experience of them, Not only between the stocking of the pond and our being permitted to fish in it, but the time, For example, that passes between the bouncing of light on the pond and our perception of the Pond, or between the time I say the word jujungawop and the moment that word bounces against your Eardrum and the moment a bit further on when the nerves that run from the eardrum to the brain Inform you that you do not, in fact, know the meaning of the word jujungawop, but this, Perhaps, is moving a bit too far from the idea of fish fucking and how beautifully blue the pond was That morning and how, lying among the reeds atop the dam and listening to the water run under it, The thought occurred to me how the germ of an idea has little to do with the idea itself, and how It is rather a small leap from fish fucking to the anthropomorphic forms in a Miró painting, Or the way certain women, when they make love, pucker their lips and gurgle like fish, and how This all points out how dangerous it is for a man or a woman who wants a poet's attention To bring up an idea, even so ludicrous and biologically ungrounded a one as fish fucking, Because the next thing she knows the mind is taking off over the dam from her beautiful face, off Over the hills of Virginia, perhaps as far as Guatemala and the black bass that live in Lake Atitlán who Feast on the flightless grebe, which is not merely a sexual thought or a fishy one, but a thought About the cruelty that underlies even great beauty, the cruelty of nature and love and our lives which We cannot do without and without which even the idea of fish fucking would be ordinary and no larger than Itself, but to return now to that particular day, and to the idea of love, which inevitably arises from the Thought that even so seemingly unintelligent a creature as a fish could hold his loved one, naked in the water, And say to her, softly, Liebes, mein Lubes; it was indeed a beautiful day, the kind filled with anticipation And longing for the small perfections usually found only in poems; the breeze was slight enough just to brush A few of her hairs gently over one eye, the air was the scent of bayberry and pine as if the gods were Burning incense in some heavenly living room, and as we lay among the reeds, our faces skyward, The sun fondling our cheeks, it was as if each time we looked away from the world it took On again a precise yet general luminescence when we returned to it, a clarity equally convincing as pain But more pleasing to the senses, and though it was not such a moment of perfection as Keats or Hamsun Speak of and for the sake of which we can go on for years almost blissful in our joylessness, it was A day when at least the possibility of such a thing seemed possible: the deer tracks suggesting that Deer do, indeed, come to the edge of the woods to feed at dusk, and the idea of fish fucking suggesting A world so beautiful, so divine in its generosity that even the fish make love, even the fish live Happily ever after, chasing each other, lustful as stars through the constantly breaking water.
From Days We Would Rather Know, published by The Viking Press. Copyright © 1984 by Michael Blumenthal. Used by permission of the author.
At the touch of you, As if you were an archer with your swift hand at the bow, The arrows of delight shot through my body. You were spring, And I the edge of a cliff, And a shining waterfall rushed over me.
This poem is in the public domain.
Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age,
When hours were long and days sufficed to hold
Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled
By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage
Of undone duties, modern heritage,
Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold
Thy presence from this over-busy world,
And bearing silence with thee disengage
Our twined fortunes? Deeps of unhewn woods
Alone can cherish thee, alone possess
Thy quiet, teeming vigor. This our crime:
Not to have worshipped, marred by alien moods
That sole condition of all loveliness,
The dreaming lapse of slow, unmeasured time.
This poem is in the public domain.
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I
walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-
conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the
neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping
at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in
the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing
down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork
chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following
you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary
fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and
never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add
shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue
automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what
America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you
got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear
on the black waters of Lethe?
—Berkeley, 1955
From Collected Poems 1947–1980 by Allen Ginsberg, published by Harper & Row. Copyright © 1984 by Allen Ginsberg. Used with permission.
—Fresno, Spring, 2016
Every few years, miles of upturned fields skirt the city,
& the rows of trees—peach, almond, & sometimes
grapevine trunks—lift their roots toward sky.
No one else comes to pay tribute to this but you
so you walk amongst the dying, the fallow, the sky turning
over another day, stop at some knotted stump & think
about when you’d last come here with your parents
decades ago, posed with siblings for their camera, the voices
of others around you spreading beyond the mist of petals.
The dark now gowns, renders familiar shapes
illegible. The stars reveal this threadbare night, the apogee
of you from your car, but it doesn’t feel quite right
to make your return, so you continue astray, leaving
your ears as guide. The crickets chirp & you
can almost decipher their monosyllabic words, let go
of any pretending to be at one with, to understand nature,
do as you’d done as a child: let the voices
around you spread beyond what is unknown,
the valley walls so far off nothing bounces back.
Copyright © 2017 by Andre Yang. Used with permission of the author.