I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things, never having wavered In these affections; never through shyness in the houses of the rich or in the presence of clergymen having denied these loves; Never when worked upon by cynics like chiropractors having grunted or clicked a vertebra to the discredit of these loves; Never when anxious to land a job having diminished them by a conniving smile; or when befuddled by drink Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled the fingers of their alert enemies; declare That I shall love you always. No matter what party is in power; No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied interests wins the war; Shall love you always.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Modern Declaration," from Collected Poems. Copyright 1931, 1934, 1939, © 1958 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Millay Society. www.millay.org.
but I remember sitting alone on the brown couch in my grandmother’s living room, couch whose cushion covers were of velvet and the color of dark rust, or dried blood —and sewn by the tailor from up the block, the same one who made me my first light blue suit two years earlier And I sat there running my hands back and forth over the short smooth hairs of the fabric and understanding what touch meant for the first time—not touch, the word, as in don’t touch the hot stove or don’t touch your grandfather’s hats but touch like Tom Jones was singing it right then on the television, with a magic that began in his hips, swiveled the word and pushed it out through his throat into some concert hall somewhere as a two-syllabled sprite, so that women moaned syllables back in return. And I knew I wanted to touch like that because Tom Jones stooped down at the edge of the stage and a woman from the audience in a leopard-print jumpsuit unfurled from her front row seat, walked like a promise of what I couldn’t quite discern up to him and pushed her mouth soft and fast up against his mouth and they both cooed into his microphone mouths still move-moaning together like that for an eternity. And then Tom Jones unlocks his mouth from hers while my breath is still caught in my throat, and moves to the other end of the stage, and squats there, and kisses another woman from the audience in a black jumpsuit, while the first woman looks on, swaying so slightly I almost can’t tell—to the band which is still vamping the chorus line— mesmerized and taut with expectation as I am, palms down on the velvet-haired cushions and Tom pauses, sensing the first woman’s impatient almost-mewling and says Easy Tiger while he moves his mouth against this woman’s, his cheeks working like tiny bellows, before returning to the first one and then the bridge or the chorus or whatever—at that point the song is an afterthought, and I knew there was a mission to be fulfilled—Tom Jones pointed to the women and said touch and the new color TV made everything shimmer with promise so my eight year old body preened and stretched itself against the ecstatic couch and dreamed of what tomorrow could be like if I could make touch mean so many things, if I could make a building or a body coo like this.
Copyright © 2013 by Roger Bonair-Agard. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on November 14, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
the cocktail hour finally arrives: whether ending a day at the office or opening the orifice at 6am [legal again to pour in californica]: the time is always right we need a little glamour and glamour arrives: plenty of chipped ice a green jurassic palm tree planted. a yellow spastic monkey swinging a pink classic flamingo impaled upon the exuberant red of cherries dash of bitters. vermouth sweet. enough rye whiskey to kill this longing: I take my drinks still and stuffed with plastic. like my lovers my billfold full of rubbers. OPENs my mouth: its tiny neon lounge
From Cocktails by D. A. Powell. Copyright © 2004 by D. A. Powell. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. All rights reserved.
We were stepping out of a reading
in October, the first cold night,
and we were following this couple,
were they at the reading? and because
we were lost, I called out to them,
“Are you going to the after party?”
The woman laughed and said no
and the man kept walking, and she
was holding his hand like I hold yours,
though not exactly, she did not
need him for balance. Then what
got into me? I said, “How long
have you been married?” and she said
“Almost 30 years” and because
we were walking in public, no secret,
tell everyone now it’s official,
I said, “How’s marriage?” The man
kept walking. The woman said,
“It gets better but then it gets different.”
The man kept walking.
Copyright © 2015 by Jillian Weise. Used with permission of the author.
begin long before you hear them and gain speed and come out of the same place as other words. They should have their own place to come from, the elbow perhaps, since elbows look funny and never weep. Why are you proud of me? I said goodbye to you forty times. I see your point. That is an achievement unto itself. My mom wants me to write a goodbye poem. It should fit inside a card and use the phrase, “You are one powerful lady.” There is nothing powerful about me though you might think so from the way I spit. I don’t want to say goodbye to you anymore. I heard the first wave was an accident. It happened in the Cave of the Hands in Santa Cruz. The four of them were drinking and someone killed a wild boar and someone else said, “Hey look, I put my hand in it. Saying goodbye is like that. You put your hand in it and then you take your hand back.
"Goodbyes" from The Book of Goodbyes copyright 2013 by "Jillian Weise," BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
At home, a sixteen-year-old son and window treatments and walls to paint and “How was your day?” On the web there are no days and no seasons and no oil changes for the Subaru. “No one important.” At the motel, flat pillows, a lamp tall as his son in the corner and a print of a sailboat. “In year three, the sex fizzled and we broke up. Then we got married.” Have you gotten yourself into something? “Tonight I am making your favorite dish.” News comes on, news goes off, taxes. “At some point, he stopped kissing me on the neck.” She needs to write her Goals Statement. “He promised.” More or less. “How can I live like this?” the three of them in unison.
Copyright © 2013 by Jillian Weise. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on November 15, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
A crate of peaches straight from the farm
has to be maintained, or eaten in days.
Obvious, but in my family, they went so fast,
I never saw the mess that punishes delay.
I thought everyone bought fruit by the crate,
stored it in the coolest part of the house,
then devoured it before any could rot.
I’m from the Peach State, and to those
who ask But where are you from originally,
I’d like to reply The homeland of the peach,
but I’m too nice, and they might not look it up.
In truth, the reason we bought so much
did have to do with being Chinese—at least
Chinese in that part of America, both strangers
and natives on a lonely, beautiful street
where food came in stackable containers
and fussy bags, unless you bothered to drive
to the source, where the same money landed
a bushel of fruit, a twenty-pound sack of rice.
You had to drive anyway, each house surrounded
by land enough to grow your own, if lawns
hadn’t been required. At home I loved to stare
into the extra freezer, reviewing mountains
of foil-wrapped meats, cakes, juice concentrate,
mysterious packets brought by house guests
from New York Chinatown, to be transformed
by heat, force, and my mother’s patient effort,
enough to keep us fed through flood or storm,
provided the power stayed on, or fire and ice
could be procured, which would be labor-intensive,
but so was everything else my parents did.
Their lives were labor, they kept this from the kids,
who grew up to confuse work with pleasure,
to become typical immigrants’ children,
taller than their parents and unaware of hunger
except when asked the odd, perplexing question.
Copyright © 2015 by Adrienne Su. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 23, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.