The name of this technique,
he said,
is afternoon.
Then pressed his mouth
to her collarbone,
pressed his mouth
’til evening
broke the window.
Copyright © 2014 by Nicole Callihan. “Lesson Three” was published in SuperLoop (Sock Monkey Press, 2014). Used with permission of the author.
The name of this technique,
he said,
is afternoon.
Then pressed his mouth
to her collarbone,
pressed his mouth
’til evening
broke the window.
Copyright © 2014 by Nicole Callihan. “Lesson Three” was published in SuperLoop (Sock Monkey Press, 2014). Used with permission of the author.
love between us is
speech and breath. loving you is
a long river running.
From Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums. Copyright © 1998 by Sonia Sanchez. Used with the permission of Beacon Press.
(adore, verb from Latin, adorare,
from ad- ‘to’ + orare- ‘speak, call pray’)
You lie asleep beside me,
one hand on the pillow and cupped
at your mouth, as if to tell a secret.
As if you might say in your sleep
what you could never find
words for awake.
Or as if you called
across a din of other voices,
or the howl of empty space. Calling
because there are no bells
to strike the hours where we live. And I must know
when to kneel and when to rise.
What to praise and what to curse.
I must know how to bless
and how to receive blessing.
One hand on your pillow and cupped
at your mouth,
as if you spoke a word
you’d kept to yourself all day, waiting
for your most unguarded moment
to say, a thought meant for me, meant to be
shared between us this way,
sealed this way, a secret
no voice can carry without destroying,
a word without carriage, except conveyed
in the peace of your body and face,
a word born out of your deepest rest, a word
which only my own deepest breathing
and happiest rest beside you,
face to face, free of thinking, can sustain.
Maybe you had to be asleep
to say what you knew to be true.
Or what you had to say
you might not could bear to hear,
and so you must say so softly
I must close my eyes, I must turn
inward, to where you’ve made a room
and a bed inside me, to receive it.
You say:
We cannot look upon Love’s face without dying.
So we face each other to see Love’s look.
And thus third-person souls
suddenly stand at gaze
and the lover and the beloved,
second- and first-persons,
You and I, eye
to eye, are born.
But such refraction, multiplying gazes, strews
Love’s eye upon the objects of the world,
as upon the objects of our room.
My brush, hairpin, mirror, book,
your loving look finds each of these things
lovable, I can see. Things
by any other measure poor, your look crowns
to make them your heart’s royalty.
Face, blush, breath, eyes, evanescent,
pledged to death, nowhere stored,
Love’s look gathers within its fondling
to adore.
This strewing and gathering
of Love’s face, of Love’s gaze, and only this,
begun in death’s audience, is the founding
action, call it the fundamental
paradise…did I say paradise?
I meant paradox…the fundamental paradox
of the breaths we breathe,
the thoughts we witness,
the kisses we exchange,
and every poem you write.
the shape
of this
&her smell
&the shine in the small
lit room
to the boy
replace him
w you &
let me love
that shine
in you
let me.
Copyright © 2018 by Eileen Myles. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 21, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
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.
because you’re psychic
no one else could understand me
the way you
do and
I say
Drink Me
I say it to you silently
but it calls forth in me
the water for you
the water you asked for
Copyright © 2015 by Rebecca Wolff. Used with permission of the author.
there is always one more death to paint us an ochre without axle aiming us like a sunflower down a path a harp once followed to still the scythe before losing love against itself
Copyright © 2018 by J. Michael Martinez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 26, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.