Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-day

Anti-Elegy

My swimmer’s body a slash at the door,
I listen to you thrash against the shore of sleep
I think we owe this to each other, to never dream
Alone again, to come home when asked. You would
Say I want for you the world, its favors. But the world
Is ending, its favors few. I want for us a future
No longer wrecked against the animal love made of us
I want to say I bore witness to the world
And mean I did not flinch when it felled you
~~I tried~~. I didn’t, not really. I held my hand out
Shielding only my face from the sun.
The most American disease is the dis-
ease of self-obsession. In its ruins I find
there are questions I never quite learned to ask:

How can I help?
What did you need?
How will I know?

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Previous Poems

Title	Author	Date
her aint even at de funeral	avery r. young	02/20/2023
Plácido’s Farewell to His Mother	Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés	02/19/2023
The Eyes of My Regret	Angelina Weld Grimké	02/18/2023
The Lose Your Mother Suite VI. “across the surface of my studied speech”	Remica Bingham-Risher	02/17/2023
St. Valentine, Bishop of Terni, probably beheaded, was also the patron saint of asthma, beekeepers, and epilepsy, so he might have said	Lynne Thompson	02/16/2023
An Act of Love	Tommye Blount	02/15/2023
Wetland	francine j. harris	02/14/2023
Love Poem Attempt 3/?	Taylor Byas	02/13/2023
Challenge	Sterling A. Brown	02/12/2023
The Venus of Milo	Henrietta Cordelia Ray	02/11/2023

Title

Author

Date

her aint even at de funeral

avery r. young

02/20/2023