Art and shiny things…
(rt Moca at Pixiv)
If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck
in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,
the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—
then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,
bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them—
and when I say I am married, it means I married
all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.
Can you imagine the number of bouquets, how many
slices of cake?
read more at Poetry Foundation
-AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL
And we’re driving again. We live out of these
suitcases and I’m feeling like that glamour
shines through the car fatigue that we wear
tight on our skin. I’m still convinced I’m
dreaming. We’ve been through a dozen states
and not one of them has been regret. Wasn’t
I destined to a textbook shaped coffin today?
There was a test, right? But now, now
these days are cup runneth over
Very excited and honored this morning to say that I have two poems included in the winter issue of Melusine, a journal for women in the 21st century (but not just for women, and not just including women). Huge respect and thanks to editor Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom, and I’m especially pleased because I love the work of two other poets in this issue – Mary Cresswell and Simon Perchik (I’ll link Mary’s poem below along with mine).
Dear Peter
I came home tired from China.
You were a sudden warmth on a violet doorstep –
Present and tender, with a smudge of laughter.
Closer than calluses, you sway me and
I fall.
Check out Mary’s “Spy Story” poem here.
We used to overturn rocks on the shore
and expose them to the belly of the sun.
I knew that some rocks should not be moved
but you picked them up to skip pebbles
and slice fountains in the sea
where they were lost
and you were satisfied
because yours had skipped the farthest
and the deepest
while mine grew steam in my palm.
Your hand in mine was sandpaper.
When you closed your fingers I was a bottled neck
with no wings flapping but the heartbeat
of one chipped stone against another.
read more at Cadence Collective
-Robin Dawn Hudechek
The Blue Dress, Ken Howard
UST as my fingers on these keys-from Peter Quince at the Clavier, Wallace Stevens
At the Shrine, John William Waterhouse
She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
-Lord Byron
Romantica 1, Raffaella Blanc
you said Is
there anything which
is dead or alive more beautiful
than my body, to have in your fingers
(trembling ever so little)?
Looking into
your eyes Nothing, I said, except the
air of spring smelling of never and forever.
-e.e cummings
You, drowning
I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after
with falling.
by Ocean Vuong, read the rest at Poetry Magazine
Tonight, while weighing wild winged hope with fears
Of loss, again the girl’s voice crying gay
And sweet – O playmate of lost pagan years! –
Comes ringing in the glory of the May.
O singing beauty! Singing though there nears
The moment of all finding and all loss:
Together in our laughter and our tears,
Wind-driven to the centre where ways cross.
Rose garden in blue night, where souls embraced
In holy silence, timeless ecstasy:
Truth grew between us, final beauty laced
The stars, and awed we knew eternity.
A secret sharing passed from eye to eye:
In death the singing beauty does not die.
-Sheldon Vanauken
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Coffee and Irony 