love poem | Coffee and Irony

Tag Archives: love poem

Poetry: Do Us Part by Dawn Dorland

books poetry lit February 28, 2015 Leave a comment

I’ve been wanting to ask you, Do you remember what I said at your wedding? Once you’d exchanged vows by banjo and your parents cried through their speeches; after Hava Nagila, when you and your bride flew on chairs. Later, when I’d blistered my feet dancing in heels, started telling big stories with flying hands. Later, when I took pictures with people I’d only just met and planned to visit their cities—but what I said, Saul, it was later than that, when you cut cake with your darling, and she smeared it up to your eyebrows. Later, much later, when we all heard a groomsman, having crept off, empty his stomach onto the sea rocks. And we laughed, willed sickness away, went headlong into a humming numbness, the wind whipping us in June off the Maine coast, dancing hard to Beat It

Poetry: Text by Carol Ann Duffy

books poetry lit February 23, 2015 Comments: 9

I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird.

We text, text, text
our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.

Poetry: Cardinals

books poetry lit February 20, 2015 Leave a comment

With but his red to woo her,

in a courtship of minutes,

he captured her jackhammer heart.

For three years, with each

never losing sight of the other,

they’ve wrapped countless presents

of tree and sky with the scissor-

curled ribbons of their flight,

managing, with nothing

but the cap-pistol firepower

of their BB-sized brains,

two lifetimes of devotion.

-Larry D Thomas, Right Hand Pointing

Ode to Eating a Pomegranate in Brooklyn

books poetry lit February 19, 2015 Leave a comment

When I fall in love again I will have another heart

and a second set of eyes which is one way

to watch the woman you love grow old

The story of my heartbreak started like this:

someone gave me a key that opens many doors

I traded it for a key that opens only one

I traded that one for another and that for another

until there were no more doors

and I had a fist full of keys

At any given moment only part of the world is gruesome

There are three pomegranates in the fridge

waiting to be broken open

When I fall in love again

my beloved and I will spit seeds into the street

-Patrick Rosal in Wax Wing Magazine

Poet Interview: Nathan McClain

books poetry lit January 7, 2015 Leave a comment

My friend Nathan McClain was interviewed for Collagist, and while some of the information is outdated – he now lives in New York and has been widely published – it’s a good read.

Nathan McClain lives and works in Los Angeles. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Quarterly West, Nimrod, The Journal, Toad, Linebreak, and Best New Poets 2010. A recipient of scholarships from Vermont Studio Center and the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, he is currently an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College.

His poem, “Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi,” appeared in Issue Forty-Nine of The Collagist.

Here, he speaks with interviewer, Darby K. Price, about botanical gardens, hindsight, and Elegance vs. Beauty.

Can you tell me a little bit about the origins of “Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi”?

Well, the cause of the poem (if we’re considering the poem itself as an effect) was an excursion to the Huntington Botanical Gardens in Pasadena, CA. I’d met an attractive woman, who also seemed attracted to me, and we took this trip together—as friends. As you might imagine, there was good amount of tension and anxiety between us as we moved through the gardens. As a result, my early drafts of this poem, originally a triptych, attempted to explore the sense of anxiety between two people who could potentially become lovers.

Poetry: Plantains

books poetry lit December 19, 2014 Leave a comment

Very excited to say that my poem “Plantains” was picked up for Blue Fifth Review’s December Poetry Special.

Peeling plantains,
I sway in the kitchen while the orchid you gave
eases toward the lamplight.

I am waiting for your staccato on the door.
Green spikes my fingertips, and I roll bites
in sugar my tongue rejects.

Poetry: Crown for a Young Marriage

books poetry lit November 26, 2014 Leave a comment

This excerpt is from one of my favorite contemporary poems, which was just selected by Rattle for one of this year’s Pushcart Prize nominations. Extraordinary, illuminated.
If I was nothing else, but was a wife;
If I did nothing else, but could make meals
with scraps and pantry staples and a knife
I got when I was twenty-nine; if real
commitment (an abstract and noble word
before it tangles up with sacrifice)
turns out to mean a smaller life, less heard,
less heralded, less published, and less prized;
if after spending summer days indoors
for several years, and writing frightening verse
I’m eighty-odd and pale and little more
than what I am today, will I be worse
off than my single, roving poet friends?
I doubt it, but you’ll have to ask me then.
3
I doubt it, but you’ll have to ask me then.
I doubt that I’ll be doddering and hunched
and wishing I could do it all again
because I felt I’d missed out on a bunch
of fellowships. And Christ, I love you. Christ
do I remember loneliness, and what
I did for scraps of evenings, what sufficed
for kindness. Offer me a life, a glut
of love, of undeserved reserves of grace
and nice interpretations of my faults.
I’ll still find ways to be unhappy. Face
the facts, though—I’m at home filling the salt
shakers, cleaning the microwave, unknown.
But staunchly, resolutely unalone.
Read more
-Mary Block (view her website here)
Share this:
Tweet
Share on Tumblr
Like Loading...

Poetry: Almost

books poetry lit November 21, 2014 Leave a comment

There is no language for why
I wanted to stroke your cheek yesterday
When you first arrived at the pub
Friend of a friend, unfamiliar
And promise-full as a new metaphor

Why I noticed the soft flesh
At the V of your T-shirt
The tender Canadian “Eh”
Inflection-propped as I imagined your body might be
Supported by an elbow amid ruffled sheets

Why it felt right for our knees to touch
And stay touching, warmth just short
Of a spark sustaining the connection
As the day lost itself to growing chill

There is no reason, no rhyme
For why I spent all of today smiling
At something more than April sunshine
And the prospect of a drink with you after dinner

When, hearing you mention a boyfriend,
In a parallel universe, another me learns again those
Other things for which we have no words:
Nothing as easy as anger; just the slow wilt
Of waste, desire cooled like a Spring day
Retreating where unbeen chances go to die.

In ours, I learn that sometimes, just feeling
Is enough. I hug you, promise to email and surprise
Myself with a skyward grin at whatever God
Decided this might amuse.

In yet another, another you sits on my hotel bed:
As we talk about planting trees, saving the world,
I start to run my hands through your hair.

-Aaron Maniam, from the Singapore poets edition of Blue Lyra Review

Morning Love Poem

books poetry lit November 14, 2014 Leave a comment

Dreamt last night I fed you, unknowingly,
something you were allergic to.

And you were gone, like that.

You don’t have even a single allergy,
but still. The dream cracked. Cars nose-dived

off snow banks into side streets. Sometimes
dreams slip poison, make the living

dead then alive again, twirling
in an unfamiliar room.

It’s hard to say I need you enough.

Today I did. Walked into your morning
shower fully clothed. All the moments

we stop ourselves just because we might
feel embarrassed or impractical, or get wet.

-Tara Skurtu, first published in the minnesota review, found via Poetry Storehouse where you can also hear a beautiful recording

Poetry: Dear Mucha

books poetry lit October 25, 2014 Leave a comment

It is raining in Manhattan. I am sitting in a chair overlooking 14th street and I realize you were right. I told you that people are taller than buildings. I told you that there are many green places in the city. Look at Central Park, for instance.

In the morning pink light falls across hardwood floor, spreading out like a thousand peonies, and I imagine that it is a greeting from you. But it is nighttime now, and raining so it makes no difference if I tell you a few real things. Today I saw a billboard advertising cigarettes and in a fit of frenzy went home and burned dinner.

And could you love me if I was pretty enough to be painted on your billboards? I would let my hair down long enough to collect pools of curls at my waist. I would pose naked in front of your tall landscapes and reach out with both arms pulling this city into my body.

And Mucha, the weather is all over this house.

I thought of such things while walking to a shop to buy cigarettes. In Manhattan, the streets smell like a wet cement and baked bread. It feels like the whole city is yawning. I, too, am tired of this body.

Yours, Catherine

-Catherine Bresner in Burnt District

Coffee and Irony