read one after everyfew day okays(:
Language of Love
by Rae Armantrout
There were distinctive
dips and shivers
in the various foliage,
syncopated,
almost cadenced in the way
that once made him invent
“understanding.”
*
Now the boss could say
“parameters”
and mean something
like “I’ll pinch.”
By repeating the gesture exactly
the woman awakened
an excited suspicion
in the infant.
When he awakened
she was just returning from
one of her little trips.
It’s common to confuse
the distance
with flirtation:
that expectant solemnity
which seems to invite a kiss.
*
He stroked her carapace
with his claw.
They had developed a code
in which each word appeared to refer
to some abdicated function.
Thus, in a department store,
Petite Impressions might neighbor
Town Square.
But he exaggerated it
by mincing
words like “micturition,”
setting scenes
in which the dainty lover
would pretend to leave.
*
Was it sadness or fear?
He still wasn’t back.
The act of identification,
she recognized,
was always a pleasure,
but this lasting difference
between sense and recognition
made her unhappy
or afraid.
Once she was rewarded
by the beams
of headlights flitting
in play.
--------------------------------------
Black Valentine
by Tess Gallagher
I run the comb through his lush hair,
letting it think into my wrist
the way the wrist whispers to the cards
with punctuation and savvy in a game of solitaire.
So much not to be said the scissors
are saying in the hasp and sheer
of the morning. Eleven years I’ve cut
his hair and even now, this last time, we hide
fear to save pleasure
as bulwark. My dearest—the hair says as it brushes my
thighs—my only—on the way to the floor. If the hair
is a soul-sign, the soul obeys our gravity, piles up
in animal mounds and worships the feet. We’re
silent so peace rays over us like Bernice’s hair
shaken out across the heavens. If there were gods
we are to believe they animated her shorn locks
with more darkness than light, and harm
was put by after the Syrian campaign, and
harm was put by as you tipped the cards
from the table like a child bored
with losing. I spread my hair like a tent over us
to make safety wear its twin heads, one to face death,
the other blasted so piteously by love
you throw the lantern of the moment against
the wall and take me in with our old joke, the one
that marks my northern skies, “Hey, babe,” you say
like a man who knows how to live on earth. “Hey,”
with your arm around my hips, “what you doing
after work?” Silly to ask now if the hair
she put on the altar, imagining her power over
his passage, was dead or living.
--------------------------------------
Wedding Dress
by Michael Waters
That Halloween I wore your wedding dress,
our children spooked & wouldn’t speak for days.
I’d razored taut calves smooth, teased each blown tress,
then—lipsticked, mascaraed, & self-amazed—
shimmied like a starlet on the dance floor.
I’d never felt so sensual before—
Catholic schoolgirl & neighborhood whore.
In bed, dolled up, undone, we fantasized:
we clutched & fused, torn twins who’d been denied.
You were my shy groom. Love, I was your bride.
--------------------------------------
A Fixed Idea
by Amy Lowell
What torture lurks within a single thought
When grown too constant; and however kind,
However welcome still, the weary mind
Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught
Remembers on unceasingly; unsought
The old delight is with us but to find
That all recurring joy is pain refined,
Become a habit, and we struggle, caught.
You lie upon my heart as on a nest,
Folded in peace, for you can never know
How crushed I am with having you at rest
Heavy upon my life. I love you so
You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.
In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.
--------------------------------------
The Dream
by John Donne
Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream;
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy,
Therefore thou wak'd'st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it.
Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truths, and fables histories;
Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best,
Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.
As lightning, or a taper's light,
Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd me;
Yet I thought thee
(For thou lovest truth) an angel, at first sight;
But when I saw thou sawest my heart,
And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an angel's art,
When thou knew'st what I dreamt, when thou knew'st when
Excess of joy would wake me, and cam'st then,
I must confess, it could not choose but be
Profane, to think thee any thing but thee.
Coming and staying show'd thee, thee,
But rising makes me doubt, that now
Thou art not thou.
That love is weak where fear's as strong as he;
'Tis not all spirit, pure and brave,
If mixture it of fear, shame, honour have;
Perchance as torches, which must ready be,
Men light and put out, so thou deal'st with me;
Thou cam'st to kindle, goest to come; then I
Will dream that hope again, but else would die.
--------------------------------------
The Greatest Love
by Anna Swir
She is sixty. She lives
the greatest love of her life.
She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind.
Her dear one says:
“You have hair like pearls.”
Her children say:
“Old fool.”
--------------------------------------
Intimate Letters
by Rosanna Warren
She reads romances, she spells poorly, she’s full-breasted,
broad in the beam, matron in a cloche hat,
bulky knee-length skirt, apron, thick calves, white stockings, Mary Janes.
Her heels go click click on the pavement.
She has those dark Gypsy eyes and the wide laugh.
He loves it when she tosses her head like that.
And here she is in long skirt and embroidered blouse, posing
by her dwarf ornamental orange tree on the balcony:
high pale forehead, stacked dark hair, heavy jaw, bust cleaving forward like a prow.
And here she is on holiday with her husband the businessman the perpetual traveller
with the commanding walk and striped tie and blunt mustache.
“Two decidedly Jewish types,” writes Zdenka Janáčková, J’s wife:
they send her, in the last year of the war,
bread, butter, eggs, semolina flour, geese
from the husband’s military contacts.
--------------------------------------
Shy Boy
by Greg Sellers
I wait for my shadow to forget me,
to take that one phantom step that I keep
from taking. I wait for the simple flash
of a dancer's spat upon this one moon
of stage-light, the mind's lonely oval
illuminated on the surface of some
windless pond or slew. And the old soft-shoe
practices to get it right, husha-husha-hush
in its constant audition of sawdust.
Even this choreography of useless
wishing is not enough to keep tonight
from becoming nothing more than some floor's
forgotten routine where faded, numbered
dance-steps silently waltz themselves away.
The orchestra's now ready to Fauré
into the evening's last song while I try
to convince myself to cross this room
for the first time all night and rinse
what's left in some débutante's silver
sequined waterfall, hope keeling hopelessly
ever closer to the edge. Across the floor
other couples sashay on. A tin flask empties
itself from asking, the shadow's last chance
now wasted in some chandelier's dim lust.
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