How can I resist? It's a day for love, so I feel compelled to post just a few love poems here. First off, from one of my favorite poets, Shivani Mehta:
The Butterflies
You unzip my dress, a curve from the side of my left breast to the top of my hip. My body is a column of butterflies. One by one, roused by the light and cool air, they wake from sleep. One by one they open their wings, answering the instinct to be free. They scatter in all directions; I learn what it means to be in many places at once.
— from Shivani Mehta’s Useful Information for the Soon-to-be Beheaded, published by Press 53
Next, from Dante di Stefano. As a Parton fan, I love this poem.
While Listening to Dolly Parton Sing “Lover’s Return,” I Imagine the Girl in You Talking to the Boy in Me
The old gods gather in my chest and throb
the miracles of flame and rusted fender,
composing a ballad for blue flowers
and grandmas toting shotguns up the hill.
I arm my grievances with handwritten
recollections of twirling skirts, moonlight,
hot mouths coming together in the dark,
the burning rafters of adolescence.
Call my kiss a romp through threshing machine
and clawhammer me up a sweet cudgel
of melody as plain as a mattress
filled with straw tick, where we can trundle on
the big feelings of us joining as one
against the hogtied malice of the world.
–from Ill Angels by Dante di Stefano, published by Etruscan Press
I am so looking forward to Nicole Santalucia's next book, due out this month. Here's a poem from that collection:
Keystone Ode to My Wife after Reading Anne Bradstreet at a One Hundred and Three Year Old Farm House
Between two clouds
and two seedless grapes
and two dandelions,
there are days that fall.
Between two horses
or two farm dogs
or two blackbirds,
there is breath.
Between two mice
or two lightning bugs?or two blades of grass
or two fallen crab apples,
there is a silent place to love.
Between two yellow wildflowers
or two fox kits or two red oak leaves,
there is energy that crashes.
Between two frogs and two trees,
there are two rain drops and two gusts of wind
that blow through darkness,
where two stars
and two far away planets
light up the sky.
–from The Book of Dirt by Nicole Santalucia, published by NYQ Books
Then I think A. R. Ammons, who makes me laugh.
Their Sex Life
One failure on
Top of another
Tryst
I’m going to see you tonight:
birds that know where to fly
are loose under by ribs:
your eyes fly here to my mind’s
eye: I dwell on them;
what if I’m frozen
when I see you; what if I burn
completely up: the birds
may break out and go
too soon; too bad
if my self flies to you
early, and I can’t follow.
–from A. R. Ammons, The Really Short Poems of A.R. Ammon, published by W.W. Norton & Company
And finally, a few translations from the wonderful Mexican poet, Ulalume González de León that remind me of the Ammons' poems.
Bird
More song than body
More flight than time
It doesn’t fit in itself
or in all its days
Tired of All Metaphysics
Simply put
I think of sex with you.
–from Plagios/Plagiarisms Volume 1 by Ulalume González de León, translated by Terry Ehret, John Johnson and Nancy J. Morales, published by Sixteen Rivers Press.