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Stuart Dischell: Love’s Dominion
LOVE’S MOVEMENT
Love does not travel light.
Love takes duffel bags and cartons,
Briefcases and backpacks,
And what Love calls a valise.
The cabdriver who is a wit
Does not really know that elephant
Tusks and gold bars are packed inside
Love’s trunk along with the bodies
Of Love’s family. Okay, it’s books
And photos and records instead—
Clothes going back to Love’s youth,
Outfits from interviews Love gave,
Dated passports and diplomas,
And every letter written to Love,
Who tips the driver and climbs
The stairs to Love’s new spot.
~~~
LOVE’S ANTHEM
There is a song Love sings
In the morning and a song
Love sings in the afternoon
And a tune Love saves
For the evening about the dead
Of night when Love polishes
The moon. Love sings in the late
Hour because Love does not want
To be seen on the giant ladder
Where Love’s steps are as rickety
As Love’s voice has become,
So uncertain it breaks Love’s own
Heart to hear Love’s anthem
When Love stands outside the windows
Of the house where Love once slept.
Love coughs twice before the song.
~~~
LOVE’S WEATHER
Love does not care for rain.
It is not in Love’s nature.
When Love carries an umbrella,
Love forgets it everywhere.
Love does not court drought either,
Though Love has taken long walks
In it when Love was alone and dry
In the Great Plains of the afternoon.
And when the earth is snow and ice,
Everywhere Love’s footprint freezes
Until the earth cannot hold back
The wild flowers of Love’s bouquet.
Then Love opens all the windows.
Then Love slides down the screens.
The trees outside are full of leaves
When Love sleeps naked on the sheets.
~~~~~
From Love’s Dominion (Unicorn Press, 2025), a chapbook by Stuart Dischell. Copyright 2025 Stuart Dischell
Stuart Dischell is the author of Good Hope Road (Viking), a National Poetry Series Selection, Evenings & Avenues (Penguin), Dig Safe (Penguin), Backwards Days (Penguin), Children with Enemies (Chicago), The Lookout Man (Chicago). A recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he is a professor emeritus in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
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Three truly delightful poems!
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Aren’t they?
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Love all that love!
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Yes, me too!
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A technically and thematically daring poem and he pulls it off.
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Stuart makes writing great poems look easy.
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Love in many guises of desire, wandering, fraught, in repose. Nicely done.
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Oh yes.
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After years of being lectured that love is passe as a poetic topic, it’s great to see Stuart Dischell has so lovingly put it back on the docket.
After fitting it in the poetic socket, he has turned on the love light again.
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At first, Jim, I thought you wrote “pocket socket” which sounded weirdly pornographic. And it would keep your rhyme scheme as well!
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Not to mention Pocket Rocket in the Socket. That’s no longer on my docket. Sounds like a bad song title.
sorry, couldn’t resist. all this love talk has me loopy.
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Ha ha ha ha. Sometimes you’re the philosopher, Jim. Sometimes the clown. I like both of you.
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Love the love poems, though it must be said that in western Oregon, love has learned to love the rain.
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hahahaha. In Pittsburgh you love in the rain or you don’t love at all.
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At least the rain in the Burgh is no longer soot colored.
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Wow. I can live in these poems, identify with every line. “Clothes going back to Love’s youth, / Outfits from interviews Love gave,” or that wonderful last stanza of ‘Loves’ Weather’ – spring and Vivaldi: “Then Love opens all the windows. / Then Love slides down the screens. / The trees outside are full of leaves / When Love sleeps naked on the sheets.”
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Oh, yeah!
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Still in the spell of meditation I step out into love. Thank you for starting my day with love.
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Yes!
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These poems are three bright glimmering lights for me on a morning of distractions and stressors. Thank you for Love’s journeys and inclinations, Stuart.
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ditto ditto
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Such wonderful poems! Wonder-filled poems about Love!
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I love these compact conceits, each one a metaphor for love.
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