Lisel Mueller: Alive Together
Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun
Chard deNiord: Lizard, An Exegesis as Love Letter
So when you woke, there I was in my Sunday best as a funny little guy with a complex tongue and stunted legs who spoke the double truth.
Doug Anderson: What time does to love
I know the spring is there.
I walk over it and feel its pull.
Majid Naficy: Billie Holiday
I walk gently on the skin of the sea.
A wandering wind wraps around our bodies
And an albatross opens its wings on our shoulders.
John Samuel Tieman: After Jorge Guillén
You slept and your arms stretched and almost caressed
my insomnia.
Jan-Mitchell Sherrill: Two love poems
Come with me
to the river again: we will test Heraclitus,
kiss deep at the tender point of sleepless change.
Kenneth Fearing: LOVE, 20 Cents The First Quarter Mile
I forgive you for being beautiful and generous and wise.
I forgive you, to put it simply, for being alive, and pardon you, in short, for being you.
Scott Silsbe: She Got My Mind Messed Up
Is something burning? Is something here
on fire? It smells like something here is
burning or on fire. It might be in my head.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: I shall go back again to the bleak shore
I shall go back again to the bleak shore
And build a little shanty on the sand…
Emily Dickinson: I have no life but this
I have no Life but this —
To lead it here —
Jason Irwin: Giuseppe the Shoe-Maker
Giuseppe, a simple shoe-maker,
who never learned English, stood
banging his head against the wall,
cursing God in his native tongue
S.B. Merrow: Craving
I’m talking about a night we spend
in the same body on the same smooth stones
on the bottom of the dry river
when a storm comes.
Doug Anderson: My mind is weighted toward sorrow
My mind is weighted toward sorrow
and I feel unbalanced when I walk.
There are old rooms there, certainly,
that I’ve now abandoned, with their coffee spills
and unmade beds…
