In the Beginning God Said Light by Mary Szybist

and there was light.
Now God says, Give them a little theatrical lighting

and they’re happy,
and we are. So many of us

dressing each morning, testing
endless combinations, becoming in our mirrors

more ourselves, imagining,
in an entrance, the ecstatic

weight of human eyes.
Now that the sun is sheering

toward us, what is left
but to let it close in

for our close-up? Let us really feel
how good it feels

to be still in it, making
every kind of self that can be

looked at. God, did you make us
to be your bright accomplices?

God, here are our shining spines.
Let there be no more dreams of being

more than a beginning.
Let it be

that to be is to be
backlit, and then to be only that light.

Resignation

I love you

            because the Earth turns round the sun

            because the North wind blows north

                 sometimes

            because the Pope is Catholic

                 and most Rabbis Jewish

            because the winters flow into springs

                 and the air clears after a storm

            because only my love for you

                 despite the charms of gravity

                 keeps me from falling off this Earth

                 into another dimension

I love you

            because it is the natural order of things

I love you

            like the habit I picked up in college

                 of sleeping through lectures

                 or saying I’m sorry

                 when I get stopped for speeding

            because I drink a glass of water

                 in the morning

                 and chain-smoke cigarettes

                 all through the day

            because I take my coffee Black

                 and my milk with chocolate

            because you keep my feet warm

                 though my life a mess

I love you

            because I don’t want it

                 any other way

I am helpless

            in my love for you

It makes me so happy

            to hear you call my name

I am amazed you can resist

            locking me in an echo chamber

            where your voice reverberates

            through the four walls

            sending me into spasmatic ecstasy

I love you

            because it’s been so good

            for so long

            that if I didn’t love you

            I’d have to be born again

            and that is not a theological statement

I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love

            is so simple

            the thought though of you

            sends indescribably delicious multitudinous

            thrills throughout and through-in my body

I love you

            because no two snowflakes are alike

            and it is possible

            if you stand tippy-toe

            to walk between the raindrops

I love you

            because I am afraid of the dark

                 and can’t sleep in the light

            because I rub my eyes

                 when I wake up in the morning

                 and find you there

            because you with all your magic powers were

                 determined that

I should love you

            because there was nothing for you but that

I would love you

I love you

            because you made me

                 want to love you

            more than I love my privacy

                 my freedom          my commitments

                      and responsibilities

I love you ’cause I changed my life

            to love you

            because you saw me one Friday

                 afternoon and decided that I would

love you

I love you I love you I love you

Nikki Giovanni

First Love

The boy beside me
is not you but he
is familiar in all

the important ways.
I pass through life
finding you over

and over again—
oppress you
with love. And every

surrogate?
Afflicted by my
kindness, they leave

me with my music.
I loved you before
I ever loved you.

Jennifer Franklin

Twenty-One Love Poems (3)

Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we’re not young.
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
my limbs streaming with a purer joy?
did I lean from any window over the city
listening for the future
as I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring?
And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.
Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
of the blue-eyed grass of early summer,
the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.
At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

Adrienne Rich

The Wild Rose by Wendell Berry

Sometimes hidden from me

in daily custom and in trust,

so that I live by you unaware

as by the beating of my heart,



Suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose looming at the edge

of thicket, grace and light

where yesterday was only shade,



and once again I am blessed, choosing

again what I chose before.

Not Doing Something Wrong Isn't the Same as Doing Something Right by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

In my defense, my forgotten breasts. In my defense, the hair
no one brushed from my face. In my defense, my hips.

Months earlier, I remember thinking that sex was a ship retreating
on the horizon. I could do nothing but shove my feet in the sand.

I missed all the things loneliness taught me: eyes that follow you
crossing a room, hands that find their home on you. To be noticed, even.

In my defense, his hands. In my defense, his arms. In my defense,
how when we just sat listening to each other breathe, he said, This is enough.

My body was a house I had closed for the winter. It shouldn’t have been
that difficult, empty as it was. Still, I stared hard as I snapped off the lights.

My body was a specter that haunted me, appearing when I stripped
in the bathroom, when I crawled into empty beds, when it rained.

My body was abandoned construction, restoration scaffolding
that became permanent. My body’s unfinished became its finished.

So in my defense, when he touched me, the lights of my body came on.
In my defense, the windows were thrown open. In my defense, spring.