Heavy by Mary Oliver

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?

Boomerang Valentine by Andrea Gibson

 

I’m sitting on my friends’ couch several months into being intentionally single and celibate for the first time since I was 20 years old

20 years old: when I believed sex had to involve a dude and the word “screw”

I’m telling my friend about the psychic who said I’m going to meet the love of my life by the end of January

It’s January 10th and I’m so far from ready for Cupid, that naked little sh*t, to fire anything sharp my way

So far from ready to be that kind of insane only love makes me

My friend musters every bit of new age jargon she can fit unto her tongue

and says, “What if you are the love of your life?”

I think, “Oh my god, I hope that’s not true, because I am absolutely not my type”

But, let’s say for a moment, I am

Let’s say I am my dream girlish boy.

And I am standing on my front step

Ringing my own doorbell

Waiting for me to answer, so I can hand myself a mason jar full of water lilies I have rescued from a millionaire’s Monet

Let’s say, I am so charmed by the radiance of my own anarchy I invite myself in for tea

And when I’m not looking, I sneak the steam from the kettle into my pocket, so that the next time I am missing the coast of Maine, I can gift myself the fog

Let’s say I’m not just running my mouth around an old cliché that says we gotta love ourselves; we don’t

I know that I can keep getting down on myself ‘til I’m tucked into the grave

Looking up at my name, carved in stone, wondering why I never knew I’d been cast the lead in my own life

When it comes to love, the only thing I’m certain of is you are the best thing that has ever happened to you.

Whoever you are-

You’re a quitter? Great, there is plenty worth quitting

A sore loser? Who isn’t?

You got no discipline? Maybe discipline is for body builders and closeted gay monks

Picture a magician so attached to being perfect that he cuts off his own legs just to pull off the trick

Picture the 738 selfies I deleted before I took one that I was willing to show to the world

Picture me wishing I could have all of those back

My so called “flaws” in stacks, like baseball cards I know will be worth something someday

Like, compassion

Like, tenderness

Like, my capacity to think myself a catch just because I have never seen a chandelier I didn’t want to swing from

because I would maybe go to space just to know if railroad tracks look like zippers from the moon

On days I have hard time keeping warm in my own weather- I imagine what the first flower said to the first human, trying to name half its flower petals “love me not’s”

No

that is not how anything grows

Of all the violence I have known in my life, I have not known violence like the way I have spoken to myself

And I have seen almost everyone around me hold that same belt to their own backs

An ambush of every way we have decided we are not enough

Then, looking for someone outside of themselves to come clean that treason up

If I were to ask myself out of that cycle, I might say, Listen,

I am still going through my growth spurt.

I am still yet to get my worst tattoo

I am still clearing the smoke from burning the toast I wrote for my own wedding day

I am still trying to get rid of my mirror face

Look myself dead in the eye

I know Facebook is a lousy mortician,

desperately trying to make us all look more alive

I know there are things I haven’t survived

I know there are people in this world who have had to work really hard to survive

Me, I don’t ever want to take that lightly.

But, I want the heavy to anchor me brave

to anchor me loving

to anchor me in something that will absolutely hold me to my word

When I tell Cupid I intend to keep walking out to the tip of his arrow

To bend it back towards myself

To aim for my goodness; 'til the muscle in my chest tears from the stretch of becoming

When I came here to be a lover of whatever got covered up by the airbrush

The truth of me: that beauty of a beast

Chewing through the leash

'Til I get a mason jar full of water lilies

I got a kettle full of sea

And my whole life, y'all, my whole life is just a boomerang valentine; coming right back at me

You Were You Are Elegy by Mary Jo Bang

Fragile like a child is fragile. 

Destined not to be forever. 

Destined to become other 

To mother. Here I am 

Sitting on a chair, thinking 

About you. Thinking 

About how it was 

To talk to you. 

How sometimes it was wonderful 

And sometimes it was awful. 

How drugs when drugs were 

Undid the good almost entirely 

But not entirely 

Because good could always be seen 

Glimmering like lame glimmers 

In the window of a shop 

Called Beautiful 

Things Never Last Forever. 

I loved you. I love you. You were. 

And you are. Life is experience. 

It's all so simple. Experience is 

The chair we sit on. 

The sitting. The thinking 

Of you where you are a blank 

To be filled 

In by missing. I loved you. 

I love you like I love 

All beautiful things. 

True beauty is truly seldom. 

You were. You are 

In May. May now is looking onto 

The June that is coming up. 

This is how I measure 

The year. Everything Was My Fault 

Has been the theme of the song 

I've been singing, 

Even when you've told me to quiet. 

I haven't been quiet. 

I've been crying. I think you 

Have forgiven me. You keep 

Putting your hand on my shoulder 

When I'm crying. 

Thank you for that. And 

For the ineffable sense 

Of continuance. You were. You are 

The brightest thing in the shop window 

And the most beautiful seldom I ever saw.

I Give In To An Old Desire

I lost so much
of the world’s beauty, as if I were watching

every shining gift
on its branch with one eye. Because

I was hungry. Because I was waiting

to eat, a self

crawling about the
world in search

of small things. I remember a small thing, my mother’s hat,

a tea
hat or cocktail

hat that sat on top of her
perfect face—petals, perhaps

peonies, flaming out, like
the pink feathers of some exotic

bird. Her mother
had been a cook in the South. She grew up

in the home of
wealthy white people. Hesitant

toward her own
beauty, unable

to protect mine, there were things
she never talked about. She said silence

was a balm. It sat
on top of her head, something of exaltation

and wonder exploding
from the inside like

a woman in orgasm. One artificial flower

I have desired
to write about for years.

Toi Derricotte

“Every morning without thinking I open
my notebook and see if something
might have grown in me during the night.
Usually, no. But sometimes a tendril
tries a crack in my consciousness
and if I remain only indirectly aware of it
and tether my attention to the imminent
and perhaps ultimately unseeable
sun, sometimes it will grow.”

[little tree] by e.e. cummings

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see          i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look          the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

What Space Faith Can Occupy By TC Tolbert

I believe that witness is a magnitude of vulnerability.

That when I say love what I mean is not a feeling

nor promise of a feeling. I believe in attention.

My love for you is a monolith of try.

 

The woman I love pays an inordinate amount

of attention to large and small objects. She is not

described by anything. Because I could not mean anything else,

she knows exactly what I mean.

 

Once upon a time a line saw itself

clear to its end. I have seen the shape

of happiness. (y=mx+b)

I am holding it. It is your hand.