Adam Falkner - “When It Matters”

Carlos Williams - “Poem In Ten Parts”

Carrie Rudzinski - “Dear Stranger”

salubriousextrications:

tigressunlimited:

comparativeanatomy:

The winter I told you I think icicles are magic
you stole an enormous icicle from a neighbor’s shingle
and gave it to me as a gift
I kept it in my freezer for seven months 
until the day I hurt my foot
and needed something to reduce the swelling

 
love

 isn’t always magic

sometimes it’s just

melting

 
or it’s black and blue

where it hurts the most

last night I saw your ghost
pedaling a bicycle with a basket
towards a moon as full as my heavy head
and I wanted nothing more than to be sitting in that basket
like ET with my glowing heart glowing right through my chest 
to my glowing finger pointing in the direction of our home
two years ago I said I never want to write our break up poem
you built me a time capsule full of big league chew 
and promised to never burst my bubble
I loved you from our first date

at the batting cages 
when I missed 23 balls in a row 
and you looked at me 
like I was a home run in the ninth inning of the world series 
now every time I hear the word love I think going, going
the first week you were gone 
I kept seeing your hand wave goodbye 
like a windshield wiper in a flooding car
and the last real moment I believed the hurricane would let me out alive

yesterday

I carved your name into the surface of an ice cube
then held it against my chest until it melted into my aching pores

today

I cried so hard the neighbors knocked on my door
and asked if I wanted to borrow some sugar
I told them I left my sweet tooth in your belly button

love

isn’t always magic
but if I offered my life to the magician
if I told her to cut me in half
so tonight I could come to you whole
and ask for you back
would you listen
for this dark alley love song
for the winter we heated our home from the steam off our own bodies
I wrote you too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak
But I know now it doesn’t matter how well I say grace 
if I am sitting at a table where I am offering no bread to eat
So this is my wheat field
you can have every acre, love
this is my garden song
this is my fist fight
with that bitter frost
tonight I begged another stage light

to become that back alley street lamp that we danced beneath
the night your warm mouth fell on my timid cheek
as I sang

maybe I need you
off key
but in tune
maybe I need you the way that big moon needs that open sea
maybe I didn’t even know I was here till I saw you holding me
give me one room to come home to
give me the palm of your hand
every strand of my hair is a kite string
and I have been blue in the face with your sky
crying a flood over Iowa so your mother can wake to Venice 
Lover, I smashed my glass slipper to build a stained glass window for every wall inside my chest

now my heart is a pressed flower in a tattered bible
it is the one verse you can trust
so I’m putting all of my words in your collection plate
I am setting the table with bread and grace
my knees are bent
like the corner of a page
I am saving your place

gorgeous

“I wrote you too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak
But I know now it doesn’t matter how well I say grace 
if I am sitting at a table where I am offering no bread to eat
So this is my wheat field
you can have every acre, love
this is my garden song
this is my fist fight
with that bitter frost”

I like when I remember she exists. 

so so many memories attached to this poem.

10/17/2011

I keep staring at the walls,

wondering when they’re going to start

speaking to me.

-

Asking myself day in and night out,

when it’s all supposed to kick in.

-

As if one day I’ll wake up

and suddenly be an artist.

A painter of scenic scenery,

a crafter of delicate phraseology,

a sculptor of ideas

molded out of thick thought-stone.

-

I’m no poet,

but I’m no ordinary observer either.

-

I am stuck firmly in this construct of

the epiphany.

As though some great revelation

will come to pass,

and suddenly poetry will flow

like blood from the tip of my pen,

making sense in all the intricate, simple ways.

-

And when that great awakening fails to come,

I will remind myself:

-

Art is never easy,

and the things worth having

will never come without a fight.

10/12/11

I trace a thousand stories into my skin,

waiting

for the day when you will read them from

the small of my back and

the insides of my arms.

-

You will pick apart the metaphors

with the pad of your fingers

running across my hipbones.

-

You will lift thinly veiled lies from

my eyelids.

-

And I will stare at you,

with the weight of every unspoken word

hanging between us.

10/10/11

My body is a temple on fire.

It is not a shadow,

laid to rest,

left behind,

in the wake of a great gust of wind.

-

My body is alight in the sea.

It burns,

spins,

floats.

It is the searing you feel

inside your chest

when you remember

how it felt to look at me.

-

My body is the scorched earth,

at the foot of the volcano.

-

My body is the phoenix,

rising anew.

10/9/2011

I am ash and rubble,

in the concrete ruins

of a used-to-be paradise.

-

I implore you:

I am in pieces.

Reassemble mismatched parts,

filling in the gaps with

cement and ingenuity.

-

And when there is dust in your eyes,

my steel beam skeleton

will be a testament to you.

-

I will be for you a kind of church,

a place for you to go

and be quiet inside of.

-

I ask only this:

that I be given one last stab at redemption.

A chance to to be for you,

what I could never be for any of the others.

-

I will hold you

inside my brick and mortar heart.

10/6/2011

You will awake to the sound of lilies

as they beat their heads upon the damp, rich earth.

-

Beetles will roll from your fingertips,

and our hands, covered in dirt,

will miraculously wipe each other clean.

-

You will find me in the space between the leaves,

where trees shine with liquid gold.

-

And as we discover each other,

hidden in the rot and the mold of long-fallen leaves,

I will smell moss upon your skin.

-

Saplings will spring forth,

the branches will grow around us,

surround our bodies,

and cradle our newfound form.

-

Voices of bark and sap,

hands like twigs,

our skin dusted in pollen,

-

I will grow into you.

10/3/2011

cold eyes.

eyes to make breath cloud within their presence.

-

there is a quietness to his demeanor;

calm, collected.

-

but the eyes…

they betray him.

-

she studies the cracks in the asphalt,

calculating, deciding.

-

summer heats permeates the air,

but she feels a chill.

-

she knows when his eyes connect with her shoulder,

her neck, her ear.

-

he ponders the possibilities of her.

a presence, a touch, a glance.

-

she tugs at her shoestrings.

-

he takes out his little notebook.

-

the bus arrives.