I’ve only known you for hours. We drink together.
We drink and we get drunk. I love the liquid
feel of the buzz, the ease of the room.
I am charming when I drink. I lie
and tell stories. You smile and look at my face
when I speak. You are intense and completely mine.
I notice the lines around your eyes, the folds of your lips
when you smile.

When we dance, your chest is warm on mine. It’s hot and we sweat
and our sweat mixes through our shirts. My beard is stiff with salt
when we kiss. My hands feel your bald head. I wonder
if you’ll mind the laundry on my bedroom floor.
I wonder where you’ll go in the morning.

William L. Alton

I relearn how to press my body
against other bodies. My slick flesh
like scales, like fish tail, hums across
men’s spines during autumn afternoons.

I teach my mouth words like sunshine,
cupcake. The mouth, once a fist,
now can’t help but smile when it wags
out these glittery promises.

My legs remember how to braid
themselves in with other legs,
hairy and sometimes freckled,
that like the gloss of my calves.

Jenny Sadre-Orafai

What does it matter
if I wore my skirt short,
my hair stacked high,
my eyeliner black and thick,

if my long earrings jangled
when I ran
and I wore a padded bra
under my gold lamée blouse
or no bra at all
under a sheer one?

When I danced naked in my apartment
or stripped on a mountain
and made love amid ferns and conifers,
I was like all
the other animals.

And I say
the body is a golden chalice
filled with guts
and menstrual blood.
Every living cell is holy,
radiant as a stained-glass window
with sunlight streaming through.

So what does it matter
how many men wanted me?
What does it matter
if I had my way?

Lucille Lang Day

Dawn is a gun shot,
but less humane.
Tell yourself
again each morning—
the bed will never
not be empty.
Being dead is easier
because it’s over—
our therapists
aren’t bullshitting.
My father located
his own crumbling bridge,
and stands underneath,
looks up. Waits
for joints to break.
Some of us
don’t need to read
the last page first:
we try to get ready.
We fail.

Sarah Bartlett

in a world where you are possible
my love
nothing can go wrong for us, tell me

Frank O’Hara

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

Frank O’Hara

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when were were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it’s no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn’t need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn’t want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

Frank O’Hara

Can you understand being alone so long
you would go out in the middle of the night
and put a bucket into the well
so you could feel something down there
tug at the other end of the rope?

Jack Gilbert

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.  

The blues gone gray 
And the browns gone gray 
And yellow 
A terrible amber. 
In the cold streets 
Your warm body. 
In whatever room 
Your warm body. 
Among all the people 
Your absence 
The people who are always 
Not you.

I have been easy with trees 
Too long. 
Too familiar with mountains. 
Joy has been a habit. 
Now 
Suddenly 
This rain.

Jack Gilbert