I only want five things,
five chosen roots.

One is endless love.

Two is to see the autumn.
I cannot exist without leaves
flying and falling to earth.

Third is the solemn winter,
the rain I loved, the caress
of fire in the rough cold.

My fourth is the summer,
plump as a watermelon.

And fifthly, your eyes.
Matilde, my dear love,
I will not sleep without your eyes,
I will not exist but in your gaze.
I adjust the spring
for you to follow me with your eyes.

That, friends, is all I want.
Next to nothing, close to everything.

Pablo Neruda

Get rid of the old words altogether.
Make up new words.
Call it a click or a ditto.
Call it the sound he makes
When you brush your hand against it through his jeans,
When you can hear his heart knocking on the back of his teeth
And every cell in his body is breathing.
Make the arch of her back a language
Name the hollows of each of her vertebrae
When they catch pools of sweat
Like rainwater in a row of paper cups
Align your teeth with this alphabet of her spine
So every word is weighted with the salt of her.

Gabe Moses

1.

Because I need music
I press my ear to the wall

and listen to the lovers
in the next room

as they undress each other
as they undress each other.

The glorious
tintinnabulation

of one shirt, two shirts
clanging to the floor.

2.

After she came
she rolled away

and fell off the edge
of the twin bed.

3.

As I drive home
to the reservation

I pass my the motel
where a white girl I loved

during high school
lost her virginity
to a white boy
after the goddamn prom.

4.

One the first night of our honeymoon
we lie in bed, too exhausted for sex

or conversation. Instead, we listen
to the surf, wave after wave after wave.

5.

On the couch, X wants Y
to take off her pants

but she refuses
because her friend, Z

is naked in bed
on the other side

of the room
with X’s best friend, A

who is desperately
in love with Y.

6.

O, the lonely country!
O, the lonely city!
O, the lonely motel!
O, the lonely bed!
O, the lonely man!

7.

There are two beds in the room. Of course
we make love in one, fall asleep in the other.

8.

Listen, she says, I always wanted
to watch a pornographic movie

in a hotel room, so my boyfriend
and I ordered one, pay-per-view

but it wasn’t real porn. I mean
they didn’t show any penetration.

It was just a bunch of shots
of sweaty bellies and profiles,

really tame, generic stuff,
and it barely aroused us

so we just sort of kissed
and fondled each other

then fell asleep, still
wearing most of our clothes.

9.

In the darkness, her dark body grows darker
until I am making love to her and her shadow.

10.

In Santa Monica, over
the course of three nights

the woman in the next room
sleeps with three different men.

I watch them all arrive
through the security peephole

in my door. One of the men
is beautiful, one is ugly

and the third is a waiter
from the restaurant downstairs.

11.

Scientists recently examined a hotel room comforter
and discovered 412 different samples of sperm.

12.

Okay, he says, I’m not one of those guys
who sleeps with anything that moves

but the threat of AIDS prevented me
from even thinking

about becoming one of those guys.
AIDS is a shitty deal for everybody

but it’s a really shitty deal for sex in general.
After all, our parents got to fuck

and fuck and fuck and fuck
without the fear of death.

I mean, I think all the liberalism
and progressive social change

during the sixties happened
because everybody was fucking

like crazy. And I think we elected
and re-elected that right-wing Reagan asshole

because nobody was fucking.
That’s right, sex and politics

are linked. Tight as tight.
If it was up to me, I’d set up this motel

where sex was happening
in every room. Sex and food.

I mean, the mini-bars would be filled
with cheese and crackers and fruit.

Room service would be complimentary.
Good coffee machines.

Sex and jobs, too.
I mean, in order to participate

you’d have to work at the motel,
janitor, maid, waiter, something.

Sex and love, of course
I mean, if you wanted to, you could

just have sex with one person.
That would be permitted

maybe even encouraged.
Everybody would have enough sex

everybody would have enough food
and everybody would have a job.

13.

Home with her
we get ready for bed

brush our teeth, wash our faces
all of those small ceremonies

and then we’re beneath
the down comforter

on a cold Seattle night
and I’m almost asleep

when she moves close
kisses my ear and asks me

to pretend we’re in the last
vacant motel room in the world.

Sherman Alexie

There are a few things I will miss,
a girl with no shirt on
lighting a cigarette

and brushing her hair in the mirror;
the sound of a mailbox
opening, somewhere,

and closing at two in the morning
of the first snow,
and the words for them

Franz Wright, “Homage”

We alone can devalue gold
by not caring
if it falls or rises
in the marketplace.
Wherever there is gold
there is a chain, you know,
and if your chain
is gold
so much the worse
for you.

Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones
are all as rare.

This could be our revolution:
to love what is plentiful
as much as
what’s scarce.

Alice Walker

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

In Haiti
A wheelbarrow

Transports
The dead

The living
Keep pushing

E. Ethelbert Miller

Do not try
To change the world.
You will fail.
Try to love the world.
Lo, the world is changed,
Changed forever

Sri Chinmoy

Afterward, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.

These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.

The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar

and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.

Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.

Maxine Kumin

i give myself five days to forget you.

on the first day i rust.

on the second i wilt.

on the third day i sit with friends but i think about your tongue.

i clean my room on the fourth day. i clean my body on the fourth day.

i try to replace your scent on the fourth day.

the fifth day, i adorn myself like the mouth of an inmate.

a wedding singer dressed in borrowed gold.

the midas of cheap metal.

tinsel in the middle of summer.

crevice glitter, two days after the party.

i glow the way unwanted things do,

a neon sign that reads;

come, i still taste like someone else’s mouth.

Warsan Shire

“Every seven years,” she said,
“Not all at once, of course.” She was
re-testing her food allergies, sneaking
peanut butter cups past her immune system on a Saturday night.
So far the Reese’s had been safe, but the imitation crab meat
on a seaweed salad had meant
five hours in the emergency room.

I thought about the hot spear of your voice
seven years ago, and how if now the sight of you
makes my chest tight,
it’s probably only natural.

Kate Horowitz

In this world
love has no color

yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.

Izumi Shikibu

When I say that she was the greatest,
I mean that she resembled a circus.

She was not brightly colored,
nor was she composed

of three rings, but
under a tent in the middle of

a starlit field
on a summer night,

you could see her
in just a t-shirt

and forget how unhappy
the elephants were.

Rob MacDonald

For fear you will be alone
you do so many things
that aren’t you at all.

Richard Brautigan