I married a shooting
star, a widower before
“I do.
— Bob Hicok, Epic Tale
This is a collection of poetry that makes me go "oof."
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2012-12-26
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→
Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer’s retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.— Ted Kooser, After Years
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2012-08-11
residue.
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
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2012-08-10
In this world
love has no coloryet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.Izumi Shikibu
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2012-08-04
I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.
— Frederic Chopin
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2012-08-02
When I am lonely for boys it’s their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don’t move, I think. Stay like that, let me have that.
— Margaret Atwood
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2012-08-01
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.— W.S. Merwin
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2012-07-30
Today I found a scrap of paper
where you’d scrawled your name.I hate the world for its
traces of you.Don’t write me again.
— Charles Jensen
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2012-07-22
I bought some string cheese today that expires
on your birthday and thought to write you.I was going to say that I cannot understand why
your parka has not been bought from the Salvation Army yet(it was a very good parka—it kept you warm
that winter we did not have a car), but all I can think to sayis that I cannot seem to find a way
to say you are gone.
Brett Elizabeth Jenkins -
2012-07-18
Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.
— David Foster Wallace
