I Have To Tell You
I have to tell you, there are times when the sun strikes me like a gong, and I remember everything, even your ears.Dorothea Grossman
"At first, heartbreak made me beautiful.
My skin fluoresced. I hypnotized trees.
The orphans followed me around town,
drunk on my pain. I ate only my own
hunger, gave off a scent like bitter oranges
or chlorine. Loss left me strangely whole,
as if my sadness, were it strong enough,
could turn your ship around. That was back
when I aged. Now, like an astronomer
who seeks no first causes, but only to map
the connections pinned out over the sea,
I want to diagram the light that shines out
through the holes you pricked into me."
My skin fluoresced. I hypnotized trees.
The orphans followed me around town,
drunk on my pain. I ate only my own
hunger, gave off a scent like bitter oranges
or chlorine. Loss left me strangely whole,
as if my sadness, were it strong enough,
could turn your ship around. That was back
when I aged. Now, like an astronomer
who seeks no first causes, but only to map
the connections pinned out over the sea,
I want to diagram the light that shines out
through the holes you pricked into me."
— Maureen Thorson, in “Apples to Oranges”
"Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances."
— Robert Hass in an excerpt from “Meditation at Lagunitas”
Exceprt from “Morning”
…I’ll not be cordial
there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is
when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go.
Frank O’Hara
"I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned."
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned."
— Edna St. Vincent Mallay in an excerpt from “Dirge Without Music”
"I’ve tried to get you out of my head but I can’t seem to get you out of my flesh. I think about your body day and night. When I try to read it’s you I’m reading. When I sit down to eat it’s you I’m eating."
— Jeanette Winterson in “Written on the Body”
freewrite [similes and metaphors]
metaphorically speaking,
you were hard wood floors
on my bare feet in the morning.
if you prefer a simile, you were
completely debilitating like
my sensory receptors wouldn’t
respond to anything
but your touch.
(via outside-inside)
Screw poetry, it’s you I want,
your taste, rain
on you, mouth on your skin.
Margaret Atwood in “Late Night”
Yes
It’s about the blood
banging in the body
and the brain
lolling in its bed
like a happy baby.
At your touch, the nerve
that volatile spook tree
vibrates. The lungs
take up their work
with a giddy vigor.
Tremors in the joints
and tympani,
dust storms
in the canister of sugar.
The coil of ribs,
heats up, begins
to glow. Come
here.
Catherine Doty
