AFTER READING OLD UNREQUITED LOVE POEMS - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

If I didn’t think it’d make me appear crazy still,

I’d apologize to you for having been so crazy then.

Reading the poems I had written about “us”

resurrected all that nervous heat, reminded me

of the insistent stutter of my longing,

how I could never just lay it out there for you.

The answer, clearly, would have been

no, thank you. But perhaps that tough line

would have been enough to salvage

all that was good and woolly about us:

your laugh, the golden ring I’d always

stretch a story for; the pair of mittens

we’d split in the cold so we’d each have

a hand to gesture with; how even now,

the paths we took are filled with starry wonder

and all that bright limitless air. I’m sorry

I could never see myself out

of the twitching fever of my heartache,

that I traded everything we had for

something that never ended up being.

But if I could take anything back, it wouldn’t be

the glittering hope I stuck in the amber of your eyes,

or the sweet eager of our conversations.

No, it would be that last stony path

to nothing, when we both gave up without

telling the other. How silence arrived

like a returned valentine on that morning

we finally taught our phones not to ring.

Next Second, You Were Gone - Randall Stephens

I heard about an old broken phone box
Where people would go to have imaginary conversations
At first, I found it foolish
And then I joined the queue.

When my turn came, I dialled your old number.
There was no ringtone, but I told you everything
and I waited in silence
as if you might respond. 

I thought I heard you breathe. 
Then I remembered they told me my life should go on. 
One second, you were here.

HURLING CROWBIRDS AT MOCKINGBARS - Buddy Wakefield

If we were created in God’s image

then when God was a child

he smushed fire ants with his fingertips

and avoided tough questions.

There are ways around being the go-to person.

Even for ourselves.

Even when the answer is clear

like the holy water gentiles were drinking

when they realized

“Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.”

I thought those were chime shells in your pocket

so I chucked a quarter at it

hoping to hear some part of you respond on a high note.

You acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars

then you abandoned me for not making sense.

Evidently I don’t experience things as rationally as you do.

For example, I know mercy

when I have enough money to change the jukebox

at a gay bar.

You know mercy whenever

someone shoves a stick of morphine

straight up into your heart.

Goddamn it felt amazing

the days you were happy to see me.

So I smashed a beehive against the ocean

to try and make our splash last longer.

Remember all the honey

had me looking like a jellyfish ape

but you walked off the water

in a porcupine of light, strands of gold

drizzled out to the tips of your wasps.

This is an apology letter to the both of us

for how long it took me to let things go.

It was not my intention to make such a production

of the emptiness between us,

playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano

to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.

It’s just that I could have swore you sung me a love song back there

and that you meant it

but I guess some people just chew with their mouth open.

So I ate ear plugs alive with my throat, hoping they’d get lodged

deep enough inside the empty spots that I wouldn’t have to hear you

leaving, so I wouldn’t have to listen to my heart keep saying

all my eggs were in a basket of red flags, all my eyes to a bucket

of blindfolds in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze.

I didn’t mean to speed so far out and off, trying to drive

your nickels to a well

when you were happy to let those wishes drop.

But I still show up for gentleman practice

in the company of lead dancers

hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.

Is that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman,

or is it a cattle call in a school of fish? Still

dance with me. Less like a waltz for panic,

more for the way we’d hoped to swing

the night we took off everything

and we were swinging for the fences.

Don’t hold it against my love. You know I wanna breathe deeper

than this. I didn’t mean to look so serious, didn’t mean

to act like a filthy floor, didn’t mean to turn us both

into some cutting board

but there were knives stuck

in the words where I came from.

Too much time in the back of my words.

I pulled knives from my back and my words.

I cut trombones from the moment you slipped away.

And I know it left me lookin’ like a knife fight, lady.

Boy I know it left me feelin’ like a shotgun shell.

You know I know I might’ve gone and lost my breath

but I wanna show you how I found my breath to death.

It was buried under all the wind instruments

hidden in your castanets. Goddamn. If you ever wanna know

how it felt when you left, if you ever wanna come inside

just knock on the spot

where I finally pressed stop

playing musical chairs with your exit signs.

I’m gonna cause you a miracle

when you see the way I kept God’s image alive.

“Forgiveness is for anyone

who needs safe passage through my mind.”

If I really was created in God’s image

then when God was a boy

he wanted to grow up to be a man.

A good man.

And when God was a man - a good man - he started

telling the truth in order to get honest responses.

He’d say,

Yeah, I know… I really should’ve worn my cross.

Again. But I don’t wanna scare the gentiles off.

That is not what I came here to do.

He said,

I’m pretty sure

I just came here to love you.

Remember How Sad That Was When - Paul Guest

I missed sadness because I no longer missed you,

how emotionally counterintuitive it was

as my citizenship in the nation I made of you

gradually lapsed. I woke some other

place with lakes and blue skies and rush hours

and strangers I worried about. But no you.

No ages of you. No your name three times

when I walked somewhere or lay down at night

to bargain with sleep. No you

falling from my mouth everywhere I went.

No you anywhere to be seen.

A secret to keep. And mostly I did,

even beside other women who asked

with the privilege of their bodies

if you had ever existed and what did you do

and did you have a name I’d share

and had you been good to me

but I never gave you up. I left the last of you

to be lost in the fog inside me.

Napping in bomb craters, haggling

over debts I couldn’t deny were mine,

memorizing every month’s horoscope.

It seemed then the days

you had left me stained in sadness

were like that. Good apples on back order from God

and the steaks full of blood

you taught me to love, rationed.

At least I told myself this,

thinking of all the never you were.

But there were limits and lengths

and limits again. There were

songs inside the fog inside the world.

Habits - Nikki Giovanni

i haven’t written a poem in so long

i may have forgotten how

unless writing a poem

is like riding a bike

or swimming upstream

or loving you

it may be a habit that once acquired

is never lost

but you say i’m foolish

of course you love me

but being loved of course

is not the same as being loved because

or being loved despite

or being loved

if you love me why

do i feel so lonely

and why do i always wake up alone

and why am i practicing

not having you to love

i never loved you that way

Mad Girl's Love Song - Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

SONGS FOR AN ENDING - Theodore Spencer

                      1

Goodbye, goodbye my darling,

Goodbye to all our past.

Love that hovered trembling

Has sprung away at last.

But Oh before that shudder,

Before that final spring,

The towering of his glory,

The splendor of his wing!

                     2

The quiet and usual word

We took for granted,

The word we wanted

And always heard,

Two vowels, two consonants,

The female and male word

Monosyllabically one

That was our union --

The word 'Love' has fallen

Most suddenly apart,

And my hampered tongue

Lacking the vowels it wants,

Stricken to consonants,

Speaks everything wrong,

Has no speech at all,

Has lost its calling,

The sweet vowels gone.

                     3

Now, my darling,

Oh now good-bye:

Love's wings are furling

In our present sky.

And we walk apart

Away from the other's

Abandoned heart,

While difficultly

The mind smothers

Grief for We

Become You and I.

Oh we walk slowly,

But forever, away

From the once half holy

Place of our day,

Knowing our love

Is done, is done.

Yet though we starve,

Braver alone.

                     4

"The longest love is this:

     To love and not to have.

To thrust love overboard,

     Makes love most safe."

I'd heard such things before;

     Foolish (I thought)

To save by loss.  But now

     I know it's not.

Oh lovers, learn that love

     Does more than drown

When thrust overboard; it forever

     Anchors you for its own. 

What I Should Have Said - MARTY MCCONNELL & EMILY KAGAN TRENCHARD

when you said that a wedding sounded

like something you could live with

so long as it was small

and local and not actually a ceremony

at all but a gathering

of some people we love but not

too many and not requiring

too much planning

I should have left you. should

have swallowed the velvet cushions

you leaned against, the ones salvaged

from the first couch my folks ever owned,

should have shredded the silk blanket

into rags, cracked my teeth

on the wood bed-frame, anything

but stay. love, you are the best

of my failures. how educated I've become

in the ways of silence. the woman

who follows me from room

to room in this new house has so

many hands there are not enough days

to fill them. when you did not

say no to the possibility

of a child I should never

have taken that for yes.

should have gathered

my ovaries like a fistful

of amaranth and run

all the way to Chicago.

who did I think we were.

who did I think

I could make you.

this is the oldest mistake,

to confuse wanting

with magic. silence is the undoing

of every spell, and we are experts

in the unsaid. even now, I forget

to put us in past tense. as if

the air in this city were the same.

as if love is anything like its speaking.

The Uses of Sorrow - Mary Oliver

(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.