Photograph

I wish I was a photograph
Tucked into the corners of your wallet
I wish I was a photograph
You carried like a future in your back pocket
I wish I was that face you show to strangers
When they ask you where you come from
I wish I was that someone that you come from
Every time you get there
And when you get there
I wish I was that someone who got phone calls
And postcards saying
Wish you were here

I wish you were here
Autumn is the hardest season
The leaves are all falling
And they’re falling like they’re falling in love with the ground
And the trees are naked and lonely
I keep trying to tell them
New leaves will come around in the spring
But you can’t tell trees those things
They’re like me they just stand there
And don’t listen

I wish you were here
I’ve been missing you like crazy
I’ve been hazy eyed
Staring at the bottom of my glass again
Thinking of that time when it was so full
It was like we were tapping the moon for moonshine
Or sticking straws into the center of the sun
And sipping like icarus would forever kiss
The bullets from our guns
I never meant to fire you know
I know you never meant to fire lover
I know we never meant to hurt each other
Now the sky clicks from black to blue
And dusk looks like a bruise
I’ve been wrapping one night stands
Around my body like wedding bands
But none of them fit in the morning
They just slip off my fingers and slip out the door
And all that lingers is the scent of you
I once swore if I threw that scent into a wishing well
All the wishes in the world would come true

Do you remember
Do you remember the night I told you
I’ve never seen anything more perfect than
Than snow falling in the glow of a street light
Electricity bowing to nature
Mind bowing to heartbeat
This is gonna hurt bowing to I love you
I still love you like moons love the planets they circle around
Like children love recess bells
I still hear the sound of you
And think of playgrounds
Where outcasts who stutter
Beneath braces and bruises and acne
Finally learning that their rich handsome bullies
Are never gonna grow up to be happy
I think of happy when I think of you
So wherever you are I hope you’re happy
I really do
I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight
I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking
I hope your lungs are open and breathing your life
I hope there’s a kite in your hand
That’s flying all the way up to orion
And you still got a thousand yards of string to let out
I hope you’re smiling
Like god is pulling at the corners of your mouth
‘Cause I might be naked and lonely
Shaking branches for bones
But I’m still time zones away
From who I was the day before we met
You were the first mile
Where my heart broke a sweat
And I wish you were here
I wish you’d never left
But mostly I wish you well
I wish you my very very best

Instructions For A Body

Praise the miracle body: the odd
and undeniable mechanics of hand,
hundred-boned foot, perfect stretch
of tendon.

Tell me there are no gods then,
no master plan for this anatomy
with its mobile and evident spark.

Someone says “children of light,”
and another, “goddessfragment,” and
another, “chosen.” A dozen makers,
myriad paths, one goal:

some scalpel, some chisel, some crazed
sentimental engineer giving rib, giving
eyelash, giving gut and thumb --

all mattering. All set down
in a going world, vulnerable
and divine.

In the beginning was the word.

Or, before time there was a void
until a voice said “I” -- and was.

Or there was star and dust,
explosion and animal, mineral, us.

Praise the veins that river these wrists.
Praise the prolapsed valve in a heart.
Praise the scars marking a gall bladder absent.
Praise the rasp and rattle of functioning lungs.
Praise the pre-arthritic ache of elbows
and ankles.
Praise the lifeline sectioning a palm.
Praise the photographic pads of fingertips.
Praise the vulnerable dip at the base of a throat.
Praise the muscles surfacing on an abdomen.
Praise these arms that carry babies
and anthologies.
Praise the leg hairs that sprout,
and are shaved.
Praise the ass that refuses to shrink
or be hidden.
Praise the cunt that bleeds
and accepts, bleeds
and accepts.
Praise the prominent ridge
of nose.
Praise the strange convexity of ribcage.
Praise the single hair that insists on growing
from a right areola.
Praise the dent where the mole was clipped from the back
of a neck.
Praise these inner thighs brushing.
Praise these eyelashes that sometimes turn inward.
Praise these hips preparing to spread
into a grandmother’s skirt.
Praise the beauty of the freckle
on the first knuckle of a left little finger.

We're gone, in a blizzard of seconds.
Love the body human
while we're here, a gift of minutes
on an evolving planet, a country
in flux. Give thanks

what we take for granted: bone and dirt,
and the million things that will kill us
someday, motion and the pursuit
of happiness--no guarantees. Give thanks

for chaos theory, ecology, common sense that says
we are web. A planet in balance or out, the butterfly
in Tokyo setting off thunderstorms in Iowa,
tell me you don't matter to a universe that conspired
to give you such a tongue, such rhythm
or rhythmless hips, such opposable thumbs –
give thanks or go home a waste of spark.

Speak, or let the maker take back your throat.
March, or let the creator rescind your feet.
Dream or let your god destroy your good and fertile mind.

This is your warning, this
your birthright. Do not let
this universe regret you.

© Marty McConnell, 2005

I Love You

This poem is for the pillow clutchers/for those looking into the imaginary eyes of the person who fills their mind with sugarplum smiles/for those who have a cannon of dreams ready and waiting to blossom/for the men and the women who want to be understood in that way that only someone who kisses you can understand you/this poem is for you.

This poem is not for the desperate/the pathetic/the lame/the loser/not for the one who hasn’t gotten laid in awhile/not for the one who says they’re choosing not to date for awhile/there is no such thing/this poem is for the people who cannot bring themselves to admit that they would give their right leg for any length of time with the person on their mind.

Forgive me/I am not a brave woman/I do not know what lurks in the hearts of humans and I don’t really want to know/if what’s there mirrors memories I show in my face on bad days it holds kisses that are long gone/people who have disappeared/and passions that have faded into the ether of the past/nothing lasts/that is the one lesson this coward can say she is able to teach.

This poem is for all those who wish to say I’m sorry/I’m sorry I couldn’t love you/you deserve love/I’m sorry I couldn’t give something to you/you deserve to be given to/I’m sorry that for every person that loves somebody/another person just doesn’t want to/and sometimes we’re the lucky ones/right/we get to feel sweet truth in the night/the bodies we reach out to are miraculously there/but I know the despair that comes when they are not/I know the long nights and the doubt and the fear and that crawling back to a womb that just isn’t there/I know intensity’s address and the letdown that rents there/I’m sorry for it/it takes years off your life and it cannot be avoided.

And some times these little words are crutches for the crush that we feel/so this poem is a pathetic vehicle for me to tell you/each one of you/that I love you/in so many ways/in the same ways that stay up nights and days/dreaming up the perfect way to be there for someone/meals you would cook for them/poems you would write for them and the things you plan to say when they say no/well I love you/and you will never know how in the slight of a magician’s hand we could have been lovers and grandly in love/could have changed the whole game/written words on the horizon/changed the compromise/but you will know something else instead/bitter as bitter ever gets/more bitter than a rotten peach pit/more bitter than a child’s most terrifying nightmare at night/you will know that I don’t reflect what I see in your eyes/we’ll share some banal recognition/some cordial understanding but have I mentioned that I love you for not lying/so many people lying all the time/I hate them/so I love you/and you will still go home alone/and that is very hard to do.

For all the humans with love for those who aren’t their lovers/I love you.

And so the poem ends because we know that it will/but before it slips away like everything else/I will attempt the only words I can think of that are a fraction as good as a kiss:  when you reach out at night and find not someone/but the cold grey light of day that wakes you up like a slap/like a curse/like an insult/I love you/when you stay at home thinking of those who are long gone or those who are getting kisses from someone that is not you/I love you/for those who want what they probably need and whose bodies are starving not for food/for me and for you and for all the people who never knew or understood what you would do for them/I love you/I love you/I love you.

- Mary Fons

The Too Much

I couldn’t have been more beautiful
than I was last night.
I couldn’t have been sexier,
juicier,
or more luscious.
My ass couldn’t have been bigger
or glowed more brightly.
My teeth couldn’t have been whiter,
skin softer,
hair shinier.
I couldn’t have
smelled any sweeter,
been nicer,
skinnier,
funnier,
or more holy.

And still I was not enough
for you.
‘Not enough,’
my friends tell me,
will never be my issue.
They say it’s ‘the too much’
that leaves lovers like me
strangled by our own question marks.

You see —
some women love lightly,
like whispers wrapped in spun sugar.
And these are the ones who make it so hard
for the blue-black molasses
ever-lasting taffy kind of love
that overwhelms the tongue.
They make it hard for those of us who,
due to circumstances beyond our control,
are destined to always
over-love with a vengeance.

We are the spell-casting blue magic witches,
mixing menstrual fluid into barbeque sauce.
We will gather your pubic hairs under the new moon
and bottle them in our piss.
Our territory is blood and dreams,
past lives and other states over which
you have no control.

Be warned: you will lose all control.

So if you really need to keep it,
if you can’t keep it real,
if intensity and complexity
just ain’t your thing,
if you can’t handle the truth,
then brethren—fuck you.

‘Cause in this house of worship
there is no room for emotions
that judge and demand regret
for our pleasure.
If forty-eight hours later was too soon
for you to be in my mouth,
than you shouldn’t have come there.
But don’t you tell me it’s my fault.
Every way I am is divine.
I won’t feel guilty.
I just won’t be ashamed.
I will not hide this story.
My craft obligates me to tell the truth.

And, brothers, y’all need to know:
If too much sugar makes you sick,
spoils your appetite for even the smell of dinner,
there are certain flavors of women
you should not consume.
‘Cause tasting even a little bit
of what you know
you can’t swallow
is
just
disrespectful.

-Christa Bell

Sex Is Not Important

1.
Sex is not important. That’s why
we have conversation. In the dark,
the unforgivable dark, it’s hope
that’s important, and hope
is something I do alone.


2.
So here comes the unfortunate part.
Sisters/Brothers/, forgive me:
what we always love about the other
man/woman/ is that she/he/ doesn’t care;
he’s got an itch he’s going to scratch;
she’s going to lick you like a puppy
hungry for your salt;
he’s going to cry out and he’s going to fall,
sweating and flushed and finished,
beside your trembling.
She’s going to keep her eyes open and her mouth shut.
And he’s going to leave you, not knowing what he’s left.


3.
It’s not your body, is it,
that glows in the night,
and it’s not me,
that woman in the hotel room,
doing all that wanting?

It can’t be. I’m too smart
for all this; too smart to disturb
these hospital corners
with this unaccountable thrashing.

It must be my mind.
It’s oozing.
It’s evaluated the situation
and suggested
that my back should arch,
arch, arch. Oh!

you’re so interesting.
When we’re ourselves
again, we really should
talk about this.

Have you ever seen
those teenagers clenched
on street corners,
repetitively touching lips?
I think it’s because
they have nothing to say.

But you and I
have so much in common:
this, for example,
and that.


4.
Sex is not important. That’s why
we have everything else: friends,
husbands, work, books, politics,
postcards, art, and poetry.
That’s why, when the telephone rings,
we answer. That’s why
we wake up in the morning,
sick to our stomach with dreams,
and ready to live.


5.
That’s why I have my circle game:
no one here but me and my abstract fame.

Everything unspoken
an endearment.

A woman’s nipple-mine-

finds a finger.

- Jan Heller Levi

Dorothy Walters Selections

"Still Life"
     The rose that no longer blooms in the garden,
     blooms inside her whole body, among the veins
     and organs and the skeleton.
               -- Linda Gregg

A hidden blossoming.
Petals flaming beneath the skin.
And a softness pressing,
as delicate as the mouth
of a blind lover.

Each movement,
each quiet gesture
awakens
a rosary in the blood.
Was it desire
which brought her to this moment,
this arrival at source,
or was it merely a need
to be still, to be richly fed
from this fountain
of dark silence.

"Taken"

First, you must let your heart

be broken open

in a way you have never

felt before,

cannot imagine.

You will

not know if what you are

feeling

is anguish or joy,

something predestined

or merely old wounds

flowing once more,

reminders of all that is

unfinished in your life.

Something will flood into

your chest

like air sweetened by

desert honeysuckle,

love that is too

strong.

You will stand there,

very still,

not seeing what this is.

Later, you will not remember

any of this

until the next time

when you will say,

yes, yes, I have known this before,

it has come again,

just as your eyes fold under

once more.

We are Unrequited, my Love

We are Unrequited, my Love.
I wish that your hands
had never touched my hair.
That I had only seen your name,
never held the face.
I wish that each of your glances
had not opened a hunger in me.
That the time I let my fingers pass
down the cool sides of your neck,
across the warm house of your heart,
that you would have shunned me;
that I would have run.


I wish that our hands
had never entwined—
that I would never have created


languages & symbols


in your moistening palm—


that someone would have seen us,
that someone would have come.


I wish that you had never
uttered my name aloud, or
written it down, or whispered it
alone in the night.
That I would never have
held your gaze
across the room, so many times—
that I would have hesitated to come,
that I would have hurried to go.


I wish that my lust for you
would turn to ashes—
that my want for the knowledge of you,
for the sound of you crying out
would disappear like smoke,


and that the thought of you inside me
—or anywhere in the world—
did not frighten,
and that the risk
of toppling the lives we live did not


strobe like a beacon amidst these churning, relentless seas


but we are Unrequited, my Love.


-Em Clair

Skin

The night we met
was the first night I stopped making comparisons.
Left the ghost of an ex-lover tap-tap-tapping on the window
as if a sheet of glass was enough to say:
"no, you can’t come in tonight."


We left the light on. 
Because I had to see you for who you were 
and who you were was not her, which was a 
comfort beyond all measures of comparison.


Skin tells you how to touch it if you listen,
and yours has been yelling, telling stories of yes and no,
stop and go 
slow like a snail that knows the next rainfall is at least
a week away.
I listen to your skin say "right there,"
as if "there" was where goosebumps become speed bumps, 
my fingers become tree trunks
slowly growing into forests.
Skin becomes kindling as we begin smoke signaling lips to move in.
Your mouth was a bargain bin and I was looking for a deal.
It was practically boxing day when I heard your skin say 
your clothes were 100 percent off
and your concerns were out of stock.


I could listen to your skin talk for the better part of a week 
so long as it will speak to me of you,
turning knowledge into a residue whose
value is determined by how much pressure I apply
when I place my hands where you want me to.


Few are the smiles I have sought with such relentlessness,
as if to dismiss all other aspects of my life
and focus on now and how it is you came to be an answer
to the question I asked myself the last time I was alone.
I’ve grown from the head down, 
refusing to plant my feet to the ground
because only statues were made to stand still,
and I will walk to you so long as I can hear your skin say
you’ve got my back like vertebrae,
and that this constant back ache stems from the fact
that you’ve cracked these bones back into position
so that I may stand for something more than “beauty is on the inside”
or “you can make it if you try.”
I am not a goddamn symbol.
I’m just like you, I put my pants on one leg at a time,
the only difference is, when my pants are on, I’m awesome.
But you want my pants off, and that’s fucking awesome.


So you can save rum and Henessey for someone other than me
because I want to be sober for this.
You can dismiss ice cubes, candle wax, handcuffs and all that other stuff
because I refuse to believe that my touch is not enough to turn you on,
because I will touch you like going is the new drug and we’re both gone.
I want your body to be something I did wrong.
I want you to hold it against me.


Skin, continuously rolls away from us.
Like, burnt-out tractor tires which wobble to a stand-still,
that will build a foundation for empires and dynasties 
whose histories are written in books bound by our spines. 
Where there will be no lines to read between because 
we’ve been filling in the spaces with the hope 
that truth retraces its steps to find that it was always 
standing still. 
And we’ll remain statuesque until 
we are brave enough to make promises, 
so this is mine:
I will pride myself on the title of Best Friend. 
Slit my wrists on your shoulder blades 
allowing my pulse to lend life to every dead end 
then bend my breath to the shape of your heartbeat 
and beat it to make noise for the silences in between,
where honesty is the foreplay that prompts us to finally come 
clean.


Because honestly, I’ve been 
thinking of holding your hand.
‘Cause I am tired of holding my breath or tongue.
I will task each rib into a rung 
leaving ladders that lead to the top of each lung 
so you can witness where all of  my words few hung 
at the gallows of my own cowardice.


This is just to say:
I don’t imagine you
saran-wrapped in black latex
or seeping out the edges
of something tight and red.


I don’t close my eyes
to dream of your back
arched at the impossible angle
of a bow pulled tight,
encouraging your shoulder blades
to drip the blood
of stockpiled broken hearts,
but I hope the sound of you not shielding your eyes
from my blinding humility
will one day top the charts.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard,
and you’re the Charlie Chaplin of "you're beautifuls"
because you make me believe it
when you say it all without saying a word.


Looking at you, it occurred to me
I could sit around all day
wearing nothing but your kiss.
You make mirrors
want to grind themselves
back down into sand
because they can’t do your reflection justice.


And this just in:
I am done with those
who in life would have made me fight
an army of imperfections,
a battalion of flaws.
Tonight we’re going to keep this city up
when they hear our bodies
slap together like applause.


-Shane Koyzcan

Ready

You never really know
when it will come
rising, laying foot into the same imprint
you’ve made yesterday and the day before
and yes, eternally before.
But some time that superbly hairline crack
in your well preserved casing
will suffer…a grace.
You can call it a crisis, or crumble
or you can see it as
the first time truth has succeeded
in escaping,
like the soft and persistent
pressing of a chick ready to leave the egg; ready to know Life
for the first time.


- Em Clair
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