Tag: Love
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The Box My Mother Kept
The Box My Mother KeptI find her in a boxlabeled “Misc.”full of not-miscellaneous things:wrinkled receipts—pollo, jabón, stamps from the 70’s and 80’s,movie ticket stubs to matinee rom-coms—each neatly placed under curled daisy petals.Birthday cards with crooked suns,one written by my six-year-old selfin tortured handwriting trying to be tender:“Te amo, Mamá”in Sharpie and crayon.A drawing of…
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I Had To Stop Writing My Poem
I had to stop writing my poem to do more important things.The washing machine buzzed—whining again for someoneto shift the wet clothesto the dryer.An hour later, midwaythrough the third stanzaof the love poem to my wife,the dryer complained— there’s a load now dry, waiting to be folded.I dug the mix out: half hers, half mine—mostly…
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Walking in the Rain
Walking in the RainI don’t know why rain breaks my heart.No one I loved ever died on a rainy day.In my life, it has become an elegy to sunshine.Maybe, it’s because rain feels like tears.I go outside when it reduces to a soft drizzle,just before the scent of petrichor has settled into the earth,my dog…
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A Son’s Lament
It’s been over thirty-five years since I felt your motherly touch, and I no longer try to shape a garden of sorrow. Instead, I let the new grass flame, its green distinct from the old cold fire, whose embers tighten their ring with each passing year. I find joy in the crepe myrtles unfolding into…
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Skin
SkinI felt the skin of my father—his thumb a soft shawlthat enveloped our intertwined hands.And when the embrace broke— how my tiny fingers traced the moss line of his skulluntil it became a familiar garden.How he would embrace mother, after-wards in her floral gown, so tenderly, thatI would sneak in later to smell the trace…
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A Late Valentine’s Day Poem
(After Ella Wheeler Wlcox)Love speaks:in the youthful flush of the first true kiss in the shy averting eye that hesitates to take this beautiful moment inwithout fainting.Love speaksIn the silent reserve of the heart’s tremblethe still and ache of hidden emotionsLove speaksin the ghosting of nearnessthe unshed tears that fears the expressing of joythat the…
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Unfathomable Will
I found the city a pitiless thing.It smelled of steel, concrete and the bay.I use to sit on the sea wall that edged my old college condo, the one I sharedwith a black cat, and sing Otis Redding-skipping the whistling part of his songbecause my lips could never purse the right tune- and watch the…
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True Sisters Know How to Stitch a Real Wedding Dress
My mother got married in a hand stitched dressthat each of her four sisters contributed a piece of their souls into the embroidered lace:a skein of swans in perfect v formation flew up her left sleeve, doves fluttered down her right, peacock trains fanned cardioid eyesof the most luminous white across her torso and bluebirds…
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Marriage
After his deep illness was over he laid his body on hers—the length of his body on hers—all the sleepings, awakenings,fights, teacup and coffee mornings,their talks about everything and nothing,the plummets, the joyous-awkward silences—and with a tear, she beared his weight— until it was gone.
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This stove I love so much.
My wife’s kitchen is her solar systemwhere she never burns out.The heat of her stove has been sizzling for more than fifty-five years.When she cooks, she’s at her most beautiful.I find nourishment orbiting her star.
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Well of Souls
(after William Erickson)The well sings of all the fallen children.The song is sad and long for there are many,but it’s also beautiful, for the children sing to the din of stars above.It’s the song of the echo of love, a song that grows, low and soft and secretbuilding a staircase to the heavensthat rises above…
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My Planet
Instead of a ticket to mars, I like one to my own planet.It would be Goldilock’s right,with love as far as the horizon.beautiful as my best imaginings.It would have conformable chairs,creatures of my rainbow bridge, theaters with the best movies and plays,schools fostering the best of imaginationcreating great philosopher and poets.There be no geography and…
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Little Things
I gift you all the little things of my heart both old and new.Hold them gently in your hands until they start to coo.Then, release them to the wind.
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Silent Little Boy
The mother watches her first child in his first wintercatch fistfuls of sun—watches the dust and airriding down to the crib—waiting for the mobile to play sweet music in the arc of light—and the sweep of his hand to its frame.The melody plays but not the words.It’s for mother and childto complete. The mother knows…
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Song of the Air
The dying fisherman stares at the sea gray as his hair, cap and clothes-knowing the day he freed the tangledmermaid from the kelp, and how she spoke of the brine and slid back into the waves. On this last day of his nothing, she appears- and he hides behind the mast so she would not…
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Sundance Review: Love Me: Human Constructs Falling in Love, Hurtling to Their Doom
Movie info via Sundance: Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love. As filmmakers Sam & Andy demonstrate in their wildly imaginative debut feature, telling the love story of a smart buoy and an orbiting satellite that spans a billion years and probes the mysteries of being and…
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Gift of a Good Little Girl
After brooding on many deaths I decided to take a walk in the bright winter sunbefore it steals away for the coming night.The wind is blowing harsh, delivering a muddle of birdsong,cacophonies of voices,mostly from behind,one or two familiar,but only one voice,now in front, wasclear and distinct. A little dog, maybe, a chi or a…
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On Reading of the Demolition of the Once Good Hospital of My Birth
I think He made this hospital beautiful this place of dying, birthing, healing and enduring—How It opened up like a prayermonumental and pleasinga place to tend God and body—How He wanted those returning from sleep not to know the smell of cotton but the feel of traveling into a kiss—How He made it to repeat…
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I want to tell you something nice
Awake, awake my love!I want to tell you something.In summer nights I can hear stars falling,the sound of the big city revel.I want to tell you something niceabout the darkness you believewe live in and are forever going against,how the world stops spinningcatches fire, falls in our hearts.I want to tell you something goodabout how…
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Rain Chapter and Verse
He fell in love with the rainvolumes and volumes sheets upon sheetseach drop a wet memorya weather forecast of himThere he was a child in yellowand black rubber bootssplashing up and downfeeling the pinging on his hoodthe flavor of pond on his tongueputting his existence on hold for maybe days and dayslocked away in play…
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A Secret Poem
He buried her kiss.For thirteen months it stayed hidden.She did not knowit was lying there.He did not tell her.When it was time,after she fell asleep, he dug the kiss upand pressed it into a little box he especially madefull of cotton.He walked to the garden,dug a two kiss deep grave under her favorite tree and…
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A Prayer for Beloved Mothers
Beloved, mother this day you will eat, in this body of trying, the bread of hope. Beloved, mother this day you will bathe, amidst this body of breaths, in the fragrance of rose water. Beloved, mother this day you will hear, inside this sounding body, the soft laughter of your children. Beloved, mother this night…
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Hot Wax on a Wool Dress
After three days of black rags over mirrors,three days of the open coffin in the parlor,Nana’s eyes closed, unable to see beyond-Lena, needed to run around the backyard,holding the hand of the first living thing that would follow her around, round, round.She was wearing the last wool dress Nana knitted for her (a green, white…
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Strawberries
Abuela bought them, the strawberries, plump , sweet, spotted, ripe for tasting from the roadside market- the one with the burlap heaven flapping in the humid air, on a day that smelled of smoke and incense. I wanted to eat them, but she slapped my hands away. The strawberries hadn’t traveled far- torn up from…
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What to Do with All the Love that Remains
The most beautiful thing is always the thing in front of you, my mother use to say. And she was a beauty, always smiling, a beauty markfollowing in front. To see such beauty was to die a little in the heart each day- Each day to give your heart away until there is noting left.Love…
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Juanito’s Dream
Juanito grew up with a velveteen rabbitin his hand and a gun by his side.On his sixth birthday his junkyard owning Dadgave him a clutch of rainbow balloons.He climbed the rusted skeleton of a Cadillac, held the beautiful Mylar to the sky and prayed to be taken to heaven.The answer was the sour tasting rain.On…
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A Desert Story
The desert scorched their lips,broke the heart of their embrace-a pink blister on their foreheadsthe sun’s reminder on how impossible it will be to hold on to these knowings.He will be left standing alone in the swirl of shadows and dust,abandoned by the mountains,living only in the patina of dwellings turning to relics. She will…
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Night Cat
Mine, mimes the black cat putting out his paw to her darkness. Let’s walk in the wood, black eyes imply,the scent of shadows rising from him.The snow, the city, the night dissolves. Mornings to come he will purr to her face.She hears a word of fur and thinks it’s love.Nights, he will slip out like…
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Parrots Call the Colors of a 1000 Names Remembered
They meet everyday in the vermillion walltender colors of viridescent and lapis lazuli thatcaress the blood before it stains then fades,calling the colors of a thousand names rememberedThey drop their cracked seeds to be mashed into the mud of the cobbled street belowpreening each other’s feather to a quiet array,moaning softly, butting heads in ritual…
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My Happiness Is Defined in You
To see what I see as beautiful. and not ever hide your little joys, knowing the sun rises, stars don’t fall, and all our Chinese meals are poems.
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Love’s Kiss Is a Parisian Night
Love’s kiss—a Parisian nightatop the Eiffel Tower. The world below—boxed macarons on a blue boulevard. All lovers- Louvre exhibits knowing only Giaconda smilesbefore la petite mort.
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New Year’s Eve Comes and Goes
A friend I’ve know for but a year came a knock, knock, knocking at my door.He was cold and thin, and even though he wanted in, I did not open the door.He was once such a grand delight but now he was so so such a bore. Knock, knock, knock, his knuckles rappedagain, again. I…
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The Bench
When the oak fell in the stormhe carved a bench for her.He placed it in the best grove shade asa reminder the bench once bloomed.Still, rays of light split through the leavesand the bench, even in winter, was warm.Here she knew fully his silent love for her,even after he fallen silent, buried nearby.Eventually, it became…
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Porcelain Years
Our marriage is old enough to vote now and on this our porcelain anniversary I vote “Yes, I do,” over and over again. A score of fine filigree plates I will gift us, two broken to match the fragile times, the eighteen days past the towers fall when we married amidst grief and joy.…
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Everything Is You
Kiss me. Devour me. Press yourself to me until inside and forever let me know you are there. Every breath is you. Every smell is you. Everything I taste has the savor of you. I look around and everything is you. Noise settles into the house with the timber of you. The gentle cloth of…
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A Dying Poet’s Final Sonnet
Bury me not in a high tomb of gloom on days sacred to all your lonely heart nor scatter my ashes in the pale moon on June’s or September’s early-late start. Mix me in with all my good beastlies‘ dust, one third reserved for Elsi’s sweet embrace, two parts crushed into diamonds that not…