The World and I

This is not exactly what I mean

Any more than the sun is the sun.

But how to mean more closely

If the sun shines but approximately?

What a world of awkwardness!

Perhaps this is as close a meaning

As perhaps becomes such knowing.

Else I think the world and I

Must live together as strangers and die--

A sour love, each doubtful whether

Was ever a thing to love the other.

No, better for both to be nearly sure

Each of each-- exactly where

Exactly I and exactly the world

Fail to meet by a moment, and a word.

--Laura Riding, 1938

Oh God

spilling water from my back,
you call and i come.
that exhausted walk to reach you
breathless and no i didn't run
to see you, i've been smoking
too much, same thing.

another awkward hug in the car
as my face smashes your cheek
that i can feel it leaving now
is the saddest, a beautiful eruption
you could have picked it off the tree
and chowed

but you weren't hungry.
feeling it dying away all day
much worse than the straining
against the leash, another gorgeous
thing that should not have happened,
gone again.


--Michelle Tea

The Letter

Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper

Like draggled fly's legs,

What can you tell of the flaring moon

Through the oak leaves?

Or of my uncurtained window and the bare floor

Spattered with moonlight?

Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them

Of blossoming hawthorns,

And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness

Beneath my hand.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against

The want of you;

Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,

And posting it.

And I scald alone, here, under the fire

Of the great moon.

--Amy Lowell, 1914

"Secretly I am building in the heart"

Secretly I am building in the heart

a delicate structure like one of those

cardhouses or Popsicle palaces

kids build, patiently piecing each part

together, fingers pinching a small tube

of glue, eyes straining to perceive what new

thing I am making that takes so much time

to finish if there's finish in these things.

And making it out of nothing but what

are ruins from an earlier effort

and tempted constantly to believe that

a readymade is better, and yet I've

labored with my heart to outlast the heart

with this thing I'm creating out of love.

--Julia Alvarez, from 33