Your Favorite Poems

[adorable]

The Gift
By David Lehman
"He gave her class. She gave him sex."
-- Katharine Hepburn on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

He gave her money. She gave him head.
He gave her tips on "aggressive growth" mutual funds. She gave him a red rose
and a little statue of eros.
He gave her Genesis 2 (21-23). She gave him Genesis 1 (26-28).
He gave her a square peg. She gave him a round hole.
He gave her Long Beach on a late Sunday in September. She gave him zinnias
and cosmos in the plenitude of July.
He gave her a camisole and a brooch. She gave him a cover and a break.
He gave her Venice, Florida. She gave him Rome, New York.
He gave her a false sense of security. She gave him a true sense of uncertainty.
He gave her the finger. She gave him what for.
He gave her a black eye. She gave him a divorce.
He gave her a steak for her black eye. She gave him his money back.
He gave her what she had never had before. She gave him what he had had and
lost.
He gave her nastiness in children. She gave him prudery in adults.
He gave her Panic Hill. She gave him Mirror Lake.
He gave her an anthology of drum solos. She gave him the rattle of leaves in
the wind.



Ninth Inning
By David Lehman

He woke up in New York City on Valentine's Day,
Speeding. The body in the booth next to his was still warm,
Was gone. He had bought her a sweater, a box of chocolate
Said her life wasn't working he looked stricken she said
You're all bent out of shape, accusingly, and when he
She went from being an Ivy League professor of French
To an illustrator for a slick midtown magazine
They agreed it was his fault. But for now they needed
To sharpen to a point like a pencil the way
The Empire State Building does. What I really want to say
To you, my love, is a whisper on the rooftop lost in the wind
And you turn to me with your rally cap on backwards rooting
For a big inning, the bases loaded, our best slugger up
And no one out, but it doesn't work that way. Like the time
Kirk Gibson hit the homer off Dennis Eckersley to win the game:
It doesn't happen like that in fiction. In fiction, we are
On a train, listening to a storyteller about to reach the climax
Of his tale as the train pulls into Minsk, his stop. That's
My stop, he says, stepping off the train, confounding us who
Can't get off it. "You can't leave without telling us the end,"
We say, but he is already on the platform, grinning.
"End?" he says. "It was only the beginning."