Your Favorite Poems

[SoNotHer]

Shoveling Snow
by Kirsten Dierking

If day after day I was caught inside
this muffle and hush

I would notice how birches
move with a lovely hum of spirits,

how falling snow is a privacy
warm as the space for sleeping,

how radiant snow is a dream
like leaving behind the body

and rising into that luminous place
where sometimes you meet

the people you've lost. How
silver branches scrawl their names

in tangled script against the white.
How the curves and cheekbones

of all my loved ones appear
in the polished marble of drifts.

[SoNotHer]

Gift Wrapping
By David Wagoner

Already imagining her
Unwrapping it, I fold the corners,
Putting paper and ribbon between her
And this small box. I could hand it over
Out in the open: why bother to catch her eye
With floss and glitter?
Looking manhandled, it lies there
Like something lost in the mail, the bow
On backwards. And minutes from now,
She will have seen what it is.
But between her guesswork
And the lifting of the lid, I can delay
All disappointments: the give and take
Of love is in the immediate present
Again, though I can't remember myself
What's in it for her.

[JackMcGrath]

Comes The Dawn

After a while, you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that loving doesn’t mean leaning
And company isn’t security.
Kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises.

After a while you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain
And the inevitable has a way of crumbling in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns
If you stand too long in one place.

So, you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting for someone else to bring you flowers.
And you learn you really can endure,
That you really do have worth.
You learn that with every good-bye comes the dawn.

[Truly Scrumptious]

When they dig deep for what is considered
the most horrifying adjective,
when they come on to you in the street

when they tell you
(and they will tell you)
that you are a sick cunt
and perverted bitch whose dyke face
they would like to (in so many words)
smash

when they invite you
to suck them off--

it will be important to remember

the night the rain came through the window
and you licked the drops from her shoulder
and they were sweeter than the ripe,
wet pears glowing in the grass

how you woke up longing,
wanting this woman too much,
how she could make you suffer in the dark
whether or not she was there.

Try to recall the way her voice broke
when you touched her just the right way,
how learning to touch her the right way
was all that ever mattered.

Bring back your own nakedness
against her rowdy jeans, her torn
sweatshirt stained red & green,
the way she held your wrists
as you strained to come.

Under these circumstances
it will be an inspiration to recall
her Fuck Off walk, perfected
in cruel streets
and other corridors of ridicule,
all meaningless to you now that you
no longer fear the rain coming through the window;
lick the drops from her shoulder.


~ Brenda Brooks

[Cin]

I love this. Thanks for posting it.

Originally Posted by Truly Scrumptious

When they dig deep for what is considered
the most horrifying adjective,
when they come on to you in the street

when they tell you
(and they will tell you)
that you are a sick cunt
and perverted bitch whose dyke face
they would like to (in so many words)
smash

when they invite you
to suck them off--

it will be important to remember

the night the rain came through the window
and you licked the drops from her shoulder
and they were sweeter than the ripe,
wet pears glowing in the grass

how you woke up longing,
wanting this woman too much,
how she could make you suffer in the dark
whether or not she was there.

Try to recall the way her voice broke
when you touched her just the right way,
how learning to touch her the right way
was all that ever mattered.

Bring back your own nakedness
against her rowdy jeans, her torn
sweatshirt stained red & green,
the way she held your wrists
as you strained to come.

Under these circumstances
it will be an inspiration to recall
her Fuck Off walk, perfected
in cruel streets
and other corridors of ridicule,
all meaningless to you now that you
no longer fear the rain coming through the window;
lick the drops from her shoulder.


~ Brenda Brooks

[Slowpurr]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

I love this. Thanks for posting it.

Hauntingly beautiful. I appreciate the share.

[Truly Scrumptious]

My fire-eating career came to an end
when I could no longer tell
when to spit and when
to swallow.
Last night in Amsterdam,
1,000 tulips burned to death.

I have an alibi. When I walked by
your garden, your hand
grenades were in bloom.

You caught me playing
loves me, loves me
not, metal pins between my teeth.

I forget the difference
between seduction
and arson,
ignition and cognition. I am a girl
with incendiary
vices and you have a filthy never
mind. If you say no, twice,
it's a four-letter word.
You are so dirty, people have planted
flowers on you: heliotropes. sunflowers
You'll take
anything. Loves me,
loves me not.
I want to bend you over
and whisper: "potting soil," "fresh cut”.
When you made
the urgent fists of peonies
a proposition, I stole a pair of botanists'
hands. Green. Confident. All thumbs.
I look sharp in garden
shears and it rained spring

all night. 1,000 tulips
burned to death
in Amsterdam.

We didn't hear the sirens.
All night, you held my alibis
so softly, like taboos

already broken.

~ Daphne Gottlieb