Hate Poem

by Julie Sheehan

I hate you truly. Truly I do.
Everything about me hates everything about you.
The flick of my wrist hates you.
The way I hold my pencil hates you.
The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped
in the jaws of a moray eel hates you.
Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.

Look out! Fore! I hate you.

The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m digging
 from under by third toenail, left foot, hates you.
The history of this keychain hates you.
My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases hates you.
The goldfish of my genius hates you.
My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.

A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious symbol of how I hate you.

My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.
My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.
My pleasant “good morning”: hate.
You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head under your arm? Hate. The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit practices it.
My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning to night hate you.
Layers of hate, a parfait.

Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,

I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one individually and at leisure.
My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity of my hate, which can never have enough of you, Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.

from PLEIADES, vol. 24:2
Central Missouri State Press

SONNET 130

By: Robert Herrick

Display thy breasts, my Julia, there let me

Behold that circummortal purity;

Between whose glories, there my lips I’ll lay,

Ravished in that fair Via Lactea.

Annabel Lee

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

I know what seeing is! 
As I saw you that day for the first time 
So I know what liking is! 

I know what striking is! 
As I stroke stone against stone 
So I know what the spark is! 

I know what rubbing is! 
As I rubbed heart against heart 
So I know what love is! 

I know what caring is! 
As I had been used to it since we met
So I know what soft touch is! 

I know what fire is! 
As I had been burning along with you 
So I know what nectar is! 

I know what compassion is! 
As I have experienced it with you 
So I know what affection is! 

I know what addiction is! 
As I have been addicted to the smell of you 
So I know what obsession is! 

I know what memory is! 
As I have experienced the break up 
So I know what the hurt is! 

I know what mistake is! 
As I have been the victim of misjudgement 
So I know what reconciliation is! 

I know what longing is! 
As I have suffered from emptiness 
So I know what she is! 

I know what losing is! 
As I have lost in the rough wind 
So I know what I miss! 

“in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me”

1. deathbed
There is a word that is not water, has nothing to do with heat or light, is unrelated to any one pain though the torn body tears itself further trying to speak it.

There is a sound beyond all the sounds that I have made, the needs that one by one I've tried to name. It burns clear in the eyes searching mine, the lips beginning to bleed again, her hand squeezing my hand, pleading and pleading that I understand.

2. living will
All afternoon in the afterlife of little things that love, or pain, or need could not let go of I hunt for the will that will let me let you go.
I am distracted and slow— all the grainy faces in old photographs, letters from the dead, deeds to places that are only air,
some bright nowhere of broad fields and sunlight that was my idea of heaven one long afternoon of clouds and steady rain
when you sat and explained where a garden was, a well, excited by it, the hell ahead of you just a brief tightness at your heart.
Outside in the yard, crickets start, cry here and here and here, night's thousand shadows growing tall. And now I have it, formal, final. I touch each keepsake like a wall.

3. going
In the hard light and hum of the room to which I've come to stay, I watch the clock, and wait, and hour by hour begin to disappear. Movements, mutterings: the brain darkens like a landscape. Pain in the pale arterial hills flashes and vanishes, takes with it one whole year. Cotton and killdeer, a cloud looks down, something's happened in the wellhouse, someone runs through tall trees, breathe and breathe, is it my hand you hold? The fever climbs. You grow cold, then warm, now cold again, a hive of nerves in the skin. Some glimmer breaks through and I bend whispering as fear like a wind shakes you, I'm right here, I'm right here...
Midnight, moonlight gauzing the walls, the iron and umber of intensive care: I watch as it swells and falls the puttied scar at your heart, and read each beat and falter on a screen and match my breathing to the breathing of a machine to know this time as it passes, each moment as it goes— until, early, you shudder and quieten, blood gases begin to rapidly rise and somewhere behind your eyes I fall in fragments away: a child surprised at his play, encroached upon by air, a shattered man near dawn, something about the way he holds so still, his hair.

Jt gibson

Walkers With The Dawn

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness--
Being walkers with the sun and morning.

New Personal Poem

BY TED BERRIGAN

Love much. Earth has enough of bitter in it;
Cast sweets into its cup whene'er you can.
No heart so hard but love at last may win it.
Yes, love on through doubt and darkness, and believe
There is no thing which love may not achieve.

As Long As You're Near

The first time we met, I could see,
That you and I, were meant to be.
Your eyes were so gentle, your smile so true,
When you first held my hand, I just knew.

Now the time has gone by, through laughter and tears,
These days I shall cherish, for years upon years.
Those memories we have, shall never fade,
For those are the steps, that we have made.

That was the past, the future is near,
I anxiously wait, for what will appear.
New homes, more laughter, and children so dear,
Everything will be wonderful, as long as you're near.

- Cristy Smith -

Sorting Laundry

by Elisavietta Ritchie

Folding clothes, I think of folding you into my life.
Our king sized sheets like table cloths for the banquets of giants,
pillow cases, despite so many washings seams still holding our dreams.
Towels patterned orange and green, flowered pink and lavender, gaudy, bought on sale,
reserved, we said, for the beach, refusing, even after years, to bleach into respectability.
So many shirts and skirts and pants recycling week after week, head over heels recapitulating themselves.
All those wrinkles to be smoothed, or else ignored, they're in style.
Myriad uncoupled socks which went paired into the foam like those creatures in the ark.
And what's shrunk is tough to discard even for Goodwill.
In pockets, surprises: forgotten matches, lost screws clinking on enamel;
paper clips, whatever they held between shiny jaws, now dissolved or clogging the drain;
well washed dollars, legal tender for all debts public and private, intact despite agitation;
and, gleaming in the maelstrom, one bright dime, broken necklace of good gold
you brought from Kuwait, the strangely tailored shirt left by a former lover...
If you were to leave me, if I were to fold only my own clothes,
the convexes and concaves of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras turned upon themselves,
a mountain of unsorted wash could not fill the empty side of the bed.

The Quiet World

BY JEFFREY MCDANIEL