Those who live to have it and those who live to give it.
Of course there are those for whom both are true, but never in the same measure.
Those who have it to give are like cardinals in the snow. So easy and beautifully lit. Some are rabbits. Hard to see except for those who would prey upon them: all that softness and quaking and blood.
Those who want it cannot be satisfied. Eagle-eyed and such talons, any furred thing will do. So easy to rip out a heart when it is throbbing so hard.
I wander out into the winter. I know what I am.
- I’ve Been Thinking about Love Again by Vievee Francis
Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman, Some type of supernatural creature. My mother would tell you, if she could, About her life with my father, A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman. She would tell you about the choices A young black woman faces. Is falling in love with some man A deal with the devil In blue terms, the tongue we use When we don’t want nuance To get in the way, When we need to talk straight. My mother chooses my father After choosing a man Who was, as we sing it, Of no account. This man made my father look good, That’s how bad it was. He made my father seem like an island In the middle of a stormy sea, He made my father look like a rock. And is the blues the moment you realize You exist in a stacked deck, You look in a mirror at your young face, The face my sister carries, And you know it’s the only leverage You’ve got. Does this create a hurt that whispers How you going to do? Is the blues the moment You shrug your shoulders And agree, a girl without money Is nothing, dust To be pushed around by any old breeze. Compared to this, My father seems, briefly, To be a fire escape. This is the way the blues works Its sorry wonders, Makes trouble look like A feather bed, Makes the wrong man’s kisses A healing.
In front of brightly lit windows overflowing with lingerie I can’t stop myself from thinking about Marx.
A respect for Karl Marx is the one thing my lovers had in common. I allowed all of them, though to differing extents, to paw at the cotton dolls hidden in my body.
Marx Marx I’ll never forgive him.
— Iman Mersal, from The Threshold, tr. Robyn Creswell
How much would you pay to be touched in the right way? Who would you think of with your hands on some bed like an animal and haven’t we all been here, walking through the world waiting for someone to free us or tie us to ourselves. People are dying, yes despite all our knowledge. Regardless of touch, what we own, everything we continue to steal. Everyone and their miniature triumphs. No, they can’t convince me love isn’t our best invention. And why I went into the ice to swallow more than my body had room for. Even afraid I opened my mouth and I swallowed. I took it all down. I was made by the cold.
— Alex Dimitrov, from “February,” in Love and Other Poems
I want to touch my forehead against yours and breathe in years, because time almost always smells like your winter jacket catching snow in New York City. Cider, cedar wood and November in libraries. Beneath the poetry section, wedged between Mallarme and the sanitizer dispenser, you were discussing Cervantes with your friends in Castilian, and I could make out familiar words-Spanish is phonetic, regional; Shakira, introductory lessons during third year of college, soap operas. In a community, language is signifiers borrowed from each household. In Calcutta rooftops, language is just an excuse to dissolve at touch, and mouths which falter on Saturdays. You paused twice, I faltered. Frozen, perceived. My hands traced the spine of an untranslated Heptameron at Till’s, your eyes, traffic lights; slow yellow, deadpanning me red. You look at me. You don’t see through, you don’t accidentally brush past: you hold my gaze. I look away. A woman in a tweed coat drank from the bottle at Berwick; a postcard town owned by a historian who claims to be a goatherd from Mehrauli, but owns every possible postcode by the West Bay. The moon makes an appearance, I rehearse goodbyes. Behind the Bass Rock, the moon costs £1.45; one way memorabilia departing to Germany. The moon, an attempt to secure Endymion from Artemis. The moon, a young revolutionary’s attempt at poetry who called it a tandoori baked khamiri. Do most young romantics die bereft of breath? For a brief second beneath the poetry section wedged between phonology and passport jackets, uninterrupted debates on Quixote, (the rest simply noise) the city, the traffic, the language; we are two strangers trying not to break eye contact. Does gaze return gaze? Is it better to hold you instead? Tonight I feel like my last lover. When we almost bartered coffee for skin, and the claustrophobia of Calcutta kept me distracted, as we dug into French Toast at Fransizka’s. In the kitchen, maa wants to bake milk into domesticity, she boils palm sap for dessert. I want to kiss the past. I want to hold your mouth in my palms and drink you for dinner.
Tell me if this is all true, my lover? tell me if it is true. When the eyes of me flash their lightning on you, dark clouds in your breast make stormy answer; Is it then true that the dew drops fall from the night when I am seen, and the morning light is glad when it wraps my body?
Is it true, is it true, that your love travelled alone through ages and worlds in search of me? that when you found me at last, your age-long desire found utter peace in my gentle speech and my eyes and lips and flowing hair?
Is it then true that the mystery of the Infinite is written on this little brow of mine? Tell me, my lover, if all this is true!
