Love A WCC Poetry Club / Bailey Library Anthology Edited by Tom Zimmerman
Lovesick A WCC Poetry Club / Bailey Library Anthology Edited by Tom Zimmerman
I’m sick of love…I wish I’d never met you I’m sick of love…I’m trying to forget you Just don’t know what to do I’d give anything to be with you —Bob Dylan, from “Love Sick”
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Acknowledgments This Lovesick anthology, featuring work by WCC students, faculty, staff, and alumni, is a joint production of the Bailey Library and the WCC Poetry Club, at Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, MI. Special thanks to the Bailey Library staff, especially Molly Ledermann, for helping make this book happen. Book design by Tom Zimmerman using Microsoft Publisher. Fonts are Garamond and Lucida Bright. Reproduced by the WCC Copy Center. Copyright Š 2020 the individual authors and artists. The works herein have been chosen for their literary and artistic merit and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Washtenaw Community College, its Board of Trustees, its administration, or its faculty, staff, or students. wccpoetryclub.wordpress.com www.wccnet.edu/resources/library/welcome
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Contents Maryam Barrie Diane M. Laboda Bruce Hackmann Nina Buckless Lilly Kujawski Teagan Parkinson Wanda Kay Sanders Luna Suave Ron Pagereski Natalie Rinehardt Aristea Fulcher
Isabel Perry Sabrina Martell Elise Ambriz Nina Nguyen
Nina Nguyen and Sabrina Martell Claire Convis
Ashton-Ezra Stardust Amelia Vogel Michelle Lardie-Guzek Dabdoub Kylie Bussell Kayla Price Kourtney Johnson Kadia Cohen-Patterson Tom Zimmerman Zach Baker
Words Dear John Keats East of the Sun, West of the Moon I Won’t Forget Heart is Hearth Falling is Beautiful Wind of the Sea A Dream without Loneliness. ode to loving dangerously Rose Quartz The Dance I remember First Love What Has Been Forgotten Thread Contact Comfort Foreshortening Timelines emperor Constantine spits Just like Mom and Dad Living Note Summer Love Mosquitos Disconnect
6 8 9 11 12 12 13 17 22 23 25 26 27 27 28 28 29 30 34 35 36 36 36
Ceremony Potion Another life Too good The Sun A letter to love You Walk Free Appearances are often far from reality Three Haiku When Okcupid asks why I’m disabling my account, I say: Love Like This Burning Lust Two Lovesick Sonnets For Merwin
36 37 37 37 38 40 41 42 44 45 46 47 48 49
Images All images were created by the following WCC Writing Center staff members at a meeting on January 12, 2020: Faizan Akheel, Abdur-Raheem Al-Hallak, Elise Ambriz, Isaiah Bibb, Meaghan Blankenship, Sydney Mae Bumpus, Trinity Campbell, Zaynab Elkolaly, Aristea Fulcher, Eissa Haydar, Garrett Kissel, Sabrina Martell, Nina Nguyen, Nur Muhammad Renollet, Grace Schmidt, Emilee Seghi, Wrena Sproat, Isabel Todoroff, Tom Zimmerman
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Maryam Barrie Dear John Keats The persuasion that I shall see her no more will kill me… I can bear to die—I cannot bear to leave her. —John Keats in a letter to Charles Brown, during the fatal trip to Italy I imagine you, well-loved by your small circle of friends, by Fanny, saturated with poetry, worn down by nursing your mother and brother to their consumptive deaths, thinking your way through the big literary questions in your early twenties, before tuberculosis consumed your lungs and mercury corroded your stomach. You write to your brothers of negative capability, charge yourself with accepting uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. If you are right, and you usually are, the poet must be permeable, susceptible. It is too easy to say I have fallen under your sway, that you are my new dead boyfriend. Your words have hunkered into me and their impressions in the clay of my body have flooded with feeling. There is a way I’m inventing my own life in poems. You seem closer to what is real than what happens in sidereal time. I fill my brain with stories of love lost, or almost lost, and your words thread their way through the synapses between my neurons, glimmering all the way from Rome, where unopened letters from Fanny, and a lock of her hair, lay with your bones under your last poem, your own epitaph: here lies one whose name was writ in water.
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I am breathing into the human warmth of your letters— I want to take them up to the red light of my own small heart and bear their weight in my blunt brown hands. When you write to Fanny, You have absorb’d me, I think of the heat in the packets of poems and pictures I sent weekly to my own beloved when I dove into him, his waters deep and safe, and mine, mine, mine. I swore vows and oaths, remember saying, “I’d rob a gas station for you!” You write her My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet, and the fire I am for him and our daughters glows red at the bone. I see my whole life reflected back to me in each letter, know that I am projecting my hillocks and chasms onto your landscape. I have sounded the low chords of the bells your words toll in my internal towers. I see nothing but thorns for the future…Oh, Brown, I have coals of fire in my breast. I have been lost and wandering in the dark swamp of personal history, paying for imaginary sins. I yearn for your prickly sweetness, the idea of you echoed now in pages and dust, fragments of bone. When I read your last letter, the last anything you wrote, my eyes well with your longing for Fanny and your death, as if they were the same thing. I wait with Fanny until December 1865, through her husband and three children, until the moment she slides out of her body and finally comes back into your arms. I imagine my own heart sore with longing for my beloved, the peace of joining again after.
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Maryam Barrie East of the Sun, West of the Moon is a version of Cupid and Psyche, whose love is annealed— shattered then strengthened, when the bride is persuaded, usually by a jealous, greedy sister or mother, to light a candle in the dark and see the face of her beloved, at long last. They ask, why does he only come to you in the dark? He is likely monstrous, you should check. Then the tallow drops onto his face, and in great sadness he tells her she has failed him. Finding real love in the story isn’t easy— saving the beloved requires help from the Winds, allies for the quest. It requires despairing alone while navigating obstacles. It is more than just meeting in dark joy. We must put some muscle into it to free the beloved. My beloved has had to lean into it at times, to free me from the spell of childhood. It took many applications of words and embraces. It took him placing his hands on my face, saying this is my favorite face in all the world, and these are my favorite hands in all the world. It took many challenging encounters. One time we lost ourselves altogether and then he asked me, Who are you? Without thinking I answered, I’m you.
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Diane M. Laboda I Won’t Forget I won’t forget his laughter, that joyful full-body eruption of mirth. I won’t. I won’t. His voice fades a little now, losing a bit of vocabulary every day, words slipping off into a year of days. I won’t forget what tickled him, what made him sad, his reaction to silly movies he went to see because I liked them, his devastation over his best friend’s passing. His smile beams at me from photos, eyes twinkling. I see it now but sometimes missed it from behind the camera. I wish I had been more in the moment, and let the photo-op go by. I won’t forget his devotion to making a home, putting together the pieces of a marriage, not letting the present go by without grabbing it by the tail and holding on tight. His body failed him but his spirit reached out to caress us, make sure we felt important, 9
felt appreciated, felt loved and surrounded by his spirit. His spirit was large, and comforting even in his declining health. He was never close to giving in or giving up. He touched us all with grace. I won’t forget.
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Diane M. Laboda Heart is Hearth Heart is home. It is where life begins, where life ends, where each of us returns for solace. Heart is where we gather, like a hearth—warm, communal, lit by the lives that gather there. Heart calls on love to be its mentor, takes each beat and wraps it around whoever seeks comfort. Heart lives and dies on the science of the breath, taking what it needs and spreading far and wide its lifeblood. Heart swells in the abundance of love. It shrinks if love is taken away. It solves the puzzles of the mind without a keystone. Heart sometimes lives in the chest, at times on a sleeve. Sense and nonsense batter it into retreat or lull it into prayer. Heart can be calm or drive a storm of misery. It tempts a tempest or slows to miniscule spikes. It is a puzzle never meant to be solved. Heart cannot address the future, but tries to intervene when emptied of a focus, cries out when its throb has no mate. 11
Bruce Hackmann Falling is Beautiful Falling can happen When you least expect it Your heart feels the passion When do you accept it Time with you is enchanting You seem so exquisite The mind finds you dazzling Each moment feels so decadent Please don’t tell me it’s illusional Because falling for you could be so beautiful ♥ Wind of the Sea Wind of the sea, I hear you wail Wind of the sea, how did I fail My love has left me, simply let me go Why all of your howling, I just don’t know Sunlight on the beach Darkness fills my heart Roaring ocean so you preach Path to my love now has no chart … How do I keep walking, I don’t want to part Blowing storm just let me be I know the gales won’t bring her back to me
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Nina Buckless A Dream without Loneliness. Goya’s Madhouse was a dance through a mirror everyone in the painting walked out holding a pair of dandelions in their hands. They were given soup and bread and had no reason to ever step inside of the painting again. The decision was an act of love in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas who wrote on how to will the good of the other. A viewer was moved by the prisoners in the painting and went in search of a key that could split the painting open and release the people inside from their exile. Ophelia slipped and fell into a river without anyone beside her. The players found wet flower petals in her hair. But, I don’t think Ophelia knew that it was a river that she waded into. 13
I think Ophelia saw something else. Her lover, a green field, her bedchamber. Anything but a river. Loneliness is a dead flea. A caged hummingbird who simply decides to continue moving its wings. In the forest maple trees fall. Honeybees dance while Van Gogh lays awake behind bars at night. In Heaven there is nothing but love and there are trumpets that ring aloud with clashing lutes. There is poetry and there are harps and gentle voices without questions that need to be answered. On earth a bell from the Sacred Heart breaks while people lament for the end of Leviathan swallowing them whole at bedtime, spitting them up and swallowing them whole again. A long time ago, Saint Margaret of Antioch struck a dragon with a blow from her fist sideways and the dragon fell while holding 14
her soft garments in his grasp. He told her that he loved her and she cut off his head. She was a boxer with a sword. Long before that, Leda, gave birth to Helen of Troy after being raped by an animal ––a disguise for a lovesick god. If Leda had an abortion perhaps there never would have been a war that launched thousands of ships and Homer might not have had that much to say about that day. Above us an angel with a golden censer delivers smoke of incense rising before God. Maybe the cup that fills creation is found in a sanctuary of love away from praise and worship where no one and nothing stand alone at a Heavenly altar.
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Lilly Kujawski ode to loving dangerously a poem in three parts / with a line from Virginia Woolf i. i like to pick apart a beautiful thing— when i love, it’s all reckless, untamed flames, full-speed, heart-first: a run-away train. when i love, it’s so deep, raw, terrifying, my virgo-brain can’t keep up, so i dissect the devotion; my defense. i over-examine each flaw with scrutiny & microscope: expose the ugly underbelly. for, no matter how beautiful the beautiful thing, there’s always something rotted buried underneath. i dig at our core probe for bruises, infection, a blemish to discount us, or evidence of a fever dream. cold, calculating, i play jury & judge to anything less than pristine, 17
but i come up short: our underbelly, dusty at its worst, proves ridden with only superficial imperfections, just surface scars hardly worth mentioning. nothing toxic or evil to permeate its core poison its roots. i toss away my magnifying glass & caution in one heedless pitch; fall a little harder. ii. the etchings of a masterpiece— your graceful fingers, soft against my cheek. you say my name like it’s a prize-winner. you lead me deeper, marry tongue to tongue; pull me under. you’re all magic tricks, but i don’t think you’re faking it. we play a game of “make each other laugh,” sift through the intricacies 18
of one another’s brains for a clue to the winning wit or remark. our phone calls last five hours & i don’t recall all the things we had to say, just that they never ran out, & it was just our eyes that grew weary with early hours when we finally hung up. at a wooden table tucked back-corner in a coffee shop, the one in which our love bloomed, the ripple of our laughter, our honest infatuation, disturbs customers from paperwork & the glow of laptop screens. across a crowded room thick with voices, you dart an eye, nod your head half a bow, i purse my lips, twitch my nose, & smile: a secret language only we know. iii. you— gorgeous, wild love unforsaken in loyalty, 19
unending in expanse; how we sprawl the meadows, how unruly we grow. you: i could not help but crave, desire, even when i was meant to want no one. you: in such foreign, mystic, & familiar fashion, through tale of cosmic fate, became mine. you: my justification of shakespeare. you: magnet to my heart, my spiritual pull. you: half of me i never knew to miss. you: sacred subject of poetry too infinite, too inexplicable, to be bound in the seams of literature.
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Teagan Parkinson Rose Quartz The God must have given you his radiance. The Goddess blessed you with her beauty. You are the very essence. Where can I find someone like you? There is no one quite like you. You are my best friend, So I would never risk losing you. That doesn’t change my feelings. If you asked me to jump off a cliff with you, I would do it. Take that leap into the abyss, Because I would do anything, Go anywhere, As long as I am with you. He makes you happy. And you vow to help me find someone to make me happy. Like he does you. You make me happy. You just don’t know how much. Your happiness, your smile, is enough to turn the bitter flavor Of sorrow. Into sugary sweet Elation Even if only for a little while. We are still something, We are still somewhere. That is better than being nothing And nowhere at all. 22
Wanda Kay Sanders The Dance I danced on tiptoes, my eyes closed. The sun shone on my face, cool breezes blowing through my hair. I breathed in the fragrant flowers, the earthy smell or grass. But my eyes I didn’t open, because I danced alone. Twirling, spinning, perfect pirouettes in pink tulle and taffeta like a doe or gazelle that Solomon described in this song of love. And as she in tan and brown skin, soft and smooth like mine, waited breathless, silent, listening for the voice of the beloved—my beloved who made love to me every time he spoke my name. I heard you call me and with perfect pas de deux we embraced. You laid me where dandelions and clover made for us a colorful bed. And when your kisses covered my face you whispered softly ‘Open your eyes. Look at me. See in my eyes that I love you.’ And I did, and I saw and believed. For all that Summer we danced, orbiting each other like earth to Sun. Like butterflies we drank sweet flower nectar. And like those flowers we gave out our own fragrance to each other and our world. No one warned me that Summer flowers fade. At sunset they hang their proud heads dropping petals going softly to sleep. But yet there is a lingering scent of Sun and day.
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Will the moon reflect our love as we lay upon the grasses? The dew becomes a gentle blanket on our skin. We embrace and are still. No dances until the dawn. But in our dreams we circle in perpetual pas de chat, holding each other with sunshine in our eyes.
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Luna Suave I remember I remember sex: how wonderful, how joyous, how free. I remember kissing—a kiss where my lips buzzed, where the feeling still stayed on my cheek. I remember that. I remember spooning and caressing and cuddling and playing with my hair. I remember the candlelit bath, the warm water on my cheek, the shower in the dark. I remember the oily massage, the massage with the sheet, the massage that leads to sex. I remember holding hands, holding arms, holding waists, holding fingers. I remember kissing ears and noses and toes. I remember gazing and longing and napping and crooning. I remember wooing and swooning—oh, do I remember! Oh I remember too much! I remember feeling and wanting and wondering. I remember lots of them, but not everyone’s touch. I remember the highs, not as much the lows—I don’t want to remember that—oh who does? I remember soft sheets and fluffiest of comforters, a hot towel after a shower. I remember cuddling in the tub. I remember and sigh.
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Ron Pagereski First Love In my dream you came to me last night. We were back at Belleville High, 1967. You wore the pink dress I liked, the one I first saw you wear in school. I could smell the heavy scent of your hairspray, could feel the gentle touch of your hand in mine. It was the first time I held the hand of a girl, it made me a little shaky in the knees. I heard the wisp, wisp, whisper of sweet nothings in my ear. A teacher yelled at us to stop. I don't remember which one but as I turned to look, the teacher, school, and you were gone. I was suddenly awake, my sleepy eyes staring, at your obituary taped to my bedroom mirror. I heard the wisp, wisp, whisper of the ceiling fan, slowly turning overhead. Lady from the deep I found her in my arms, bewitched by her charms, her time would be short with me. Her going away, I begged her to stay, she ignored my fervent plea. She had to depart after stealing my heart, she had to return to her home. Exit she did in a cloud of foam, the mermaid returned to the sea. Sadly I watched her return to the deep, soon she was hidden from me. In Davy Jones locker, she’s happy and free, the beautiful maid of the sea. 26
Natalie Rinehardt What Has Been Forgotten The House on the hill That steadfast cavity of the heart Has been abandoned for years. The sun baked windows: Dull, tiresome eyes That look out for returning sailors. Dust coats the forgotten memories Left empty, its bones cradling its grave And inside the main hall, which faces East Sits a lone piece of furniture, A Podium with an ancient Gazetteer. ♼ Thread A woman's love is like a fog, It places the mind in a bog Dirty water that is murky Soft brittle clay, cannot see And it chews at your feet Parasite, that can never leave A worm of thread inside of me
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Aristea Fulcher Contact Comfort A light breeze trickles through the cracks in your window, gently rustling the small pieces of trash we've collected. The tea kettle overflows in the other room, The dim overhead light reflecting in the water like the moon in a lake. Later, we walk in the road to avoid the deer that's been pushed to the sidewalk, Ribs sticking out of her like tired fingers, Like a fist halfway clenched. You found a lighter on the way home. You brushed off most of the dirt, and kept it in your pocket. I still don't know where my glasses went, But I can live with the headache. ♥ Foreshortening From my window upstairs, you’re an inch tall. I wonder if you would let me hold you in my mouth, I would promise not to swallow, to breathe through my nose, to keep snacks for you nestled between my molars. Or I could tuck you behind my ear, And you could tell me all kinds of stories, the close proximity making your voice loud enough to hear. I wonder if you’re already all the places I would invite you. ♥
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Timelines At night I watch my laundry being dried, like a mobile above a babies crib, like the planets being projected on the wall of your highschool classroom, blurry with age. I wonder how many bugs I’ve stepped on since then, how many spiders I’ve placed outside. I don’t think asking will do any good, I don't think you’ve been keeping track either. On a map, we are touching.
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Isabel Perry emperor Constantine spits i haven’t got a comb so i tear out my golden hair and flirt with the boy next to me on the couch, I don’t like him i sit on his lap anyway my hands disgust me as they clutch at his shirt as if there is something inside of him that i could ever want of course there isn’t he laughs, my palms feel like prophets like they are hearing everyone’s heartbeat all at once and teasing me with the knowledge I am Eve, I am Pandora, I am Venus I want to know and be exquisite as I know it there used to be an orange in my hand but i gave it away bloody orange, the source of my power plump with oil paint sometimes i put my head on people’s rib cages to listen for an orange I have not found one yet but when I do I’m prepared to reach in past the shell and grab it orange heart, red ripe organ pry it up and suck out the sweetness I want it to drip down my chin and neck in torrents into the hollow between my breasts where it will be sticky later where the thrill of the moment can collect Tell me, what will I know after I locate my orange? Tell me, baby. I ask the boy whose arm is around my waist. Do you like me? 30
We go into a confessional together. it is small and dark every sound echoes with sanctity I tell him I want to find something but I hate myself for looking, I get the feeling i’m looking wrong but his big hand feels so good so i praise him and say my hail marys until i realize i cannot feel my heartbeat so i say unto him “you are not a real priest” he tries to grab my hands “let us pray.” too late there is nothing holy left. Did a prophet predict the loss that came next? Did a prophet predict the abandonment of oranges? Lead me to the exit, prophets. (I show him my left hand.) “This is Miriam.” I whisper. He bites her off and spits her to the floor, long fingers go limp. (Oh great leader!) Maybe he is confessing something. I raise my right palm like the other half of a prayer, “This is Mohammed.” Again a flash of teeth. Blood but the kind you can only see by its thickness and smell. Iron filled blackness as the boy pulls me close and hard to his chest, asks if I can feel his heartbeat, I say “no” because I don’t. maybe it’s that my prophets are pinned under his shadow he meets my pitfall eyes pulls my head back by its golden hair, asks again. “Canyouhearitcanyouhearitcanyouhearit” 31
my throat is bared to him, pale as a planet in the palm of his hand i can feel my voice vibrate through it as i answer “yes, father” “yes, father.” I imagine myself as emperor Constantine, because it’s easier until it’s over and i open my lips in heaven, where there are no heartbeats at all. and where i am only maybe dead. Heaven is where they put people who’ve asked too many questions. Peace, peace peace. diplomacy, complacency, each with their own cloud. I wonder if there are sedatives in the stratus. A spiral drip of morphine rolled into the thunder Hell is for good people who can accept a punishment without a fight, Who stare into fire and grovel whose knees are used to it Upon entry, all are are questioned “Do you promise not to come alive again, even under extreme heat?” They all promise If you look right, you can see their pinkies intertwining. But I have not given up my search for an orange. I can feel the juice on my lips, I stagger, I ignore any and all angels. My arms are still bloody and prophetless. The search will be much more difficult. I make my way through the clouds to Heaven’s only bar Classic dive. “Do you serve oranges?” i ask as i walk through the doors, licking my lips with a bloody tongue “Only beer.” “Do you know of any ways back to earth? i’m looking for one and there aren’t any in heaven.” The white of the sky silhouettes the bartender. Harps moan in the distance halos seem to glow a little lighter. 32
“All i have is space junk. Maybe you can use a telescope to find a crack in the cloud layer.� I have a confession to make. Fury ignites in me now. So much time So many chances were given Who did I trust with my primordial orange, to whom did i give my heart? The answer is limitless and I am alone. Nevertheless, I creep to a hole in the clouds and peer through. The ground is a moonlength away Remains that way with a telescope. I confess, There is no hope, father. I know something now. so instead, i do not swallow for a minute or two, I let saliva gather in my throat summon phlegm from the depths of my stomach and when the time is right, when the clouds and constellations have aligned I spit from the firmament with everything in me and watch it for as long as i can, squinting, hoping my hand will catch it.
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Sabrina Martell Just like Mom and Dad I want to get married in a cheap Las Vegas chapel, just like Mom and Dad. I want their fairytale wedding. I want to go across the country, and I only want to invite my family. Lord knows I wouldn’t have his feuding family ruin my classy affair. I want my sister, my beautiful maid of honor, to be drunk-laughing during the entire ceremony, and I want to glare at her through my vows and my veil. Just like Mom, I want to get my period on my wedding night and down too much birth control to try to control the situation. I want my pill-popped hormones to go berserk and have a good newlywed sob on the streets of Vegas. I want to lose the little money we brought playing penny slots, and I want a headache from the casino lights. Truly, I want to start off like Mom and Dad, so I can hope to finish like them too.
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Elise Ambriz Living Note The only person I wish to see is you, and I will never see you again. I always knew our time was finite but avoided thinking of the timeline. The end felt fake and future even when we booked the Cadillac for you to leave. No matter how long you’re gone, it will not sink in. I’m supposed to see you when I arrive home. To make us dinner. To hear about your day. To pick a movie for us to watch. All that I am supposed to do but none that I can. What is left is nothing right. I’m not mad at you for leaving. It was not your choice. I do not blame you. It was not right for you here anymore, and I couldn’t change that. I can’t be so selfish as to follow you. Others would miss me just as I miss you. If I did follow, I know you would not welcome me. You would not turn me away, but you would not love me the same. I know I can’t follow you. Still I see you in my mind. I remember, and I cherish. I remember, and I miss.
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Nina Nguyen Summer Love Summer love is real Never wanting this to end Too bad leaves turn red ♥ Mosquitos Mosquitos swarm us We swat them like they are boys They are bloodsuckers ♥ Disconnect Static fills my ear The voice of the one I love Haunts me forever
Nina Nguyen and Sabrina Martell Ceremony Don’t bring me flowers I love a good funeral Especially ours 36
Claire Convis Potion Who knows If this is love mixed with lust Or lust mixed with love Either way This potion is making me sick ♼ Another life I wish I could die And reincarnate as the girl you want ♼ Too good When I saw you I thought I had seen something too good to be true Turns out I was right
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Ashton-Ezra Stardust The Sun this one is for you the beautiful soul i long to confess a secret long overdue but i’m afraid my heart is locked and past lovers threw away the key maybe you can help me find it? i’m like a bird inside this cage trying to fix a broken wing in here i sit, cower and fear, guilty of being too scared to break free i often find my luck is poor, as heart and head fight to declare if I’m worthy of you or not and yet, they do agree with this: there is a sense of dread as my dances with love often end in storms and heart distraught— but I want to believe a heart like yours can counter this dying plot Because you—yes you— you are my heart’s sapphire a gem, a treasure the fuel for this fire in these two cheeks of mine your smile like gravity— i fall . . . your laugh— i fall . . . i fall . . . it’s dire to say— that i long to confess even in this subtle way to you 38
to you, whose heart does shine even in the darkest night yes you, my sun, and me with wings of wax so fragile and small for you i’d fly so very close and do embrace the fall . . . i fall . . . I fall . . .
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Amelia Vogel A letter to love Tell me, love, What is love? Is it taking a bite of your favorite food and thinking, “Wow, I love spaghetti?” Is it watching a movie that changes your life and saying, “I love this movie, so much?” Is it new experiences? Like watching, not seeing, a sunset for the first time and thinking, “How is this world so lovely?” Is it nostalgia? Like finding a teddy bear that used to go everywhere with your five year old self and realizing, “I really loved this thing, didn’t I?” Is it finding your soulmate, and spending your life the way all story tales end? “Happily ever after?” Is it all of the things I listed? Is it none of the things I listed? Tell me, love, What is love? 40
Michelle Lardie-Guzek You Walk Free Do you remember that first glance? Cuz I do The electric shiver shooting from toes to heart Breaking up that steady beat Do you remember that first smile? Honey I could never forget The warmth in my stomach like three shots of cheap vodka downed one right after the other. Do you remember our first conversation? The first time we held hands? When I realized you were completely clueless about how others saw you? The first time I saw you weep, your pain doubled in me. MY GOD GIRL! The sound of your voice ripped me apart and sewed me up a new person ready and able to love myself for who I was . . . But who was that? What the fuck am I? And you don’t feel what I do, do you? And now I see it all All the foolish times I thought friends meant more than nothing And our last conversation I was willing to take a chance But the chains of expectations Hold me down And you don’t even glance back as you walk away Walk free
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Dabdoub Appearances are often far from reality So listen to this simile: I look like I’m free But something inside of me Is in control and directing me like so Inside of me, but not me, yet is me but not “I” A weird relationship to describe—but I’ll give it a go It’s a part of me, if I lost I wouldn’t exist… but without it, technically, I wouldn’t die Give it a guess, don’t be slow If you said a girl The answer is yes! A girl without compare: When she lends an ear Even if far, I feel her near A manifestation of love and care And an answer to my prayer She’s a cutie with eyes that twinkle and shine She’s a beauty and she’s all mine!
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Kylie Bussell Three Haiku When thinking of you I can swim through clouds– I can run on water ♥ You’re beautiful you know and you’re always enough– Never let anyone tell you otherwise ♥ “You’re so in love with the idea of being in love” —Mom… all the time
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Kayla Price When Okcupid asks why I’m disabling my account, I say: “I need to open space to focus on other stuff? Or, I feel bad for being so unresponsive so much. I’m probably not ready for love. I say it’s anxiety, probably. I blame the molehill dateability, That the mountain peak looks too unsteady. From down here, in the mud Mixed in with the honey, Waiting for prince charming to save me. Etcetera.”
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Kourtney Johnson Love Like This A four-letter word that can make many sick but you’re so slick with it. If love was a melody it would be the sound of your hearts put together moving at the same rhythm at the same time in sync like one. This is more than a decade bond, there ain’t no breaking, you see a love like this is so patient and rare many don’t get this. Love like this moves people to be just like this. Take me for instance, I want a love like this no matter the ups, downs, and all arounds you guys stayed down; you may not always smile but you stayed around and look at you two now. You taught me what it is it be loved and showed it everyday of mine and yours, that you love me. This is an infinity-and-beyond type of bond. I’m trying to say thank you for making me, me. You made me see what love is supposed to be. You made me see that I am okay with being me. You made me hold my standards even higher for a man. If a man can’t treat me like my father and be as real as my mother, I don’t want him. The two people not including the two I call sisters that you gave birth to that made us three. They gave us unconditional love, even when we were bad. They deserve an award for being the best in the world. I love these two from the bottom of my heart, and then some. I love them so much that I’m fighting back tears. I guess all that’s left to say is thank you for loving me.
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Kadia Cohen-Patterson Burning Lust Old flames before have faded, although the passion raged, But you have started a new fire, like fine wine, with time, has aged. There is a stirring in my loins, my desires for you unhinged, Our passion a fiery furnace, no storm could ever quench. When we are apart, I think of you and my breathing intensifies, And my memory plays out scenes of us, enough to drive me wild I pulsate in unmentionable places, a lady dare not loudly say, So I must express my hungry lust, in the subtlest of ways. The yearning is agonizing, so unbearable is my lust, Come home and quell these feelings, before I turn to dust. I am trying so hard to be proper, but uncouth I am tempted to be, Would you not rather be here, making new memories with me? Yesterday an old flame provoked a spark, yet to you I stay true, I neither flickered nor flinched, my only hunger is for you.
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Tom Zimmerman Two Lovesick Sonnets 1 The outline of her lying on her side in bed at night, a mountain range. And you, the wind that over eons smooths it. More than Himalayas, more than Alps. The stars have dimmed their fires, gone red giant, died, within your love’s wild orbit. Passing through, the ragged march of time, the sea-combed shore, the anthems, every folk quartet’s guitars, drums, basses, horns: processions not yet ceased. One music of the spheres, your joined flesh warm, a river ever new, the path of beast persistence, far beyond Platonic Form. Your love, it doesn’t die, it’s never sick. It sheds its skins, darts glistening and quick. 2 You’re kissing, in each other’s arms: it’s world enough. And time? You’ve stopped it: history is past—and tense, as usual. It’s hurled clay on the potter’s wheel. The mystery? Its center cannot hold. All things, they fall apart. It’s entropy as destiny. Not now, however. Loving words forestall such endings: “You bring out the best in me.” “It tingles everywhere you touch.” There’s not much sense in stats or consequences. Yes, effects will have their cause. But bodies ought to breathe in tombs: sea-change survivors bless instead of grieve. Your love, it never sickens, as even in dead earth, fresh new life quickens. 48
Zach Baker For Merwin W.S. Merwin (9/30/1927 - 3/15/2019) Days like these where a poet dies every day and a liar rules the world But there is always spring and Merwin understood spring like the youth that cried out yesterday as Merwin slipped into shadows The youth who didn’t know his name but every beat of his song sang we love this world the planet green and blue the youth sang we will not sit 49
in classrooms we will stand for the planet and spring the death that brings spring
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A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover. —Charles Bukowski Everybody said, “Follow your heart.” I did, it got broken. —Agatha Christie All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer, with sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear. —William Shakespeare Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love. —Albert Einstein At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. —Plato I say if you love something, set it in a small cage and pester and smother it with love until it either loves you back or dies. —Mindy Kaling I was like, Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized . . . I'm just slutty. Where's my parade?” — Margaret Cho I'd rather have a broken arm than a broken heart. —Christie Brinkley Love is a friendship set to music. —Joseph Campbell If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question? —Lily Tomlin Love is so short, forgetting is so long. —Pablo Neruda ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. — Alfred, Lord Tennyson Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. —James Baldwin Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. —Rumi The heart was made to be broken. —Oscar Wilde The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. —Mother Teresa of Calcutta