Verses for Lovers
Compiled from recent collections by Jabari Asim
Sunday, February 7, 1999; Page X09
Vino Tinto
Dark wine reminds me of you.
The burgundies and cabernets.
The tang and thrum and hiss
that spiral like Egyptian silk,
blood bit from a lip, black
smoke from a cigarette.
Nights that swell like a cork.
This night. A thousand.
Under a single lamplight.
In public or alone.
Very late or very early.
When I write my poems.
Something of you still taut
still tugs still pulls,
a rope that trembled
hummed between us.
Hummed, love, didn't it.
Love, how it hummed.
-- Sandra Cisneros
(From "Loose Woman" 1994 by Sandra Cisneros. Published by Alfred A.
Knopf and Vintage Books. By permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services,
NY. All rights reserved.)
Reading Someone Else's Love Poems
is, after all, all we've ever done
for centuries -- except write them --
but what
a strange thing it is, after all,
rose-cheeks and sun-
hair and lips, and underarms,
and that little gut
I love to nuzzle on, soft underbelly --
oops --
that wasn't what I meant to
talk about;
ever since handkerchiefs fell,
and hoop-
skirts around ankles swirled
and smiled, lovers have dreamed their
loves upon
the pages, courted and schemed
and twirled
and styled, hoping that once they'd
unfurled their down-
deep longing, they would have
their prize --
not the songs of love,
but love beneath disguise.
-- Kate Light
(From "The Laws of Falling Bodies" by Kate Light. Published by Story Line
Press. Copyright 1997 by Kate Light. Reprinted by permission.)
Haiku
I want to make you
roar with laughter as i ride
you into morning.
-- Sonia Sanchez
(Published by permission Africa World Press, Inc. From the book by Sonia
Sanchez, "Under a Soprano Sky," 1987)
Full Moon
The circle moon
fell upon your face.
The circle moon
spilled powdered shadows
upon your shape.
The moon, the circle moon
argued with me,
fell upon my arms
and told me that I could
gather up all the dust of
the circle night
and I could tell you
woman
I love you.
-- Henry Dumas
(From "Knees of a Natural Man" by Henry Dumas. Published by Thunder's
Mouth Press. Copyright 1989 Loretta Dumas and Eugene B. Redmond.
Reprinted by permission.)
Lifelong
for the marriage of Charles and Lucina, Candelaria Day, February 2, 1995
So long as you both shall lift
An echo in night's tunnel, lift
A child from numbing pavements, lift
A hand to hold back, set loose, to enfold;
So long as you both shall leave
Proud pursuits go their own gait, leave
The trampling and bright trophies, leave
Your tidemark on the mind's strand;
So long as both shall laugh
At sworn lies and their catch tunes, laugh
At all contrived, all forced growth, laugh
From peaks of occult, calm passion;
So long as both shall leaf
Through sanctimonious parchments, leaf
Gold on a new daybook's edges, leaf
Out, then blossom the nerve's branchings;
So long as you both shall listen
To the song latched in the rib's cage, listen
To breath, soft, in the next room, listen
To surfsound down the blood's ways;
So long as you both shall love,
So long last; none lasts longer.
-- W.D. Snodgrass
|
