Lately I’ve found myself in a new stream of reading poetry. Plenty of people (my own friends included) scoff at poetry, but I’ve always loved it. As a genre, poetry has consistently forced the world to look again at social norms. Each poem challenges our experiences and demands that we observe life with a new perspective.
I’ve come back, again and again, to my favourite love poems – controversial, cliché and cataclysmic in their turn. Below are some of my absolute favourites – ones to sit, and read, and contemplate over and over again. Heartbreak and heartsick and heart-full; it’s all here.
What could my mother be
to yours? What kin is my father
to yours anyway? And how
did you and I ever meet?
But in love
our hearts have mingled
like red earth and pouring rain.
You Don’t Know What Love Is
Kim Addonizio
but you know how to raise it in me
like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to
wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.
How to start clean. This love even sits up
and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.
Any day now she’ll try to eat solid food. She’ll want
to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive
to some cinderblock shithole in the desert
where she can drink and get sick and then
dance in nothing but her underwear. You know
where she’s headed, you know she’ll wake up
with an ache she can’t locate and no money
and a terrible thirst. So to hell
with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt
and your tongue down my throat
like an oxygen tube. Cover me
in black plastic. Let the mourners come.
Untitled
Rupi Kaur
if you are broken
and they have left you
do not question
whether you were
enough
the problem was
you were so
enough
that they were not able to carry it
My Lover is a Woman
Pat Parker
I.
my lover is a woman
& when i hold her
feel her warmth
i feel good
feel safe
then- i never think of
my family’s voices
never hear my sisters say
bulldaggers, queers, funny
come see us, but don’t
bring your friends
it’s okay with us,
but don’t tell mama
it’d break her heart
never feel my father
turn in his grave
never hear my mother cry
Lord, what kind of child is this?
II.
my lover’s hair is blonde
& when it rubs across my face
it feels soft
feels like a thousand fingers
touch my skin & hold me
and i feel good
then- i never think of the little boy
who spat & called me nigger
never think of the policemen
who kicked my body & said crawl
never think of the Black bodies
hanging in trees or filled
with bullet holes
never hear my sisters say
white folks hair stinks
don’t trust any of them
never feel my father
turn in his grace
never hear my mother talk
of her backache after scrubbing floors
never hear her cry
Lord, what kind of child is this?
III.
my lover’s eyes are blue
& when she looks at me
i float in a warm lake
feel my muscles go weak with want
feel good
feel safe
then- i never think of the blue
eyes that have glared at me
moved three stools away from me
in a bar
never hear my sisters rage
of syphilitic Black men as
guinea pigs
rage of sterilized children
watch them just stop in an
intersection to scare
the old
white bitch
never feel my father turn
in his grave
never remember my mother
teaching me the yes sirs & ma’ams
to keep me alive
never hear my mother cry
Lord, what kind of child is this?
IV.
& when we go to a gay bar
& my people shun me because i crossed
the line
& her people look to see what’s
wrong with her
what defect
drove her to me
& when we walk the streets
of this city
forget and touch
or hold hands
& the people
stare, glare, frown, & taunt
at those queers
i remember
every word taught me
every word said to me
every deed done to me
& then i hate
i look at my lover
& for an instant
doubt
then- i hold her hand tighter
& i can hear my mother cry.
Lord, what kind of child is this?
Should You Die First
Annabelle Despard
(Taken from Being Human, Neil Astley, Ed.)
Let me at least collect your smells
as specimens: your armpits, woollen sweater,
fingers yellow from smoke. I’d need
to take an imprint of your foot
and make recordings of your laugh.
These archives I shall carry into exile;
my body a St Helena where ships no longer dock,
a rock in the ocean, an outpost where the wind howls
and polar bears beat down the door.
