We're inconsolable.

[raybear]

Several weeks ago, when it was still summer but that first weekend when fall was starting to show and long sleeves were needed at night, I went on this date with a guy, and it was a Good Date. Even though I think we both knew it wasn't really going to go anywhere, that we were looking for different things, I appreciated that it was a still a fun Friday night of biking around and people watching and sitting on park benches and dive bars. And after the second whiskey, he recited poetry to me and then we made out over my bike before I went home. I haven't seen or talked to him since, and I'm totally ambivalent about running into him or never seeing him again, and mostly I was happy to have a Good Date and I heard this poem by Richard Siken which I've been thinking about and today finally looked up.

Scheherazade

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forgot that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That meant it's noon, that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.

Comments

[tracijean.livejournal.com]

that poem is just great.

[raybear.livejournal.com]

i know! imagine how awkward it would have been if he said "i love this poem and i just recently memorized it" and i asked him to do it and it was BAD.

though that would be a funny story. but i'll take a good poem over a funny story.

[hughknox.livejournal.com]

this is a damn good poem and it reminds me of some of the finer spanish poets in its imagery and shifts. does this guy have a book out?

[freakysparks.livejournal.com]

Stunning, and I can see that it'd go well with making out and then disappearing into the ether.

[crafting-change.livejournal.com]

there are some poems I want to live in.

this is one.

[magdalene1.livejournal.com]

Beautiful poem!

A good companion to one of my favorite Kim Addonizio poems:

What happened, happened once. So now it's best
in memory--an orange he sliced: the skin
unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge
lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin
membrane between us, the exquisite orange,
tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,
the way he pushed me up against the fridge-
Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss
that didn't last, but sent some neural twin
flashing wildly through the cortex. Love's
merciless, the way it travels in
and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove
we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers
on the table. And we still had hours.

--Kim Addonizio