Asking About You
Instead of having sex all the time I like to hold you and not get into some involved discussion of what life means. I want you to tell me something I don’t know about you. Something about the day before that photograph in which you’re standing on your head. I want to know about softball and the team picture. Why are you so little next to the others? Were you younger? Were you small as a girl? What I want most is to have been a girl with you and played on the opposite team so I could have liked you and competed against you at the same time.
Eloise Klein Healy
in Passing, 2002
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ONCE UPON A TIME
Five o'clock in the morning,
I wake up. A call, a window,
the sky is barely alert.
Every day the stars see it all,
but I know about loving first.
By Eloise Klein Healy
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What I want most is to have been a girl with you and played on the opposite team so I could have liked you and competed against you at the same time.
- from "Asking About You," Eloise Klein Healy (x)
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Cactus
(by Eloise Klein Healy)
In the nursery, I always go to the cactus first.
Who are they anyway? Old ghosts, perhaps,
who meet you on their own terms.
Then I leave them and walk into ferns, cooler
heads, and palms, long arms and secretive.
I circle. If this were love I'd be thinking
opposites attract because I'm back
at the cactus counter fixed on someone
called Goat's Head. But what did the poet say,
.
the one who was holding a woman so high
off the ground? Something about tenderness in love?
when I look at the cactus in my hand,
my hand carefully raising the green plastic cup,
I think love is in the spines,
the spines that curve and radiate
in parallel lines.
Love is how close you can get and even bleed
and even want to pick it up again.
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A poem by Eloise Klein Healy
Living Here Now
My father’s dying
resembles nothing so much
as a small village
building itself
in the mind of a traveler
who reads about it
and thinks to go there.
The journey is imagined
in a way not even felt
as when years ago
I knew my father would die someday.
The idea came up as fast
as a curve in a road
which opens out
to an unexpected vista,
and now in this journey
the road gravel crunches
under my tires. I miss
some of the streets,
get lost, get lost.
I find I’m no tourist anymore
and settle into the oldest human assignment.
Bury your father and live forever
as a stranger in that town.
Eloise Klein Healy
More poems by Eloise Klein Healy are available through her website.
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The Lyric In A Time of War
for Sappho
Let my music be found wanting
in comparison
to yours (as it must)
let me be found loving
(as you were)
extravagantly the beautiful
let me find you
and the song (forever)
between us
in these terrible times
—Eloise Klein Healy
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what i want most is to have been a girl with you and played on the opposite team so i could have liked you and competed against you at the same time!!!!!!!!!
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hello, do you any recommendations for poems overflowing with love, (does not have to be romantic)? i am trying to memorize a love poem for the month of february and am short of ideas. hope you have a lovely day!!
well obviously you should make frank o’hara’s “having a coke with you” your poem to memorize in february cause OBVIOUSLY. love is real etc. other poems that might be easier to memorize & make my heart full would include “o small sad ecstasy of love” by anne carson, “what I didn’t know before” by ada limón, “asking about you” by eloise klein healy, “checkout” by caroline bird, “I don’t want to lose” by mary oliver. OR for a specifically february poem: “on a train” by wendy cope
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please GOD HELP ME. do you have any love poetry either single poems or book reccs im going THROUGH IT orz (<me curling up on the floor)
i’m picking you up off the floor and pressing this list of assorted love poems into your hand like a folded note. i hope you like them! 💌
to you and morning by frank o’hara
poem for my love by june jordan... honestly all of haruko/love poems (1994) is very good!
love (iii) by george herbert
on the reproduction of images by miriam alex
december by michael miller
o small sad ecstasy of love by anne carson
serenade by dilruba ahmed
amores (II) by ee cummings (the entire amores series, I through XI, are all so worth reading but this is my favorite of the bunch!)
my house by nikki giovanni
little crazy love song by mary oliver
romance by claude mckay
to revolt is to insist on joy by nur turkmani
there is only one of everything by margaret atwood (located on page 15 of this compilation!)
asking about you by eloise klein healy
love song by william carlos williams
poems for blok, 1 and where does such tenderness come from? / whence cometh such tender rapture? (< these are two different translations of the same poem and they are both striking lovely in their own way) by marina tsvetaeva
encounter in april by may sarton
we have not long to love by tennessee williams
laura, i want you pulling your hair back by natalie dunn
adore by li-young lee
you by carol ann duffy
after touching you, i think of narcissus drowning by leila chatti
summer was forever by chen chen
untitled by izzy wellwaterhysteria
and here is the new penguin book of love poetry (2003), borrowable via the internet archive!
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11, 12 and 19 if you're taking asks?
YES I AM!! ty anon :)
11. what are some good sapphic songs/music artists?
ive been really into chappell roan, boygenius, and muna lately!! and some miscellaneous sapphic songs i like are girls just wanna have sex by mazie, you and me on the rock by brandi carlile, share the moon by indigo girls, sweet woman by cris williamson, and come to my window by melissa etheridge!
12. good sapphic books/poems/authors?
i havent read a lot of books lately ngl but i like the poems "asking about you" by eloise klein healy, "ode to the unpaid electricity bill" by olivia gatwood, and "she is the poem" by june bates!
19. describe your fashion sense. do you "dress gayly"?
probably yeah but i want to dress gayer! i like button ups and jeans but i need to buy more of the latter, and i also like wearing comfy clothes that i can relax in. i do also enjoy wearing dresses sometimes :)
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If y'all would be so inclined, please feel free to check out my poem in Issue 25 of Lavender Review literary magazine:
I'm only one of many amazing poets in this issue so please go ahead and take a look 😊
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Eloise Klein Healy, Asking About You
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Artemis
(by Eloise Klein Healy)
I am thinking about romance and its purpose.
Children and why I don't have any.
I would have left the cave and them with it
or I would have tied them to me forever
with my own sad dreams and finicky order.
.
I've liked young animals better.
I could put their heads in my mouth.
I could lick and clean them like a mother,
but I could not raise a child.
The first thing a child should see
is the pink sunrise of a nipple, not the green wind
of a branch whipping in passing.
.
I chose to keep animals around me instead
because we are the same. We have habits
and make strange circles before we sleep.
We don't like to be watched while we eat.
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