Iris Murdoch

wandavision

As Your Eyes Are Blue

Lee Harwood

As your eyes are blue you move me—& the thought of you— I imitate you. & cities apart, yet a roof grey with slates or lead, the difference is little. & even you could say as much through a foxtail of pain            even you

when the river beneath your window was as much as I dream, of. loose change & your shirt on the top of a chest-of-drawers. a mirror facing the ceiling & the light in a cupboard left to bum all day           a dull yellow probing the shadowy room              “what was it?”

“cancel the tickets”—a sleep talk whose horrors razor a truth that can walk with equal calm through palace rooms chandeliers tinkling in the silence as winds batter the gardens outside             formal lakes shuddering at the sight of 2 lone walkers                          of course this exaggerates small groups of tourists appear & disappear in an irregular rhythm of flowerbeds

you know even in the stillness of my kiss that doors are opening in another apartment on the other side of town             a shepherd grazing his sheep through a village we know high in the mountains the ski slopes thick with summer flowers & the water-meadows below with narcissi the back of your hand &— a newly designed red bus drives quietly down Gower Street a brilliant red                     “how could I tell you …” with such confusion                               meetings disintegrating & a general lack of purpose only too obvious in the affairs of state                              “yes, it was on a hot July day with taxis gunning their motors on the throughway a listless silence in the backrooms of paris bookshops why bother                           one thing equal to another

dinner parties whose grandeur stops all conversation

but    the afternoon sunlight which shone in your eyes as you lay beside me watching for … — we can neither remember—still shines as you wait nervously by the window for the ordered taxi to arrive               if only I could touch your naked shoulder now                     “but then … ”

and the radio still playing the same records I heard earlier today                                             —& still you move me & the distance is nothing “even you …

Adrienne Chung

Rachel Khong in conversation with James Davis

Hanif always ♥️

If No Echo, No Monologue

wordless, but not quite silent

unless to say love, unless not to speak

—there is leftover gunpowder in this line

becoming a simplified beginning

poetry is a sky giving this its performance

—Translated from the Chinese by Lucas Klein

From issue no. 233 (Summer 2020

Tired of Love Poems

But we never tire of them, do we? We wish to worship more than just each other. We put a god first, sometimes a tree, write a sonnet to a bird in the black of night or offer a light to a stranger and not call it love. But it is. To pull out a chair is more than manners. What we tire of is that we never tire of it. How it guts us. How it fails, then reappears. Because what is the bird compared to you? The bird is replaced each morning. You approach on a red bike in summer and the poem takes shape. I entitle it anything but Love, anything but what it is.

Megan Fernandes (2023)

from Fifteen Poems

1

Gathering the rain. The task of the

poet keeps coming down in buckets.

Cid Corman (1977)

from Magdalene Afterwards

Often I’m lonely.

Sometimes a joy pours through me so immense.

I want to see through the red bricks of the building across the street,

into the something else that almost gleams though the day.

Marie Howe (2017)

With a Blessing Rather than Love Said Nietzsche

Linda Gregg

The square stone room makes a shape in the air to rest inside. A form for holding what is loved beyond naming. With gratitude and reverence as Nietzsche said. We have other ways, other places. Like figs left on the stone shelf above the patio as a gift. You go out and return with fruit you’ve picked and I make jam for our crepes and yogurt and we eat. It is still morning and we look at each other even though we have known each other for years. You take me on your lap in the chair by the open window and pull off the shirts over our heads so we can feel the air and embrace and kiss high up on the mountain in the shaded room by the screen window where the air comes in and keeps touching us and we are happy beyond saying, beyond any sounds even. Less than nothing and deeper.

Fear of Being Asked to Dance

It's the starting position, the untaught beginning. Not when the two dancers step in, eyeing each other, not when their arms latch lightly, becoming a fence around their bodies. What you mean is the true starting position. You, running your finger over the mouth of your wineglass; a man crossing the room thinking, Red hair tumbles down her back. You are singularly aware of the measures between yourself and every person in the room. You are convinced that you will never dance with any man in the indelible way, his foot following where yours just was and so forth, on the dark hollow sticks of a field floor, tangled hands appetent in your hair, your cotton dress pressed.

Amanda Lamarche (2005)

A Cedary Fragrance by Jane Hirshfield

Claudia Rankine