Poem for the Day: Three Love Poems

First Seduction

The bedroom was twin share for the night,
white laced, candles in candelabras,
something out of Madame Bovary.

The covers were tight, close to our necks
the aroma of bodies, invisible.
In passing you said, 'withdrawal'
and I thought of money from the bank.

We began that rib fingering thing
that comes with love, you caging
the soft weight of my breasts in your hand.

Everything took on a different hue
as we smoked a cigarette in the dark.

In the morning the room was clumsy
with cooing, two pigeons bobbing and
moaning on the bed.


Last Time in a Restaurant

Not long after we discussed divorce
we sat at a small table in Caffe Amaretto
in Main Street and were deeply
engrossed in the menu.

You ordered Veal Tortellini and I chose
Di Cesare. We were forever looking
the other way. You looked at a
buxom waitress, while I thought of

a passage from Kant's Perpetual Peace.
Our hands curved away from touching,
like arrows never reaching Athene
from Eros's love charms.

I can't remember how we ever faced
each other. You, with the attitude
never giving up the drink, and I, going
out for fun with the university crowd.

That night we were never close,
and when we reached a point in the evening,
finishing the wine, and folded napkins,
we knew exactly where we were.


Abandoned Love

The sky began to fall,
forming white knights of pearl,
so I held a cup out to catch
thoughts of you.

The porcelain became half full,
filling to streak down the sides,
pooling droplets on my dress
like toes looking for a river.

And again, I was too late ‒
the sky bloomed into yellow crocuses,
the cup empty of you. I hardly hold it now,
lame thing.

Two of these poems have been accepted
into the Poetry D'Amour Anthology (2014)

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Poem for the Day: My Red Buzz-Box

My Red Buzz-Box

On the first night,
I sat in both front seats.
A robin ready to wander the linear road.

I drove out under a cloud-ring of sky
and with a sigh unleashed Emmy-Lou Harris
on the console.

Passing motorists heard my song,
and inhaled at the power beneath
my feet. Unloosed and headlong,

I surged into back streets,
matching anything with overdrive.
I took a right, then a right, clicking fingers
back and forth to Boulder to Birmingham
as if this was the only way to un-knot
the silence of the night.

I was one hell of a country gal
dressed in my red voluminous coat.

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Poem for the Day: Toffee Apples (from my 2013 collection) of Arc & Shadow -

 

Toffee Apples

In years gone by women
made toffee apples before they died.

They passed the recipe down

through the fruit trees that swayed

and rolled apples on the land.

We collect the apples now from memory,

the heavy branches staring a gloss

of Delicious Reds, crisp, evergreen

Granny Smiths. We leave them in

their skins, the toffee boils in the pot;

a liquid of glucose, castor sugar, cochineal.

Toffee apples form a perfect sphere

like miniature worlds in sticky charm.

Popsticks placed within the core

are like peace flagpoles, one a piece.

Cool and clamped in their tight red bellies

the apples cry out ‘eat me, eat me.’

Sirrrip! The toffee lifts as lip, as ledge

for the mouth’s first bite.

Red balls like the sun, a stitched ball

in your hand, the earth’s red blood.

Crimson candy you have to work your way

into, mouth dribbling a spillway of saliva.

Toffee that can only be eaten

in that first deep crunch,
a crack between teeth
like the breaking of ice.

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Graphic for the Day: Meet the author

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