WRITTEN + EDITED BY MEL KARTAL
This year-long quarantine has deprived us of most, if not all human contact. It has sucked every last droplet of romance in our veins dry, and has left us all in a large, fleshy heap of depressed skin and bones… For some, this feeling has been around since the beginning of time. For others, romance and intimacy are a taboo, something shameful. But despite any societal pressure, or any single person telling you that what you’re feeling is wrong, there will always be that visceral feeling of longing within every human, no matter how hard you try to suppress it. But all is not lost. Here are a couple of poems that may remind you: with absence, the heart does indeed grow fonder.
—
Little Beast
BY RICHARD SIKEN
4
He had green eyes,
so I wanted to sleep with him—
green eyes flecked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool-
You could drown in those eyes, I said.
The fact of his pulse,
the way he pulled his body in, out of shyness or shame or a desire
not to disturb the air around him.
Everyone could see the way his muscles worked,
the way we look like animals,
his skin barely keeping him inside.
I wanted to take him home
and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his
like a crash test car.
I wanted to be wanted and he was
very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving.
You could drown in those eyes, I said,
so it’s summer, so it’s suicide,
so we’re helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.
—
One Girl
BY SAPPHO
TRANSLATED BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
I
Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
Atop on the topmost twig, — which the pluckers forgot, somehow, —
Forget it not, nay; but got it not, for none could get it till now.
II
Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found,
Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound,
Until the purple blossom is trodden in the ground.
—
Mayakovsky
BY FRANK O’HARA
1
My heart’s aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it’s throbbing!
then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.
2
I love you. I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.
Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick
with bloody blows on its head.
I embrace a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.
3
That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest
oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea
4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.
—
For Willyce
BY PAT PARKER
When i make love to you
i try
with each stroke of my tongue
to say
i love you
to tease
i love you
to hammer
i love you
to melt
i love you
and your sounds drift down
oh god!
oh jesus!
and i think
here it is, some dude’s
getting credit for what
a woman
has done
again.
—
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