An Act of Procreation | Frank Hughes

what beatings we have taken—
gave

what we have endures:
poverty, hunger, sickness,
spinal taps,
seizures,
stripped of privacy,
independence,
dignity

my rage
your vengeance
our dissembling

the gods against us

the void’s wide swallow
beneath us

the weight we lost to it
the nerves, stomach, and teeth
we lost to it

the you and me we lost to it

and i did unforgivable things
and you perfected a certain cruelty

and when the end came screaming at us
we fed it fresh, new years
our best years,
our prime of life years
they call them

so we sit here tonight
locked in the silence
our long crafted and patient
hatred built
with its own hands
with nothing to show
for all our dues

but this resentment we
killed ourselves
creating
it sits here

between us
like a dying child
waning
without cure

The Danger of Wisdom | Jack Gilbert

We learn to live without passion.
To be reasonable. We go hungry
amid the giant granaries
this world is. We store up plenty
for when we are old and mild.
It is out strength that deprives us.
Like Keats listening to the doctor
who said the best thing for
tuberculosis was to eat only one
slice of bread and a fragment
of fish each day. Keats starved
himself to death because he yearned
so desperately to feast on Fanny Brawne.
Emerson and his wife decided to make
love sparingly in order to accumulate
his passion. We are taught to be
moderate. To live intelligently.

for women who are difficult to love | Warsan Shire

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial 
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who 
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel 
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Yes Yes | Charles Bukowski

when God created love he didn’t help most
when God created dogs He didn’t help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe. 

Goodbye, April | Mike Spry

He had fantasies about being left at the altar,
so when on their wedding day she married
the pharmacist instead, he felt a sense of joy.

He apologized to the priest, and hugged his mother,
went home and trimmed back the brush,
buried their secrets in the neighbour’s back yard.

She took the cat, which freed up his afternoons.
She left all the collars, and a credit card debt.
Her fathers called often, one confused and one drunk.

He started singing gospel in the showers
of hotel rooms he didn’t pay for,
and leaving himself love notes on the mirror.

He drank gin. He learned to play bridge poorly.
He went to parties dressed as someone else.
All of his thoughts were plagiarized.

For a moment he considered being successful,
but instead bought a television and picked up
a casual drug habit and an affection for cheese.

His psychic was a fraud, but he respected her opinions.
His therapist took long vacations,
and was obsessed with erotic daydreaming.

He held a garage sell, and sold their memories below cost.
He sold the house to a homeopath,
and swore off real estate for good.

He wrote the note with his left hand,
“I wish I hadn’t seen this,” it read.
And with that, he got in their car, and left.

The Reunion | Jack Ridl

The last time I saw them we were young.
Ginny was a cheerleader. Ben was getting
A’s in trig. Tonight we glance at nametags.

Around the cheese tray we say, “Of course
I remember you.” “Yes, four years ago.
Things are better now.” “No, she never
graduated, moved. I don’t know where.”

We look good. The food is just fine. The music
brings it all back and we dance the latest steps
across our brain’s prom floor. It’s all the same.

And nothing is. We’re still dumb kids, just gray
and tame. If we had to do it again, we’d get it
right. Some are sure they got it right the first

time. They ask for another Manhattan, dry
martini, scotch on the rocks. They glisten
in their tans. They watch the rest of us,

the ones with comb-overs, two divorces,
the ones who look for lower gas prices,
a good night’s sleep, group tours.

Topography | Sharon Olds

After you flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Dog’s Death | John Updike

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, “Good dog!
Good dog!”

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest’s bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet’s, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.

When You Go | Edwin Morgan

When you go, 
if you go, 
and I should want to die, 
there’s nothing I’d be saved by 
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room 
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.

Living Hungry After | Jack Gilbert

The water nymphs who came to Poseidon 
explained how little they desired to couple 
with the gods. Except to find out 
whether it was different, whether there was 
a fresh world, another dimension in their loins. 
In the old Pittsburgh, we dreamed of a city 
where women read Proust in the original French, 
and wondered whether we would cross over 
into a different joy if we paid a call girl 
a thousand dollars for a night. Or an hour. 
Would it be different in kind or only 
tricks and apparatus? I worried that a great 
love might make everything else an exile. 
It turned out that being together 
at twilight in the olive groves of Umbria 
did, indeed, measure everything after that.