Just One More Time...

As Addonizio is prolific in form poems, I thought I'd try again at the love sonnet. Not nearly as juicy, but what can I say...I'm just a big softie...

Just One More Time

It's one more time that I get to kiss you.
One more time to count all of your freckles.
One more time to wake up and remember
that your nose is incredibly special.

One more time watching you walk down the hall.
Just one more time to be thinking in twos.
One more time whispering nothing at all,
except I love you, I love you, I do.

Each time you climb out of bed or each time
doors close behind you as a chance to say
Whoever you are, please give me a sign,
blessed on my lips, just one more time today.

Because no matter how long we are one
I'll have one more time on the tip of my tongue.

When Poetry is So Good

I had the pleasure and privilege of supporting a course today and one of the participants chose to take more time for herself and do things that she enjoyed just for her. One of these things was to write poetry.

I couldn't resist at the break asking her about the poets she read, and when she asked for recommendations I couldn't resist talking about Kim Addonizio. Multiple poems came to mind-- "Fuck," "Bugdom," "Miniatures"--but this one is so good I had to type it up for you:

You Don't Know What Love Is

but you know how to raise it in me

like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to

wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.

How to start clean. This love even sits up

and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.

Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want

to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive

to some cinderblock shithole in the desert

where she can drink and get sick and then

dance in nothing but her underwear. You know

where she's headed, you know she'll wake up

with an ache she can't locate and no money

and a terrible thirst. So to hell

with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt

and your tongue down my throat

like an oxygen tube. Cover me

in black plastic. Let the mourners through.

- Kim Addonizio, What is This Thing Called Love

----------

I want to make words do this....