the atrocity of sunsets

“Uncomplicated Happiness” by Alex Dimitrov

Maybe I don’t want uncomplicated happiness.
In the morning one of us turns
to dress away from the other
although little has changed.
In a better world memory would
always lead back to affection.
Who is that person on the edge
of the bed, looking back?
Nothing is uncomplicated, traveler.
Maybe I wanted you to stay
for the wrong reasons.
Maybe it’s the wrong reasons I love.
I too am somewhere over an ocean—
writing you this as fast as I can.

x"I knew when I said
I love you
that I was inventing a new alphabet
for a city where no one could read
that I was saying my poems
in an empty theater
and pouring my wine
for those who could not
taste it."
— Nizar Qabbani

Honeysuckle, Lyn Lifshin

bees, my
skin smells
of sun, the
insides of
roses. I want

to eat that
light. Every
thing that
grows does.

x"And the night smells like snow.
Walking home for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable."
— Franz Wright, from “Night Walk”

Love Is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

x"Lately you remind me of a wild thing
chewing through its foot. But you
are already free and I don’t know what to do
except trace the rough line of your jaw
and try not to place blame.
Here is the truth: It is hard to be in love
with someone who is in love someone else.
I don’t know how to turn that into poetry."
— Clementine von Radics

For Grace, After a Party, Frank O’Hara

You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air while I was
blazing my tirade against someone who doesn’t
interest
me, it was love for you that set me
afire,

and isn’t it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings
writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand,
isn’t there
an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? And someone you love enters the room
and says wouldn’t
you like the eggs a little

different today?
And when they arrive they are
just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather
is holding.

x"I’ve had it with stingy-hearted sons of bitches.
A heart is to be spent."
— Stephen Dunn, from “Sixty”

x"What
dark part of my soul
shivers. You don’t want to know more
about this."
— Mary Oliver, from “Every Morning”

from “Rainy Morning” by Louise Glück

Look at John, out in the world,
running even on a miserable day
like today. Your
staying dry is like the cat’s pathetic
preference for hunting dead birds: completely

consistent with your tame spiritual themes,
autumn, loss, darkness, etc.

We can all write about suffering
with our eyes closed. You should show people
more of yourself; show them your clandestine
passion for red meat.

from “Northwest” by Stacie Cassarino

I am afraid of isolation,
and of the woman who says forever,
moving her tongue along my skin.

If I believe her, I will suffer.
If I don’t believe her, I will suffer.

Who has never wanted to be unneeding?

x"I thought: please don’t grow
familiar. I think I said it out loud:
Please don’t let me love you
that horrible way."
— Olena Kalytiak Davis, excerpt from “All the Natural Movements of the Soul”