grammatolatry

To say “I’ve never loved anything the way I love you” would be a lie. Before we met, there were days I did not believe you existed. I had more love than this body could hold & Mama had always said, give what you don’t need. So I gave it away to dog park pitbulls & summer orchids & old books that smelled like promises. Handed it out like grocery store flyers to seashell whorls & boys with fist-shaped mouths aimed for the walls of my chest & girls who kissed with the desperate thrash of salmon on silver hooks and still I had so much love. For years I offered myself to scraped knees & nails bitten down to bone & lonely parking lots, & no matter what I did there was nothing I loved enough to feel it back. I was born an ocean and I emptied it into hearts too small for the overspill, evacuated and left me behind. Silly me. I mistook lighthouses for the moon, dressed up impermanence for decades. And then you. You, with arms the breadth of deep space, discovered the part of the eye that converts belief into light. You are not the sun or the moon, but the hand clasped in mine while we watch clouds shaped like starships trailing maps in the night sky. I have no use for luminaries. It is your voice in the dark that reminds me nothing need be seen that cannot be felt. I have no use for sight. It is your lips on my neck reminding me to keep one last thing for myself.

I am sick of writing this poem but bring the boy. his new name his same old body. ordinary, black dead thing. bring him & we will mourn until we forget what we are mourning & isn’t that what being black is about? not the joy of it, but the feeling you get when you are looking at your child, turn your head, then, poof, no more child. that feeling. that’s black. \ think: once, a white girl was kidnapped & that’s the Trojan war. later, up the block, Troy got shot & that was Tuesday. are we not worthy of a city of ash? of 1000 ships launched because we are missed? always, something deserves to be burned. it’s never the right thing now a days. I demand a war to bring the dead boy back no matter what his name is this time. I at least demand a song. a song will do just fine. \ look at what the lord has made. above Missouri, sweet smoke.

"In the Library," Dorothea Grossman

Hi, I was wondering if any of you could help me find a poem. It was written by a woman telling her stories with men she has had relationships with, but how she never felt truly happy with them. It included the line “I drown men in the sea of me” or something similar to that. I'm sorry if I'm being kind of vague, this is all I can remember and I would really like to read that poem again. If you can't help me, I'll understand. Thank you!

‘Some men break your heart in two…’                            —Dorothy Parker, “Experience” Some men carry you to bed with your boots on. Some men say your name like a verbal tic. Some men slap on an emotional surcharge for every erotic encounter. Some men are slightly mentally ill, and thinking of joining a gym. Some men have moved on and can’t be seduced, even in the dream bars you meet them in. Some men who were younger are now the age you were then. Some men aren’t content with mere breakage, they’ve got to burn you to the ground. Some men you’ve reduced to ashes are finally dusting themselves off. Some men are made of fiberglass. Some men have deep holes drilled in by war, you can’t fill them. Some men are delicate and torn. Some men will steal your bracelet if you let them spend the night. Some men will want to fuck your poems, and instead they find you. Some men will say, “I’d like to see how you look when you come,” and then hail a cab. Some men are a list of ingredients with no recipe. Some men never see you. Some men will blindfold you during sex, then secretly put on heels. Some men will try on your black fishnet stockings in a hotel in Rome, or Saran Wrap you to a bedpost in New Orleans. Some of these men will be worth trying to keep. Some men will write smugly condescending reviews of you work, making you remember these lines by Frank O’Hara: I cannot possibly think of you/other than you: the assassin/of my orchards. Some men, let’s face it, really are too small. Some men are too large, but it’s not usually a deal breaker. Some men don’t have one at all. Some men will slap you in a way you’ll like. Some men will want to crawl inside you to die. Some men never clean up the matter. Some men hand you their hearts like leaflets and some men’s hearts seem to circle forever: you catch sight of them on clear nights, bright dots among the stars, and wait for their orbits to decay, for them to fall to earth.

A soft woman is simply a wolf caught in meditation.

What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness. It’s as if we were working together on the same statue, cutting it out of each other’s misery. But I don’t even know the design.

Love. I’m not capable of it, can’t even approach it from the side, let alone head-on. Nor am I alone in this—everyone is like this, the liars. Singing songs and painting pictures and telling each other stories about love and its mysteries and its marvelous properties, myths to keep morale up—maybe one day it’ll materialize. But I can say it ten times a day, a hundred times, “I love you,” to anyone and anything, to a woman, to a pair of pruning shears. I’ve said it without meaning it at all, taken love’s name in vain and gone dismally unpunished. Love will never be real, or if it is, it has no power. No power. There’s only covetousness, and if what we covet can’t be won with gentle words—and often it can’t—then there is force.

When he says He doesn’t love you anymore, Roll your shoulders back And look him in the eye Even when it feels like your ribs Are breaking inward, like spider legs. When he digs up old aches That he swore he forgave you for, Smile And ask him why he didn’t leave you sooner. Ignore the way the words feel like sandpaper Running all the way up your throat to your mouth. When he blames you For mistakes that wear his face, Do not scream. Do not cry. Tell him that there are boys Who would be proud to say they’d loved you. Tell him that in two years You won’t even remember his name And don’t let him see the way you can taste your own lie. When he leaves Ignore the howling in your blood And do not get up after him. Not even to lock the door. Do not, do not Do not. Smell his shirts when you box them up To give them back. Not one. Swear off dating when you realize You’re chasing ghosts that wear his smile. It’s okay to cry over him. It’s even okay to forgive him. But do not go back to him. If he did not know how to love you the first time, He won’t know how to do it the next.

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?

When I walk in, men buy me drinks before I even reach the bar. They fall in love with me after one night, even if we never touch. I tell you I’ve got this shit down to a science. They sweat with my memory, alone in cheap rooms they listen to moans through the wall and wonder if that’s me, letting out a scream as the train whines by. But I’m already two states away, lying with a boy I let drink rain from the pulse at my throat. No one leaves me, I’m the one that chooses. I show up like money on the sidewalk. Listen, baby. Those are my high heels dangling from the phone wire. I’m the crow flapping down, that’s my back slip you catch sight of when the pain twists into you so deep you have to close your eyes and weep like a goddamned woman.

Tell me our story: are we impetuous, are we kind to each other, do we surrender to what the mind cannot think past? Where is the evidence I will learn to be good at loving?