Laundry List: Poems about love
- allymmmounga
- Jun 26, 2020
- 6 min read
Hey hunniepie. This one has already earned a spot on my favorite posts list if only for the sake of poetry and love.
Two years ago in May, school was coming to a close and I'd just met someone with red hair. This was young little me the weekend before:
The butterflies were flourishing, at times my tummy felt more full of electric fireworks and pop rocks than winged beauties. It was outrageous how immediately the connection came. When we pulled up to my drive, the electricity in the air was begging me to stay, I didn't want to go and thus became a pattern of long goodbyes. Eventually he got my door and I went inside, dropping my shoes at the front door and going straight to my mom's room to tell her about this red headed boy. Later I'd come to find that he went home that night and collapsed to the living room floor. Lying on his back he said, "Mom, there's this girl," and told the same story. We were in love. It was wild and spectacularly blissful. He'd pick me up and we'd drive to the reservoir for a swim with the other football boys and their girls. We spent the whole summer together with hearts in our eyes and dreams larger than life. I dreamt about him probably every night for the year that we were together. It was pure magic. And somehow that wild love for him and for me had been there from the very beginning.
I knew in my heart that this was something special. And at that same time in May that he wandered right into my world, my lovely English teacher assigned the class a big project; to find five poems and analyze them, and create five poems and read them to the class. The day came to read them two weeks later. My friends spoke about patriotism, about friendship, about sports and the mountains. Then I got up and I spoke about love, they all looked at me with surprised, wide eyes and I said, "Haven't you been in love before?" I think they either loved it or thought I was absolutely batso. No one else wrote poems on love, but here I was, silly little Ally Mia, reading poems about being in love with a boy she'd only known for two weeks. I had absolutely no idea if he'd even be in my life for longer than that, but I knew that those feelings were something different, new, never before. but I did know that love poetry was the only kind for me.
I'm going to share with you today some poems that I found for that poetry project, and some new ones too.
My paper began with this:
Ally M. Mo’unga
English A4
Miss Kristen Oda
9 May 2018
Spilling Feelings
Life is pink and purple right now, like clouds wrapping the Earth, demanding eyes to look at them. I’m a long texter, descriptive speaker, my stories take ages. It’s Spring. The days were bitter cold and endless. Then I woke up one morning and there were flowers everywhere. Now the air is sweet. He asked if I read much poetry and I said never. How wrong of me. I worship poetry. I’m a feelings girl. So I told him spilling feelings is my poetry.
Leigh Hunt: "Jenny Kiss'd Me"
Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil: "The Woman Who Turned Down A Date With A Cherry Farmer"
Fredonia, NY
Of course I regret it. I mean there I was under umbrellas of fruit
so red they had to be borne of Summer, and no other season.
Flip-flops and fishhooks. Ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs
of mint to slip in blue glasses of tea. I was dusty, my ponytail
all askew and the tips of my fingers ran, of course, red
from the fruitwounds of cherries I plunked into my bucket
and still—he must have seen some small bit of loveliness
in walking his orchard with me. He pointed out which trees
were sweetest, which ones bore double seeds—puffing out
the flesh and oh the surprise on your tongue with two tiny stones
(a twin spit), making a small gun of your mouth. Did I mention
my favorite color is red? His jeans were worn and twisty
around the tops of his boot; his hands thick but careful,
nimble enough to pull fruit from his trees without tearing
the thin skin; the cherry dust and fingerprints on his eyeglasses.
I just know when he stuffed his hands in his pockets, said
Okay. Couldn't hurt to try? and shuffled back to his roadside stand
to arrange his jelly jars and stacks of buckets, I had made
a terrible mistake. I just know my summer would've been
full of pies, tartlets, turnovers—so much jubilee.
"Alexandra" by Allie X
This one is a bit melancholy, lovely all the same. Here are some favorite lines:
"Feels so good to be with Alexandra
Born in grey, but still she tries her best
Brown hair to her waist, a porcelain face
And a manicured grace,"
"I miss the way she used to eat her breakfast
So careful with the way she held her spoon
Kept away from the sun, always chill to the bone
Only I'd keep her warm,"
"We used to glow like copper newly shined"
Reginald Shepherd: "You, Therefore"
For Robert Philen
You are like me, you will die too, but not today:
you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:
if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been
set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost
radio, may never be an oil painting or
Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are
a concordance of person, number, voice,
and place, strawberries spread through your name
as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me
of some spring, the waters as cool and clear
(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),
which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:
and you are a lily, an aster, white trillium
or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star
in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving
from its earthwards journeys, here where there is
no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,
when there was snow), you are my right,
have come to be my night (your body takes on
the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep
becomes you): and you fall from the sky
with several flowers, words spill from your mouth
in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees
and seas have flown away, I call it
loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,
a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,
and free of any eden we can name
June Jordan: "Poem for My Love"
How do we come to be here next to each other
in the night
Where are the stars that show us to our love
inevitable
Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness
and the rain
falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh
the black men waiting on the corner for
a womanly mirage
I am amazed by peace
It is this possibility of you
asleep
and breathing in the quiet air
U.A. Fanthorpe: "Atlas"
There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it
Which checks the insurance, and doesn't forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;
Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists
And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds
The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.
And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.
Bruno Major: "Nothing"
That's all for today loved ones. Thank you for reading. Thank you for being patient with me as I've been posting a bit unpredictably. A lot of it has to do with my wack sleeping schedule while working at the bakery.
I love you, please like if you liked. And I wanna hear from you guys. How about please leave a comment about what you're grateful to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel today? I love to connect with the senses. I'm grateful to see the colors in my bedroom, to taste a turkey bacon avo samwich, to hear my mom's voice and Moose's barks, to hug my grandma, and to smell our little wallflower, oil air fresheners.
If you liked this post you might like my other Laundry Lists. As of now there's one on wonderful things to be grateful for, and one on songs to love.
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