During the holidays, many people turn toward home and thoughts of love. I found three poems that focus on these two intertwined notions: Home and Love. The first one is Billy Collins’ poem in The New Yorker this week. It’s one of those wily love poems that says not one direct word about the relationship of the two lovers. Their relationship lingers in the background, the unexpressed joy of getting
If you’re all alone on Thanksgiving Day, with no turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy, your heart aching from loneliness and neglect, and your shame keeping you from making even one single phone call to some relative who is surrounded by devoted loved ones, just keep in mind that, for what it’s worth, we’re together in this poem, sharing these words. Sleepy late-afternoon football chatter will fade away, but this conversation will last
I dug for you in the deep rich soil, my hands plunging further and further into the ground, into the past, searching for traces of your soul, only to find a decayed, unreadable letter.
The shades enter and leave each frame in unexpected ways. Being human means being part of the projection. I’m a visitor, here for a while but then off to somewhere else, wearing the body and everything that goes with it. The accessories make us think this is who we are, but they’re just borrowed trappings cloaking the penetralium, tight-fitting suits we have to wear until the ceremony is over.
It’s all a collective memory shaped by a planet of dreamers living inside themselves, waiting for release.
You left your mark like a prehistoric cave drawing. Unseen, undiscovered, permanent. A message understood only by the one who created it. You created a masterpiece. Beaten, bruised, bleeding, inanimate. To you. Leaving nothing to remember you by but a stain, faded, never gone. Violence the medium that stenciled you onto me so cruelly. Memories inaccessible but my body, like a cave wall, will never forget. *** Amy Menkhus is a
