Amas Veritas + more
dedication:
"Amas Veritas" is dedicated to my partner of 12 years, written as if I'd conjured him as a child like Sally Owens in Practical Magic.
"Love Poem to the Parts of Myself I Can't Stand" is dedicated to me and every human self-love is the origin of our love for others. I've wasted so much time hating certain things about myself, so I wanted to write a piece where I turn those parts of me into things that I love.
"Want Like Cupid's Arrows" is dedicated to that toxic ex you know you shouldn't think about and definitely shouldn't reach out to, but your silly heart.
Amas Veritas
after Sally Owens in Practical Magic
He will come find me when I've caught the wrong
bus on a Minnesotan January night.
He will whistle like a Disney sparrow.
He can impersonate Kermit the frog, but everyone else
is laced with McCartney.
He can teach the dog to rest its head on your palm—
hold out your hand, say face.
He will not always be nice,
but he will always be kind.
And his favorite animal will be an octopus.
And he'll have green eyes flecked with gold.
He will invent a hand-squeeze code—twice for yes,
once for no—when my tongue can't find the roof
of my mouth, caress the backs of my teeth.
He will send me photos of one-dollar books—I might like
to own and never read—at the Nicollet Goodwill.
He will make his righteous scrambled eggs for me at midnight.
He will be gentle with his scramble, the cat's post-op stitches,
the dog's nails.
And his name will mean "free."
And his humor a mudslide.
And his pupils will greet every dawn like a newborn Neptunian.
He will not be mine forever;
we will love each other anyway.
Love Poem to the Parts of Myself I Can't Stand
I want the mockingbird throat you only spread
for shower walls. Your voice sounds Swiftian
tonight. Your pianic falsetto. Your strained violin
strings worth the days you hit the tenor in
"Carolina." I want to know what poem your tongue
is tonguing. Can't keep that mouth still. Imagine
every twitch a metaphor for all the ink-sac,
hand-grenade, belly-of-the-whale parts of you working
their way to every surface the only route
they know. I'll bring the basin, you bring the brine.
I'll be your voice box. You keep weaving
that head-in-the-oven, pummeled-mitral-valve,
hurricane ache into poetry. I want you, wallflower.
I want you, hungry siren. Your gaping, famished,
every-molar-is-a-poem, every-dust-mote-a-galaxy,
every-moss-carpeted-wood-is-a-witch's-realm pupils.
Cough up your butterflies. Blink out your oceans.
I want the widow's peak the stars gave you.
Your quiet. Gazelle stomach. Lepidopterarium chest
you never outgrew. Your flower face just
before it aprikola blooms.
Want Like Cupid’s Arrows
Beneath the poetry, a wise
mind dances. Joy sits weary
in Phidian langour. Spring isn't
here yet, but something shifts
and squints through frosted panes.
I've shed enough summers in amber
exuviae to know when to open
windows or keep curtains
drawn. But your love is
an August sun
glistening like mirror ball shards
on bruisey eyelids; our history,
rose thorns I can't connect to the plasmic
pigments freckling my forearms. Ask me
for a list of unpopular opinions,
and I'll write you love me, du liebst mich, me
amas a thousand times, in every language.
I've outgrown you
in more ways than I can count,
but you kiss my winter belly aftersun
pink. I put my reasons to leave under
a microscope, and still my heart
shoots its want
like arrows toward you.