If I didn't look closely I might believe this story you tell with your smooth pressed shirt and carefully knotted tie but I see the way you bite your lip as you pull your hands in and out of pockets and I wonder: why not put those hands here come bite my lip instead?
Author: Elizabeth Maynard
Shanghai
Rainy day, Shanghai you sit across from me in that restaurant we liked maudlin as you say that you will never love another woman the way you loved me Let's hope so The women of the world deserve better
Amuse Bouche
Your name on my lips like a single icy flake this warm breath dissolves
Poets
You called me a poet and I will carry that gift around all day like those little folded notes I treasured in school passed by friends between classes sharp creases in the paper and lines of sparkling ink
How do we thank those who invite us to be more of who we are?
The First Hundred Days
A poet friend offered a challenge: Could I write 100 poems in 100 days? More than that: Would I share them with a group of strangers?
Some days words flew; other days I floundered. I kept writing. Almost three hundred poems later, I write every day.
You can do this, too.
It doesn't have to be good or, rather, I don't have to be, Mary said as her geese flew toward greener things
Knowing
You never know my young son said He wanted a sister a brother a puppy I laughed sometimes to myself sometimes out loud I was sure I knew what lay ahead Now he lectures me on the possible He was right before: I do not know cannot know what good is coming
This Verse 