Eve Poetry

Nurse Mary (I Need You) by Yair Michaeli

I checked into the lobby of her one room apartment,
darkened corridor filled with paintings of Jesus.
The fountain throbbed in the hall of this hotel,
shuttered windows,
subtle innuendos,
three knocks.

The night was hot and black,
clothes stuck to our shirts.
The story is about summer and you,
and her dark little island of a room,
and all of her crooked roads,
that had their footprints in my odes.

She was born under the star of Venus, three stars above me.
Her light blue eyes, filled with humbleness, softly saddened.
Her painter’s eyes, mercury mouth at the biblical times.
Hair that was colored like wine dark sea fell down on her breast,
on lips that looked like bare roses,
blushing with blood, eating themselves with desire.

I was a wounded soldier, long afloat on a ship less sea.
Deserted and displaced from the war.
A war between the black and white,
A war between the man and the woman.
Utopian infant, Eutopian mother.
Born into this life, thrown into this world.

We entered the darkened room, and purposely didn’t turn on the lights.
She threw her house keys and bag on her bed, lit a cigarette.
Offered me one, however she took some of my own.
Looking into her eyes through the smoke, where the moonlight floats.
Lit lamp that was hanging from a distant boat.
Now I saw, there was a painting by Arnold Bocklin hanging on the wall.

A small rowing boat is just arriving at a water gate and seawall on shore.
An oarsman maneuvers the boat from the stern. In the boat, facing the gate, is a standing figure clad entirely in white, a lone loon dives upon the water. Just behind him, there is a festooned object commonly interpreted as a coffin. The tiny islet is dominated by a dense grove of tall, dark cypress and willow trees. The Mephistopheles is just beneath him. As siren grabs him from the of the edge of the boat, underwater.

And she wraps up my tired face in her hair
And she hands me the apple core,
Two birds in a cage, drinking lovers wine and eating bread.

I’ll stop in the middle and skip things between me and her. (It comes to us all, soft as a pillow)

The oarsman has gone
And the loons have flown for cover.
And me I am on trail, in the funeral of my lover.

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. For more information, see my disclosures here. 

A Poem I Wrote for My Hypothetical Husband While Stoned by Ari Lohr

hi. nice to meet you. my name is Ari. better known as the poet, known as the guy who saw you on tinder once, swiped right, wrote three half-assed similes about you and told you that i was a writer over text. when i say i’m a writer, i mean that i’m awkward. when i say that i’m awkward, i mean i will double-text you a love poem.

apparently, i’m not that good at first dates.
turns out
hiding all your flirting in mixed metaphors
because you’re too scared to talk to people
is a terrible way to continue a conversation
or establish any sort of human connection.
who knew?

some might say i’m a prick but i prefer the term rosebush. i’m cute, flowery, and pink, but at the same time i’m not afraid to cut a bitch. i am the type of guy who calls themselves badass, but gets embarrassed when their cat sees them naked after a shower. sometimes, i fantasize about gravity, write some weird metaphor about saturn, or love, or beg for you to dip me in your wedding ring arms like watch this, like listen to this rising pulse reach crescendo, like each heartbeat i give is a manifesto to breathing, like i love you so much i cannot breathe without being in your orbit, like sometimes, the difference between cardiac arrest and love is simply how poetic it is to write about. when i tell you that no one can write you like i do, i mean when you comfort me in the middle of an anxiety attack, i thank you by exhaling despite being breathless at your touch, by holding hurricanes in my chest and calling you my storm chaser, by not knowing what else to do but make noise, because indecision is the loudest form of silence i know. in that moment, i will tell you i love you for the first time that is not a poem. but what is this if not a poem? what is love if not the lonely language of ink? what is a poem if not the home of the heart’s most violent vocabulary? give me a pen or make me a god – i will love with the same penmanship. when i tell you i love you, i mean that in some stanza, somewhere, we are still sharing our first kiss. that in the space of three lines, our hearts harmonize in 1000 different dialects and swell to the silent song of the same supernova every second. when i write, the paper sings. with a single sonnet, i could serenade the sky to sleep ‘till this night lasts forever. there is no eye in this storm, only us. somewhere, i once saw a bottomless pit and jumped, which is to say that i am always falling for you.

when the sun rises and the ink dries, i’ll press my ear to the page and hear your name thaw in the warm morning air. i’ll text you and say i’m a writer, when, really, i am just braver over a keyboard than in person. i’ll be so crazy and chaotic and weird, but i’ll cherish every minute i spend searching for the right words. when i say that i’m a writer, i mean that every day, i greet the morning with ink, close my eyes and reach out and again, you are right here. i am always too awkward to say anything except

hi. nice to meet you. you know my name already.

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. For more information, see my disclosures here. 

Poseidon’s Memory by Elissa Capelle Vaughn

I leaned over the cliff, expecting Poseidon to break through the waves and flood the sky with aquamarine and gold.

What I found was a sea of rotting kelp beds stretching past the horizon. His underwater forests were just a memory decaying on the surface of the ocean.

The sulfuric air was still. There wasn’t even a ripple under the dead canopy. I imagined myself walking clear across toward the setting sun.

I watched the sun go down on that cliff, but I didn’t lose hope that something magical would happen.

I’ll never forget how bright the moon was when the Loch Ness emerged from Poseidon’s memory like a mountain.

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. For more information, see my disclosures here. 

Mountain House by Ron Tobey

You wear chaste tennis whites
modest skirt hemmed at your knees
front-buttoned short sleeved blousy shirt
white socks and canvas shoes
for the clay court
unusual attire for a date
we sit on a double wicker chair
on the Golf Shop porch
next to the Coca Cola dispenser.
At the record hop for teen guests of the Waumbek
you slow dance with me
a golf course employee
keeping greens
press tight as a lady’s deer-skin leather golfing glove.
Eighteen, reddish brunette hair cut above your shoulders,
skin blossoming rose after the day’s trials,
40-love
point
set
match
the model for the Coca Cola ad campaign
on the back cover of Life magazine
1963.
When you kiss you relax
your tongue gently traces the outline of my lips
in your mouth I glimpse life’s distance
moonlight reflects off the Presidential peaks
snow furtively glows above the tree line
Reverend Tuckerman’s glacial ravine
skiers in July race slalom flags and rocks
hay
mowed meadows
grass hills
roll out of Jefferson Intervale
the Waumbek golf course
pours liquid in the evening over the near landscape
dew settles on the whipped bentgrass
moles in silence hollow out their dark worlds
at whisker length beneath
ancestors in the cemetery call me
from coffins in granitic ground
near the 1913 Episcopal stone church
a cool Sunday morning you pray
bow your head
as now to rest upon my neck.
You are the girl I cannot see
falling for me
twist my life in poetry
I hear you fondle my rhymes
recite my lines in whisper
magically in my ancestors’ lyrical Irish brogue
play the Mountain House tennis circuit
two weeks here more contests
Balsams, Mount Washington, Mountain View
you hold my hand until your mother drives you away
from the portico where porters load your luggage
your blue-black tote of stringed tennis racquets in your car trunk.

Let go
you reappear

alarms clog the gutters
worry taps the window
death coughs at the door

in dilapidated memory
I am not free.

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. For more information, see my disclosures here. 

Comfort by Arwyn Vincent

You were a bipolar mess
and I was covered
in the low-road dust
of aimless men
but as you sobbed into my chest
I found tangled
iridescent
threads of heaven
coiled into your brown hair
and together
we gathered them
into a generous blanket
of shimmering lace
to veil
and comfort
our tumultuous hearts

Lie to Me by Arwyn Vincent

We know where this is going . . .

so before Time’s groping
hands take us into its cold embrace
and we fall into the dust
of old dreams
just
(for the love of God!)
kiss my careless lips
and lie to me
(please lie to me)
tell me our souls will unite
as afterglow in the dreams
of young lovers

Radiant Gift by Arwyn Vincent

I love the mornings
when it’s like the sun
leans over the earth
just for me
and lends me
its waking radiance
its slow dancing
glow of new morning light
to restore my heart
from desolate
night

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. For more information, see my disclosures here. 

The Antidote by August Jackson

When poison drips
from their gaping lips,
you may feel that
all you possess
is a river.

My dear,
you carry the antidote
in your veins,
so whatever lies
they may feed you
know that they serve
no purpose
here in yourself.

When A Man Cries by August Jackson

Tell me, darling.
How does a gentle snowfall
inspire a raging avalanche
as exquisitely as you do?
How does such an unmovable presence,
such an untouchable peace
become so frigid
and gorgeously undone?
Help me to make sense
of these contradictions.
How, my love?
How do you make weakness
look so strong?

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. For more information, see my disclosures here. 

Listen by Gabriel Angrand

I listen
to the whispers
of One who filled spaces
with words
and birthed light
out of nowhere

Warped time and space
to terraform homes
for all kinds of life

Spoke autobiography
into biospheres that leave us
with a million
thousand words
behind our irises

And from mountain
tops to ocean floors
all nature roars in volumes speaking of its Lion King

I’m listening
to the whispers and
they tell me,
“He can reform you too”

“Rebrand you
with the mission
He gave your ancestors
and we hope you’ll let Him
speak through you too”

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. For more information, see my disclosures here. 

On Deck by Stephen Mead

Crazy and not minding what is, after all,
only a word.
Further down is the street queen wearing
her usual wedding dress. It always looks
new & her hair is just so, immaculate Geri-curls
framing a face wizened as an infant’s
with the whisper of a smirk.

She’s wearing that now
as prowling tom cats in sailor suits,
as souvenir-laden tourists, the immigrants to come,
the immigrants of old, hold an inner Ellis Island,
hold a home port or know not knowing a home to lose.

I am on this ship banishing all thoughts
of selfishness for that, to us, may be just a walk
to some junk shop. What is forgiveness to some junk
on high seas, some multi-tiered wedding cake
about to pull anchor?

I think of love, the fall hard and fast, yet kept under a hat.
I think also of its potential ascension and these waves, words
in a diary writing, wiping themselves out.
Here, all is entirely possible & nothing is.

Now the horizon is a moving night city, a great
lit-windowed bus, and I, feeling all this, believe death
may come as a shrug. The calm then will be neither
indifferent or cold, just another area to open & say
“hello there” to, gladly perhaps, or a bit reserved,
with respect, expectations kept in check entirely.

Perhaps this finally is the time of humanity’s going,
as so many in the past, thought of their own age.
Perhaps this is the dawn of another time’s birth pangs
& it is all always about voyaging. Order. Restoration.
Some here. Some there, with chaos a constant fringe.

“I know. I’ve a few ideas,” the crazy street queen says,
handing me her wedding dress.

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. For more information, see my disclosures here.