with time you see the golden threads
connecting you, me, us, the past
each pulse bringing gifts
bringing poisons given with love as children
not knowing
.
with time you see everything
your side and his and hers and theirs
all the facets diamond-sharp
is it pain or joy
.
when you look too long at it
you’re left with double vision
i can’t see my side without seeing your own
.
Copyright 2021 Autumn Looijen
If you try to write poetry
when checklists are on your mind
The imagery is off
Everything crisp and black and white in the name of speed.
Poetry is inefficient
It takes
[ ] time
[ ] perspective
[ ] a delicious sense of humor (optional)
which you cannot find in paragraph 1.A.iii.
(See paragraph 1.B.viii instead.)
No one looks up from a lease agreement and says, how beautiful, how striking.
No, it’s how clear, how precise
Brains crunching words like numbers
While the rest of us waits to breathe.
©2020 Autumn Looijen
Slow spirals, gentle pressure, turn the heat up. Oil the edges.
It’s firming up as we kiss. One minute only; we can’t let it burn.
Turn away, a flick of the wrist, turn the heat down.
I’ve only just stepped into the forest of your eyes and already I’m lost, my breadcrumbs disappeared. I find my way back by the scent of dosas browning on the stove.
© Copyright 2020 Autumn Looijen
I remember
One playhouse,
Two chairs,
Four blankets,
Twenty drops of rain,
Your hands working beside mine
Before I’d even asked.
Crickets in the night,
Your face unmasked in the garden lights,
Conversation so good, our clothes stayed on.
Childhood poems and rethinking history:
Systems to be undone,
Holes to fill.
Where is my little voice that always says no?
Rushing to the cliff’s edge and pulling back
Again and again
Calling your name in the dark
Hands brushing the grass
© Copyright 2020 Autumn Looijen
Dark kitchen longing
Fingers in the cantaloupe
And you lick them clean
© Copyright 2020 Autumn Looijen
The kitchen is my favorite place
Better even than the worn futon where we stayed up till dawn
Tongues busy with lust and conversation.
In the daytime kitchen we cook,
A dance of knives and fire and longing
And in the nighttime
By the hood light
In the nighttime kitchen we give in to the fire
Your fingers in my cunt
Moving together as the pressure builds and we rock against each other
Everything spiced with the taste of danger
© Copyright 2020 Autumn Looijen
