Angels and Moths / Olena Kalytiak Davis

If a man once loved you,
he’s turned you into a moth.

That’s how he’ll remember
the flutter: that numinous,
that beating, that winged.

Angels and moths:
that’s who men love.

But I don’t recollect like that.
I don’t think I ever loved
that gently. And I’ve never
flown toward a burning
house, hoping, maybe
my faith lay in that
single thing left,
in that smoldering filigree.
I never reminisce
a sorrow that delicately shaped.

But sometimes I feel someone remembering
me that way: translucent,
crazy, awake only at night.
He’s regretting his fingertips
were not wide or soft enough.
He’s mourning me now.
He’s imagining me eating away
at someone else’s light.

And that’s perfect.
That’s exactly how
he always wanted to love
me. My wings, 
my hair-like antennae
hanging;
my frenulum
between his forefinger
and his thumb.

A Name by Ada Limón

toriethevampireslayer:

When Eve walked among the animals and named them—
nightingale, redshouldered hawk, fiddler crab, fallow deer—
I wonder if she ever wanted them to speak back, looked into their wide wonderful eyes and whispered, Name me, name me.

“When Leather is a Whip” By Martín Espada

At night,

with my wife

sitting on the bed,

I turn from her

to unbuckle

my belt

so she won’t see

her father

unbuckling

his belt

“Love Poem” By Richard Brautigan

it’s so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don’t love them
any more.

(via orchis)

“Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich,—yes, richer than a king,—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

lovequotesrus:

Photo Courtesy: somebody-that-i-used-to-know

(via deadbedfellows)

“Tattoo” by Todd Davis

Try telling the boy who’s just had his girlfriend’s name
cut into his arm that there’s slippage between the signifier
and the signified. Or better yet explain to the girl
who watched in the mirror as the tattoo artist stitched
the word for her father’s name (on earth as in heaven)
across her back that words aren’t made of flesh and blood,
that they don’t bite the skin. Language is the animal
we’ve trained to pick up the scent of meaning. It’s why
when the boy hears his father yelling at the door
he sends the dog that he’s kept hungry, that he’s kicked,
then loved, to attack the man, to show him that every word
has a consequence, that language, when used right, hurts.