Love Poems That Are Not About Suffering Are Difficult
Lauren Boisvert
I told you I was writing love poems
and you said oh no
like you knew they’d be about you;
I could’ve been writing
about the impeccable love
between cat and person
but instead, yes, I wrote about you
am currently writing about talking about writing
about you.
There’s some psychology about that somewhere
I’m sure:
Freud or Rilke or the great philosopher Siken.
Writing about writing
about someone you love
is a shallow act
like an old prospector panning for gold
praying for that little nugget of pure inspiration
an angel’s tear
unearthed from water
this poem is neither tear nor nugget
but something unpolished and raw
an unrefined wisdom on a shelf at the Goodwill
dusted off and taken home
with someone who collects neither nuggets nor tears
but cyclical renderings
of words and fat
a richness like a snake eating its own tail
and enjoying it.
I hold your cheek to mine
and I feel like I’m looking at the base of a globe
the light-up one I had as a child
suffused blue light and multicolored countries
I traced them all in marker
like I trace my fingernails along your back now
staring into that light
white Antarctica blazing in it’s frigid shell.