karenanne

In a Beautiful Country by Kevin Prufer

A good way to fall in love
is to turn off the headlights
and drive very fast down dark roads.

Another way to fall in love
is to say they are only mints
and swallow them with a strong drink.

Then it is autumn in the body.
Your hands are cold.
Then it is winter and we are still at war.

The gold-haired girl is singing into your ear
about how we live in a beautiful country.
Snow sifts from the clouds

into your drink. It doesn’t matter about the war.
A good way to fall in love
is to close up the garage and turn the engine on,

then down you’ll fall through lovely mists
as a body might fall early one morning
from a high window into love. Love,

the broken glass. Love, the scissors
and the water basin. A good way to fall
is with a rope to catch you.

A good way is with something to drink
to help you march forward.
The gold-haired girl says, Don’t worry

about the armies, says, We live in a time
full of love. You’re thinking about this too much.
Slow down. Nothing bad will happen.

Sweetness by Stephen Dunn

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear 
one more friend 
waking with a tumor, one more maniac 

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness 
has come 
and changed nothing in the world 

except the way I stumbled through it, 
for a while lost 
in the ignorance of loving 

someone or something, the world shrunk 
to mouth-size, 
hand-size, and never seeming small. 

I acknowledge there is no sweetness 
that doesn’t leave a stain, 
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet …. 

Tonight a friend called to say his lover 
was killed in a car 
he was driving. His voice was low 

and guttural, he repeated what he needed 
to repeat, and I repeated 
the one or two words we have for such grief 

until we were speaking only in tones. 
Often a sweetness comes 
as if on loan, stays just long enough 

to make sense of what it means to be alive, 
then returns to its dark 
source. As for me, I don’t care 

where it’s been, or what bitter road 
it’s traveled 
to come so far, to taste so good.

Each From Different Heights by Stephen Dunn

Each from different heights

That time I thought I was in love
and calmly said so
was not much different from the time
I was truly in love
and slept poorly and spoke out loud
to the wall
and discovered the hidden genius
of my hands
And the times I felt less in love,
less than someone,
were, to be honest, not so different
either.
Each was ridiculous in its own way
and each was tender, yes,
sometimes even the false is tender.
I am astonished
by the various kisses we’re capable of.
Each from different heights
diminished, which is simply the law.
And the big bruise
from the long fall looked perfectly white
in a few years.
That astounded me most of all.

A Hunger So Honed by Tracy K. Smith

Driving home late through town
He woke me for a deer in the road,
The light smudge of it fragile in the distance,

Free in a way that made me ashamed for our flesh–
His hand on my hand, even the weight
Of our voices not speaking.

I watched a long time
And a long time after we were too far to see,
Told myself I still saw it nosing the shrubs,

All phantom and shadow, so silent
It must have seemed I hadn’t wakened,
But passed into a deeper, more cogent state of dream–

The mind a dark city, a disappearing,
A handkerchief
Swallowed by a fist.

I thought of the animal’s mouth
And the hunger entrusted it. A hunger
So honed the green leaves merely maintain it.

We want so much,
When perhaps we live best
In the spaces between loves,

That unconscious roving,
The heart its own rough animal.
Unfettered.

The second time,
There were two that faced us a moment
The way deer will in their Greek perfection,

As though we were just some offering
The night had delivered.
They disappeared between two houses,

And we drove on, our own limbs
Sloppy after that, our need for one another
Greedy, weak