Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with the martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and the weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look.
Contents List
NEW POEMS (2015)
13 Lives of the Poets
14 Scrapbook
16 Idioms for Rain
18 Plastic
19 Here Be Dragons
20 Divine
22 Seasonal Affective Disorder
24 Reel
25 Postmodern Romance: Internet Dating
27 Prosody Pathetique
28 Darkening, Then Brightening
29 Pareidolia
30 Party
31 White flower, Red flower
33 Sleep Stage
35 Dream the Night My Brother Dies
36 Candy Heart Valentine
37 Last Lights
38 The Givens
40 Invisible Signals
from THE PHILOSOPHERS’ CLUB (1994)
42 What the Dead Fear
43 first Poem for You
44 The Sound
45 The Concept of God
46 The Philosopher’s Club
48 Full Moon
49 Gravity
50 Them
51 The Call
53 Beds
54 The Last Poem About the Dead
from TELL ME (2000)
57 The Numbers
58 Glass
60 Quantum
62 Theodicy
64 Garbage
66 Things That Don’t Happen
69 Night of the Living, Night of the Dead
70 Virgin Spring
72 New Year’s Day
74 Generations
76 Near Heron Lake
77 Collapsing Poem
79 The Divorcee and Gin
80 Intimacy
82 Last Call
83 The Promise
84 The Body In Extremis
85 Rain
86 Tell Me
88 Mermaid Song
89 Onset
90 ‘What Do Women Want?’
91 Good Girl
92 Physics
94 Aliens
95 Like That
97 Prayer
98 One-Night Stands
99 For Desire
100 flood
from WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE (2004)
103 Stolen Moments
104 Blues for Dante Alighieri
105 So What
106 Muse
107 You Don’t Know What Love Is
108 Ex-Boyfriends
110 Death Poem
111 Scary Movies
113 Dead Girls
114 Eating Together
115 Cat Poem
117 February 14
118 It
119 The Way of the World
120 Chicken
122 Lush Life
123 Bad Girl
124 Blues for Robert Johnson
125 Fuck
127 Romance
128 Kisses
from LUCIFER AT THE STARLITE (2009)
130 November 11
132 For You
133 Lucifer at the Starlite
134 Storm Catechism
135 Verities
136 Long-Distance
138 You Were
139 The first Line Is the Deepest
141 Another Day on Earth
142 The Smallest Town Alive
143 The Matter
145 Crossing
146 Weaponry
147 Suite pour les Amours Perdus
152 In the Lonely Universe
153 Merrily
154 Sui
155 My Heart
156 Semper
157 Shrine
158 News
160 Happiness After Grief
from MY BLACK ANGEL: BLUES POEMS AND PORTRAITS (2014)
163 Cigar Box Banjo
164 Creased Map of the Underworld
166 Half-Hearted Sonnet
167 Radio Blues
168 Open Mic
170 Heraclitean
171 Queen of the Game
172 Please
173 Penis Blues
175 Spell Against Impermanence
176 Black Snake Blues
177 Northeast Corridor Blues
178 When Joe filisko Plays the Blues
180 Salvation
181 The Women
183 Wine Tasting
Related Audio
Kim Addonizio talks to Maurice Riordan, Editor of The Poetry Review, about riffing on the canon and traditional forms, her view that 'emotional experience is the essence of any art' and how 'the best humour is also dark and traffics with something else' – how she uses poetry as a process of discovery. She also reads her poem 'White Flower, Red Flower' from Wild Nights.