NaPoWriMo Day 10, 2022

Homage to Apollinaire by Mark Chagall (1911-1912)

Today’s prompt “is pretty simple – a love poem! If you’re having trouble getting into the right mood for a love poem, maybe you’ll find inspiration in one of my favorites, June Jordan’s “Poem for Haruko.”’ (Full NaPoWriMo post available here.)

I have two responses to this prompt, one serious, one less so. The first piece addresses the myth of the androgyne. The second, a well-known character from a nursery rhyme. These are both persona poems.

The Lonely Half of the Androgyne

Put your hand over my eyes
like this.
I can almost feel it. I can almost
tell it’s a hand.
All the hands I see
resemble yours.
Somewhere you dream
of my palm
swooping lightly over your
eyelids, a barely there
brush. Infinite
tenderness.
It doesn’t matter
how real.
Having thought of it
is enough.
Every day I wake in this
half-body,
I think of it as separate
from yours. I end
before you begin. Where
do you begin?


Itsy Bitsy Spider in Love

She comes on stilts, as always.
I swear, she’s the tallest woman I know.
How can I not fall for her,
who constantly falls for me
from way up there?
The water spout? It’s a device.
Like a hook that pulls you
right in. I am never
washed out. I am washed
clean. She does it from the inside
out and from the outside in.