{ there is no world that isn't this. }

{ Marty McConnell: Marrying the Violence. }

Marrying the Violence
by Marty McConnell

I have taken the blueprint of your back for granted
as if the sidewalk were not an altar
and the sound of the shower not a hurricane
bearing down – there is no ceremony for this.
the night goes on in spite of the rain, much
like the mail. make me a bullet of a mouth,
sex love and money on the radio. not a bullet,
a gun. not a gun, a harbor. to hold you, against
this, against the night with its sirens and batons,
I fly down the block to you and the lights, in
harm’s way, all sixteen muscles of my tongue
pulled, meat for the men who don’t love you.
my love, ink is fool's armor. your good luck
works on no one in uniform. if it's true
that bone is harder than steel, make me
a building, a garden of calcium
and mineral in bloom, deadbolt
of a spine, you coming home whole,
the apartment of my head on your bulletless
chest / each time the cry of fight goes up
on the street I remember your hand, the man
rocking back on his heels, his mouth
a sidelong oval shocked into quiet
at last, his pale hand torn from your forearm --
love, lay your burden down, here, tell me how
to make this body a safehouse and not
a prison, how hold your hand when its every lifting
is an act of self-defense, how take the knife from you
and not call it murder, or surrender – the cabdriver,
the cop, the woman gripping her purse
on the L train conspire -- you are already
a weapon. I am no building, no shield,
less than cotton between the violent night
and your skin, less than teeth
ground down to bonedust
small, white as I am.

{ Stephen Dunn: Sweetness. }

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.

{ Ada Limón: Marketing Life for Those of Us Left. }

Marketing Life for Those of Us Left
by Ada Limón

Stuck in the answer of day,
all we’ve got are these people to rely on,
and trees, and the grasp of a river in the mind.

All the beautiful girls in the office are laughing and I laugh
along. And all of us good people, honest and clean,

And what puts the mean in some of us?

Sumptuous mountain, midnight milkweed,
come to the valley of neon and no-crying.

High hillside of home,
I’m waving from the cement center, can you see me?

I’ve got this big city in me. Pretty on fire, pretty high wired.

It’s been a year since Jess died, she said,
“I always knew it would come down to pills in the applesauce.”

And the house is not haunted, nor the office.

I wish it was, don’t you?

We were wilder before, see-through shirts
and model boys and bouncers in hotels lobbies
across the country.

Who knew it would be hard to get to thirty-two?

A friend says the best way to love the world is to think of leaving.

We’re all in a little trouble, you know?
Piles of empty stars we’ve tossed aside for the immediate kiss.

Push me around a bit, shake my pockets, I store everything
in my mouth, going to make an apple out of plastic,
going to make a real star out of the apple, then I’m
going to sell it to you.

I’m going to tell you it’s the most important thing.
I’m going to tell you I’m sorry, I’m going to crash
on your communal couch of unwanted.

Let’s say bloom.
Let’s say we’re a miracle of technology.
It’s harder to not say anything. It’s harder to admit
we are alive sometimes, isn’t it?

It’s all we’ve got, say it, pinch me.
You’re here. So am I. So there.

{ LOL IN RL. }