Sunday, September 01, 2013

I Take Your T-Shirt to Bed Again

And by now it has almost lost its scent—
your scent, as when you were here and turned
towards the wall while I pressed my body
into your body and sighed, “You smell like candy”
into your t-shirted back. Yes, the smell is yours
the shirt warmed by your lean torso, tufted
and delicious. I’ve washed my clothes in your soap,
but that wasn’t it—there must be something sweet your pores
pour forth. In three days you will be here and we will drink
from and with each other, sleep in close quarters,
naked, awake to heat and singing cells and slickness. But now,
 too tired even to please myself, I breathe the shirt that covers
my pillow and dream—our yes and yes and yes opening and opening—

----Amy Lemmon


Published in The Best American Poetry 2013 (Scribner, 2013)
Originally published in Vitrine:a printed museum

Monday, February 18, 2013

best american poetry....and best of the net!

I'm getting some great poetry news so far in 2013. My poem "I take your T-shirt to bed again..." was selected for The Best American Poetry 2013, which will be published by Scribner in September. I've written for the Best American Poetry blog several times, but this is the first time my work will actually appear in that estimable annual collection.

Furthermore, Gerry LaFemina's poem "Bright Windows," which I selected for the Summer 2012 issue of Ducts.org, was chosen for the 2012 Best of the Net Anthology! That should be online later this month, I hear. I'll post again when it's out.


Sunday, January 13, 2013

Rilke is my litany


The place we rip open again and again
that always heals—that’s God.
We are all sharp-edged from our need
to know; He is spread out, serene.

Even the pure and blessed libations
He takes into His world in just
one way: by staying motionless,
never controlling the way things turn out.

Only the dead drink
from that spring that we can hear,
when the god signals to them, silently.

Just the noise of it reaches us.
And the lamb begs for its bell
out of its quieter instinct.

 Sonnets to Orpheus, Part II, #16
Trans. David Young