Poetry

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American Life in Poetry: Column 529 & 530

by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 

People speak of “hearts and flowers” when they’re talking about poems with predictable sentimentality, but here’s an antidote to all those valentines, from Sally Bliumis-Dunn, who lives in New York. Her most recent book of poems is Second Skin, Wind Publications, 2010.

Heart

She has painted her lips
hibiscus pink.
The upper lip dips
perfectly in the center

like a Valentine heart.
It makes sense to me—
that the lips, the open

ah of the mouth
is shaped more like a heart
than the actual human heart.
I remember the first time I saw it—

veined and shiny
as the ooze of a snail—
if this were what
we had been taught to draw

how differently we might have
learned to love.

Poets often do their best work when they’re telling us about something they’ve seen without stepping into the poem and talking about themselves. Here’s a lovely poem of observation by Terri Kirby Erickson, who lives in North Carolina.

Hospital Parking Lot

Headscarf fluttering in the wind,
stockings hanging loose on her veinroped
legs, an old woman clings to her husband 

as if he were the last tree standing in a storm,
though he is not the strong one.

His skin is translucent—more like a window
than a shade. Without a shirt and coat,

we could see his lungs swell and shrink,
his heart skip. But he has offered her his arm,
and for sixty years, she has taken it.

Boulder Weekly takes poetry submissions of 250 words or fewer, along with a onesentence bio, at poetry@boulderweekly.com.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2014 by Sally Bliumus-Dunn and reprinted by permission. Poem copyright © 2014 by Terri Kirby Erickson, “Hospital Parking Lot,” from A Lake of Light and Clouds (Press 53, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Terri Kirby Erickson and Press 53. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts .