The Poetry Hive Loves You!

XVII - Pablo NerudaI don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as one loves certain obscure things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose from the earth lives dimly in my body.I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you directly without problems or pride:I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,except in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Poem - Langston Hughes I loved my friend.He went away from me.There’s nothing more to say.The poem ends,Soft as it began—I loved my friend.

Dulzura - Sandra Cisneros Make love to me in Spanish.Not with that other tongue.I want you juntito a mi,tender like the languagecrooned to babies.I want to be thatlullabied, mi bienquerido, that loved. I want you insidethe mouth of my heart,inside the harp of my wrists,the sweet meat of the mango,in the gold that danglesfrom my ears and neck. Say my name. Say it.The way it’s supposed to be said.I want to know that I knew youeven before I knew you.

Scheherazade - Richard Siken Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lakeand dress them in warm clothes again.How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses runninguntil they forget that they are horses.It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the dayswere bright red, and every time we kissed there was another appleto slice into pieces.Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that meanswe’re inconsolable.Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.These, our bodies, possessed by light.Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

Woman - Audre Lorde I dream of a place between your breasts to build my house like a haven where I plant my crops in your body an endless harvest where the commonest rock is moonstone and ebony opal giving milk to all my hungers and your night comes down upon me like a nurturing rain.