The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Mon 3/24/2008)

I Want a Love Poem

Millions of tiny throated blossoms wave with wind
outside girlhood's window, already beginning
to die as I clip them into vases, purple and white

everywhere, full blown lilacs glorious in their
brief bending. Don't forget the love-drunk bees
so stuffed with passion they topple down the chimney,

crawl on the living room carpet to die. Listen: do you hear
their faint whirring? See the gypsy fortuneteller
in her glass cage, illuminated only by quarters?

She jerks to life, flurry of red and gold scarves,
enormous baubles on her fingers. She deals a card
with your secret, are you passionate, indifferent,

or cold? See her grow dark? It's the new century,
love, and those poems I once knew are lost to me now.
I remember a smudge of sentences, line breaks

all wrong, but each true to its own fragrance.
Now I'm writing love poems--should I ask the obvious
questions? I'm drifting on the edge of my new

black dress, slashed low to my electric cleavage,
an underskirt of red tulle. How it shivers, so lavish
someone must say beloved. Perhaps I spend

all day in bed, my lovely skin, beautiful still,
tangled in a sheet of passion. Will you write
a couple of lines on a card, slip it under the door?
Just a word or two like oh love or finally, you.

Virginia Chase Sutton

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Her prize winning book of poems, What Brings You To Del Amo, was published in October 2007 by University Press of New England. Her first book of poems, Embellishments, was published in Febuary 2003 by Chatoyant. Her poems have appeared in a number of literary publications including "Paris Review", "Ploughshares", "Antioch Review", "Boulevard", "Quarterly West", "Western Humanities Review", "Witness" and many other publications. Poems appear in recent anthologies "Are You Experienced?" (U of Iowa 2002) and "Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Poets on Tattoos, Tattoos on Poets" (Warner 2002), "Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets on Housework" (U of Iowa 2005), "Manthology: Poems From the Male Perspective" (U of Iowa 2006). She's been a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Walt Whitman Award, Akron Poetry Prize, Morse Poetry Prize, New Issues Poetry Prize, Four Way Books, Levis Poetry Prize and many others. Five times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she has been the Louis Untermeyer Scholar at Bread Loaf, won first prize for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, has been a fellow at Writers at Work, was a winner for the Paumanock Visiting Writers Series, a winner in the National Poet Hunt, and other competitions. She has been a fellow at the Ragdale Foundation many times and once at Vermont Studio Center. She has received many grants for her teaching and writing from "Poets and Writers," Tempe Cultural Council, Arizona Humanities Council, Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the Scottsdale Cultural Council along with several Professional Development Grants. She's completed poetry manuscripts, "Reading Electra To Sleep," "Madame X." She is currently working on a memoir called "Famished" and a poetry collection title "Introducing the Varga Girl."

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:hi:

RL

I'm drifting on the edge of my new


black dress, slashed low to my electric cleavage,
an underskirt of red tulle.

:hi:

RL

:kick:

RL

:kick:

RL

"Will you write
a couple of lines on a card, slip it under the door?
Just a word or two like oh love or finally, you."


Finally, you...


Words we all need and want to hear. Sigh...

:hi:

RL

:thumbsup: :hi:

:hi:

RL

:D

:hi:

RL

:hi:

:hi:

RL

Mind-meld?

:hi:

RL