Poem by Kim Addonizio

So, I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of appreciation for poetry in the world. Ok, I know what you are thinking, Sara just got her MFA and is feeling high and mighty about preaching poetry awareness...blah blah blah i wish she would stop talking so i could make a cheese sandwich, you can't cover poetry with delicious cheddar, hmm, sharp, man i am hungry.... LISTEN! The thing is, I hate the lofty better than thou poetry that poets only write to other poets. I like accessibility and beauty and tangibility. I don't write something that someone is not going to "get". I don't spell it out for people either -- but I to use imagery and senses to bring people to a different place. So, I could use this blog as a masturbatory forum where I only post my own stuff -- but its bigger than that. I have decided to post some poems I think would appeal to people on different levels, and ones that I love. Feel free to post your comments and thoughts on the poem -- and in essence if that happens -- great! Lets start talking. Poetry is the key to what is lacking in this world. And when I say that, lets not assume I think there is only one lock... and there ain't no skeleton key either. So, enough of the rant, onto the poem, and I hope you enjoy the new feature.



Fuck

There are people who will tell you
that using the word fuck in a poem
indicates a serious lapse
of taste, or imagination,

or both. It’s vulgar,
indecorous, an obscenity
that crashes down like an anvil
falling through a skylight

to land on a restaurant table,
on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.
But if you were sitting
over coffee when the metal

hit your saucer like a missile,
wouldn’t that be the first thing
you’d say? Wouldn’t you leap back
shouting, or at least thinking it,

over and over, bell-not clanging
in the church of your brain
while the solicitous waiter
led you away, wouldn’t you prop

your shaking elbows on the bar
and order your first drink in months,
telling yourself you were lucky
to be alive? And if you wouldn’t

say anything but Mercy or Oh my
or Land sakes, well then
I don’t want to know you anyway
and I don’t give a fuck what you think

of my poem. The world is divided
into those whose opinions matter
and those who will never have
a clue, and if you knew

which one you were I could talk
to you, and tell you that sometimes
there’s only one word that means
what you need it to mean, the way

there’s only one person
when you first fall in love,
or one infant’s cry that calls forth
the burning milk, one name

that you pray to when prayer
is what’s left to you. I’m saying
in the beginning was the word
and it was good, it meant one human

entering another and it’s still
what I love, the word made
flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one
whose lovely body I want close,

and as we fuck I know it’s holy,
a psalm, a hymn, a hammer
ringing down on an anvil,
forging a whole new world.

--Kim Addonizio