It’s Not Love Till Someone Loses an Eye · Clay Ventre

How Best in Bronze to Show Your Feelings for Her

1.
Organize words into
tiny armies to invade
the shores of her
consciousness

2.
Hold your head
in your hands and
roll it up some
Sisyphean hill
named – Here is Where
the Hopeless Sigh

3.
Sigh

4.
Carve an immovable
statue of her

5.
Get used to it until
she shows up
carrying her
love
and a jackhammer

It’s not Love till Someone Loses an Eye

I should warn you
She said
Two of my former lovers
were dragged to their
deaths by wild horses

¿Only two?
He asked

Yes
She said tightening
her legs around him
But the horses part was
metaphorical

and he noticed the
sun had rolled off
to somewhere
it could be more
useful

The Godless Night Kitchen (remodeled)

Where day is overcooked
and blackened to night
and the wind comes drumming
a memory of the yesterday’s
morning
while everyone else is sleeping
more soundly than him and
his nimble fingers awake
at the abacus

He finds he and she add up
to something like unwelcome
religion
over and over again

And smiles are contraband
to each other
and in the morning he’ll wake
before her when
someone comes to him and
tells the truth of what
an unfinished symphony
they are

And that all hearts are designed
to harden and crack.

There are birds in there

That’s how they get out