Love Poem
by Andrea Gibson from “Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns”
You
are the music of two grasshoppers
making love in a school yard
where four-year-olds ask me,
what are the grasshoppers doing?
and I tell them they’re dancing to the music of
You
are the gaps of my ribcage
where the sunrise winds through to my heart and
You
are the moon when it bloomed for the very first time
and a child inspired unwound the lid of a jar
that set ten-thousand grasshoppers free and
You
drive me fucking crazy
I mean insanely.
You make me wanna take a fork to my eyeballs,
rip the hair from my armpits
and shove it down my throat
’cause I would rather choke
than argue another minute with you
but you are so
pretty.
And smart.
You know so many words.
You’re every poem I would write
if ink could ever hold the light
that glows from your toes
when you’re climbing up trees.
Girl, I swear ya got sap running thick in your veins
and I never love you more
than when you’re mourning the death of raindrops
falling forsaken on pavement.
God, I love how you hate pavement.
But you make me wanna smash my skull on pavement.
It’s true.
When we argue you make me wanna rip off my nose,
bone and all like my uncle Billy used to pretend to do.
He’d say, “Girl, I’m gonna rip off yer nose!”
Then he’d tug at my face
and hold up half his thumb
and half the time he’d fool me and I’d start crying.
But I’m older now and I’m not lying
you make me wanna rip off my nose.
Except when you don’t.
Sometimes you make me wish I had an extra nose
only to smell your hair,
because I love how your hair smells like… hair.
I always hated the smell of shampoo,
Besides
I love you.
It’s true.
The way you pretend to chew gum when you’re nervous.
The way you stick out your tongue
when you look in the mirror
’cause you think your face is shaped better that way.
And I love the way you pray
and I love the way you chew
and use chopsticks like you’re from Japan.
God, you’re a woman of culture.
I wanna eat you like a… not a vulture
a swan.
I wanna eat you like swans eat flowers.
Baby, if swans ever ate flowers
I would eat you like that for hours.
Except when you’re sour
and acting like a self-righteous grumpy old grump
like ya do sometimes,
’cause those times
you make me wanna run to the edge of the fucking world
and hurl myself into a black fucking hole
and never come back ever.
And then there’re the times I wanna be
with you forever and follow you forever
wherever you go
if only for the freckle in the middle of your belly
that’s just like mine,
or the time you corrected me for saying man
instead of human kind.
I can’t believe I did that.
Do you know how much I love your boobs?
Almost as much as I love how
you hate that I call breasts boobs
and say you’re tired of dating a 12-year-old boy,
but god, your boobs bring me joy.
Though I could live forever between the lines of your teeth
and eat nothing but memory and purge myself clean.
You are a dream.
We are a nightmare sometimes.
But if you wake up terrified
I’ll be there to hold you, fold you in the pockets of my faith
and say, “We’ll be ok.”
Mother of All Things 