Valentines 2/14/2010

Valentines…
I
So many sites sported valentine poems… Today, I started off O Pen with “Valentine” by Terri Ford, the poem for 2/14 on “Your Daily Poem”. If I say “valentine” – what do you think of ? Red, hearts, love, Rudi (as in Valentino)… and so let’s move on to “love”.

Check your adjectives, similes, and 5 lines packed with implied action
Valentine -- by Terri Ford

Hovering insectile love. Fretful love, every
two mile check-up love, nerve pill rope-end indecisive highly
diagnostic love. Bracing love. Speedy

love. Medieval leeching what ho troubadour head-
lopping dulcimer lost
ark love. Manifesto
love. Give up the throne
love. Love as truce. Tectonic plate
rearrangement love. Ultimatum bad

dog love. Ziplock
suffocation love. Bottom
feeder plankton love. Trophy preener
improvement love. Pink pluming
hope burning diary teen
reversion love. Blurt
out love. Perpendicular
gridlock love, hall
monitor love, detention love. Bad
press love. Half-Nelson Gladiator
headlock uncle you say it blood-

spitting hard-breathing down
for count head
injury love. Log-rolling jolly
motion river gusto wet and
galvanized love. Sympathetic

Red Cross love. Sinatra, Iglesias, Don Ho, Yo-
Yo, Dvorak, Monk Chant, Yanni love. Not entirely
believable love. Wild
love, burned at the stake love, iron
lung love, bone marrow pacemaker
toupee love. Love in remission,
amputee love, Federal Witness
Protection love, in hiding subtext
Morse Code spy love. Revisionist

love. Open book test
love. Boundless applause in the front
row love. African trumpeting large
flap love. Stealth Bomber
love. Slow me down
love. Keyhole light
love. Pebbled
bird’s egg love. Name it to
your face love, woke

up love, count on it
stouthearted no-leak no-fault
high octane 911 in the daylight unashamed
long haul fearful but right here intergalactic
Hovercraft love.

From Why The Ships Are She (Four Way, 2001)

II
I didn’t share this poem on Narrative
where love oscillates between verb and noun,
between mind and body. How why in the plural/ line break/sounds like wise.
I’d like to know what Heather McHugh would think of it…


Mind Loves -- by Jenny Factor

Who mind loved would not rather be loved body too.
Since all is all. Want eyes through everything. Like
comb through hair. Like water washing gold. Who
mind loved would not rather love body to body since
all is more than map making map that looks like man.
Who’d mind love. Who would rather love mind when
body needs body. Wants swing. Wants stone.
Wants flesh. Wants glass. If minds love (must love) (do
love) why not bodies love also. If not you who. Why
wise the uncertainty.

From Unraveling at the Name

**
Ted Kooser’s This Paper Boat from his book Valentines is far more satisfying.
See notes about 2/15.