So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

First, an announcement: For various reasons, I'm taking down the links to my own poems on this site. This is mainly because it has come to my attention that putting them here on this blog might make some editors decide they are already "published" and hence, not desirable. I know that's a long shot, but the good people at Duotrope's Digest recommend not making your work too widely available before it's been published. Another reason is that some of the poems I put up are still works-in-progress and I'm too lazy to update the links every time I tweak a word or two.

I suspect that I can count on one hand the people who will care/be affected by this change (sorry, Dad). Instead, I'm going to put up links to the publications that have been so kind as to publish my poems. If you desperately want to read my other poetry, well, just write me a note and I'll send you some.

Now on to today's poem, which is by May Swenson, my new poet crush. Swenson writes mostly about love and sex (she famously wrote a poem describing the act of cunnilingus with lines like "Pink lips the serrate/ folds taste smooth"). Her poetry is very erotic and some of it makes me blush, but I have to give props to anyone who dares to title a poem "Daffodildo."
Hello, that's awesome.

Today's poem is not about sex, though. Sorry. It is, however, very romantic in that it captures that sensation you have when you're in love and convinced that no one else on the planet exists.

Early Morning: Cape Cod

We wake to double blue:
an ocean without a sail,
sky without a clue
of white.
Morning is a veil
sewn of only two
threads, one pale,
one bright.

We bathe as if in ink,
but peacock-eyed and clear;
a roof of periwink
goes steep
into a bell of air
vacant to the brink.
Far as we can peer
is deep

royal blue and shy
iris, queen and king
colors of low
and high.
Then dips
a sickle wing,
we hear a hinged cry:
taut as from a sling

downwhips
a taunting gull.
And now across our gaze
a snowy hull
appears;
triangles
along its stays
break out to windpulls.

With creaking shears
the bright
gulls cut the veil
in two,
and many a clue
on scalloped sail
dots with white
our double blue.