Amy Gerstler Quotes

Fuck You Poem #45

Fuck you in slang and conventional English.
Fuck you in lost and neglected lingoes.
Fuck you hungry and sated; faded, pock marked, and defaced.
Fuck you with orange rind, fennel and anchovy paste.
Fuck you with rosemary and thyme, and fried green olives on the side.
Fuck you humidly and icily.
Fuck you farsightedly and blindly.
Fuck you nude and draped in stolen finery.

Fuck you while cells divide wildly and birds trill.
Thank you for barring me from his bedside while he was ill.
Fuck you puce and chartreuse.
Fuck you postmodern and prehistoric.
Fuck you under the influence of opiun, codeine, laudanum, and paregoric.
Fuck every real and imagined country you fancied yourself princess of.
Fuck you on feast days and fast days, below and above.
Fuck you sleepless and shaking for nineteen nights running.
Fuck you ugly and fuck you stunning.

Fuck you shipwrecked on the barren island of your bed.
Fuck you marching in lockstep in the ranks of the dead.
Fuck you at low and high tide.
And fuck you astride
anyone who has the bad luck to fuck you, in dank hallways,
bathrooms, or kitchens.
Fuck you in gasps and whispered benedictions.

And fuck these curses, however heartfelt and true,
that bind me, till I forgive you, to you.

Domestic

Where's the wisdom in erasing a loved one's mess,
so akin to his signature? Your honor, I only meant
to strew the immaculate in his wake. To wipe the path
ahead and behind reasonably clean. Futile, yes,
but weren't such gestures essential to love's discipline
once upon a time? Daily, I harvested dropped fruit peels
and socks. I chased him through life with dustpan
and broom, smoothed his body dents from the bed,
soothed the mud tramped floors. Did I sin in this?
Better to leave the habitat sweetly reeking of him
than to spend years scrubbing up evidence of his existence.
Archaelogists centuries hence may marvel at such relics:
his mustard stained napkins, toothpicks chewed
to splinters. Never let it be said that in my zeal
to clean I robbed the future's museums. Who
am I to call what flies to either side of the trail
he blazes--half read magazines, cups of scummed
over coffee and mashed out cigarettes--dirt?

Love doesn't reside in the heart, anyway. Love resides in the liver along with jaundice.