Explore Poems: Infatuation & Crushes

In love again, I welcome the familiar
high, the dizzying state of detecting
signs around me that the world…

I still feel the same
As the day that I first met you
Though softened by all of this time

I still think…

I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
  a lot. It makes me nervous…

We land in the aisles of British fiction
to soak in the air conditioning. Your fingers
play the spines…

in the building two women’s restroom & in the strangest places
i want to tell you the most mundane things…

To all the boys
who asked me
to dance and to 
all the boys to whom
I said yes and to 
all the steps we took…

Loved you since I was little, on the playground break-time
-brawled with you and your mismatched cuffs…

Ready to fly, my heart has been unbuckling
for a long time, waiting. When you finally

arrive, we are…

He seems to me equal to gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
   to your …

I want
            my Luci Tapahonso cowboy
            with a shining belt
            and a good dog

he likes my legs in blue jeans
but even more,
            my poetry

we ride the moon’s shirttails
             till dawn
when we bless ourselves

and wade into the spring water,
            well-fed and wet faced

& while the sky turns...

Twelve years old and lovesick, bumbling
and terrified for the first time in my life,
but strangely hopeful, too, and stunned,
definitely stunned—I wanted to cry,
I almost started to sob when Chris Klein
actually touched me—oh God—below the belt
in the back row of the...

Coming back
from the ski trip
in the back of a van,

it had gotten dark

enough for
the steady hum
of the engine

to lull us all

into a deep sleep—
my best friend
and I having

the backseat

all to ourselves.
Have you ever felt
your body starting

to lean toward

its truest
intentions—head
hoping hard

for...

I

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.   
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,   
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed   
Gaily digging and scattering.

And in answer to their treble interjections   
The sun beats lightning...

Under the sagging clotheslines of crepe paper
By the second string of teachers and wallflowers
In the school gym across the key through the glitter   
Of mirrored light three-second rule forever   
Suspended you danced with her the best slow dancer   
Who stood on tiptoe who...

There are people to live for and people to die            for I comfort myself: there are people to sleep with and people to wake with            there are fifty thousand years...

I tried to stay away. Could not. I’d turn to  J
    or T and say: Today’s the day

it stops. Nothing right should feel
    this dirty, nothing real

this quicksilver and fanged. I kept thinking
    of  that show My...

It's easy to
fall in love
with the
grocery store boys—
the one with the
tiny coffee cup
sweatshirt, too-tight
pants & cotton shoes or
the impossibly pale
fish boy who smiles
when he says, I'm
from Alaska. Your
heart swelled,
stupid &
dreaming
of a boat
in arctic
waters,
stars,
dots
that 
dot the
ocean floor, you
will read
him poems & he
will...

Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no...

The twilight of your face,
the unknown bird in your voice,
drew me to your eyes’ green vision,

your song about a moment
that stood in the shadow
of a moon vulnerability,

a Natalie I saw standing alone,
at your friend Carolyn’s party
years ago, where you called

me...

Side by side through the streets at midnight,
Roaming together,
Through the tumultuous night of London,
In the miraculous April weather.
 
Roaming together under the gaslight,
Day’s work over,
How the Spring calls to us, here in the city,
Calls to the heart from the heart of...