Tags: loving of art, sharing of art, art as object, writing of art, narrative, syntax, surprising last line
The funny thing about this poem, having read both of its precursors, is that this genuinely did mark something of a turning point in my life, like Mark Leidner describes here. Namely, it was one of my first times genuinely engaging with art in the sense that I loved this poem and its characters so much that I found myself thinking about it often and eventually emulating it as follows. Enjoy!
Having “Having “Having a Coke with You” with You” with You
James Bowden
is nothing special, but also everything special, I’m sorry, I oscillate between the two;
you had just sent me a poem called “Celebration” that I’d posted, thinking of you, of course
about love, and you said it was interesting how differently we’d interpreted it, that you were tempted
to send this to “new boy”, the only name we dared give him, but weren’t sure
if you’d stopped yourself partly because you were afraid to hand your heart on a platter to someone,
or partly because part of you sees sharing poems as something special just between you and me
and I, who hands my hearts on platters to anyone I possibly can, as early and as late as permitted,
asked you if you had seen this poem and that I absolutely adored it, and you responded a minute later
saying you were just about to send it to me actually, since you’d seen it independently
(but dependently, because you’d started following poetry accounts because I’d shared so many poems)
and you felt I’d memorize a poem just to ask someone their thoughts on it
and I awfully loved us both in that moment.
anyhow, I continued encouraging you to love him despite your fear of not having heart space
for us both, and talked about how I was going to bake an apple pie with “new girl” and
watch the hobbit and offer a piece of pie to “old girl”, who had deeply hurt me weeks before by
sleeping with my best friend without the customary 2 weeks’ notice, and whom I had
meant to go to in anger before I talked with you on the phone and all vitriol fled my heart
and the only thing I could fathom doing was hugging my hurt and love into each of them
before taking some countably indefinite amount of space, and never had my heart felt so full–
I still send you poems now and then, though you won’t engage, so there’s your answer to that,
and I think about all the having with you that I no longer can do
and I knew I wanted to be with you forever a year before having this poem with you, but just last night
I dreamt of you again and–how tender you were–I felt lost with your new boy there, as
will likely happen if I visit this summer and as happened last summer though realize it I did not,
but you smiled upon me with such warmth that I knew I was at the last line of the poem.
Here’s a link to the poem mentioned at the beginning, Mari Evans’ “Celebration”.
The upcoming poems will start to focus in on more specific aspects of poetry and its relation to art and sharing. The next few are very concretely about loving art, in particular.