Four Sappy Romance Poems

Before I Caught You, Fishing Kinda Sucked

The tide smells like ghost fish and the fan blows you
all over my apartment.

I feel your hairs clinging to me and grasp to find
nothing, another apparition.

I changed the sheets, it had been weeks, you were there
on that spread, but I had to change it. Wish I hadn't.

Changes are flung like fat plastic bottles into the river,
filling you and sinking you and drowning away

into a new less life form flailing like a salmon
in a story by Hemingway that's overrated.

The times I have ahead, the thought of fishing
and not catching you, using my bait on small fishes

instead of big loves, it is the way it should be, but the salt
taste in my mouth is one of loss, and it won't sweeten soon.

One Dance, More Than Physical

You say the boys

never danced with you

in school, that you

were too tall, you

intimidated them, but

I’m inches over you

so slow dance with me

in my living room, music

not allowed, your

heart is my speaker

and it sings waves

ocean sized, rocking

me when I dream

at night, of you

as your head rests

on my shoulder, moments

so soft, I step on your toe,

but when I do, I pull you

closer, and fix it with

my lips, on yours, on

neck, on forehead, on

eyelid, on nose-tip

if you let me

I’ll kiss you all over

Everywhere I can find

Everywhere

even inside.

  

Single Shot

Double grin, triple yes, and in her dress she calls
me the fiend, the addict, but she doesn't know much
about drugs, the circular magnetism of two poisons
mixed in equal parts restraint and release for perfect
fuck-yeah-that's-amazing reactions that leave dreams
in the dust and make reality the new sleepytime.

She is Where I Remain

Summer, she says. It used to be my least favorite
season, until that year, the one where we were
briefly. It's not quite broken glass, but shards
stick out of my mind, moments as sharp
as a Siren's tongue. Will you draw me
back with your song? You claim to be
someone who is never anything
but off-key, except for the fact that to me
your words are all I want to know, rocky shores
be damned, I'm coming home. 

** These four poems were published in eRomance, an offshoot of eFiction, which I believe now calls itself The Fiction Magazines. When I was told by Doug Lance, the editor and founder of eFiction, that I would be the featured poet in Issue #3 of eRomance, I was super-happy. When Mr. Lance replied to an email I sent him, one essentially saying what I just told you about how stoked I was, he began his note by calling me "Leon," to which I wrote this back: "My name is actually Leonard, not Leon (even though there was a very cool movie about an assassin with a young Natalie Portman that was made in the early nineties, I decided not to jump on that bandwagon and stuck with the full name instead)." Yeah, I really did that. He didn't reply to that email. Nor did he reply to any of my other emails when the issue was delayed and I was asking when it would go up. I checked the website the other day and Issue #3 was finally up, months late. He did this to another writer I know: accepted her work and never replied to emails she sent him about when it was going up.

So, Doug Lance is a D-Bag. Don't send eFiction any of your stories or poems if you are a writer who wants your work (and your birth-name) taken seriously. I am glad these pieces were accepted there, but regret everything else about the process.