For Valentine’s Day this year we called upon our wonderful literary community for Anti-Valentine’s Day poetry. For some of us, it’s not all candy hearts and cupids. If, by any chance, you spent the joyous occasion ripping the wings off of Cupid cut-outs and shredding paper hearts to pieces, we hope this collection of poetry submissions from writers in the greater New England area is just the outlet you need. In other words, Mass Poetry has decided to lean into the angst.
After We Fight
By Kerry Loughman
These pink roses
you've brought me
as gift rescued
from compost
edges
shriveled & torn
tinged with
an oxidized stain
the way
blood dries
on a wound
crusty and raised
Remembrance
by Kathleen Latham
You’re sitting in a car
that’s really a desk
with a boy who isn’t there
while a song bleeds
from a far-off speaker
and you are back there
in your youth, in your
beauty. You are back there,
and you are whole.
What is memory if not
a kind of mourning
that brings us to our knees
on a Friday in February?
some things sound awesome on paper but in actuality are really lame
By Annie Bolger
daily sunrise yoga
me sitting at your kitchen counter, while you
cook us
eggs, just
the way
i like
you humming a song i wrote
batman
getting
a bitewing xray
Loved Ones, Not Lovers
By Ellen Doré Watson
Otherwise I’ll be left alone with the muscle of me
like a blessing never delivered. Otherwise February
will atrophy, even if I'm okay buying myself flowers.
Otherwise my days will be countless oysters, shucked
& sucked & slippery gone. An Aphrodisiac? Just
their name turns my stomach. I’d no sooner eat one
than be on the lookout for a lover. No sooner consider
sex sanctified than pretend to be a cellist—sacred
calling that it is. As sacred as unsexy love: no make-up,
whatever’s on-the-radio love. Scrabble in sweats love.
Say I spill olive oil on Z.’s turquoise leather purse, or
take my eyes off my grandbaby for two seconds &
—thwack!—his head meets the wood floor. My people
freak, then simmer, then sigh & affirm our forever.
Born on a Day Meant for Two
By Sophie Hong
I know how much you hate this Day
With couples swooning
left and right,
Ever the anti-romantic.
I know how much you hate this Day
So much that you wear a shirt that says,
“Love is in the air”
Above a picture of a gas mask.
I know how much you hate this Day
But let us not forget,
That on this Day
There is something far more important to celebrate:
And
That
Is
You.
Look how far You have come
From a high school kid always late to orchestra class
With a tumbler of iced coffee in hand
To an adult in college
Stepping into the unknown.
You are the
Most courageous,
Most confident,
Most unbothered,
Most honest,
Most unique,
Person I have ever had the honor to know.
So this February 14th,
Forget the glittering greeting cards.
Forget the candy-coated chaos.
Forget the long-winded love songs.
And let us celebrate You.
I know I do.
Happy Birthday.
Laundry
By Holly Thompson
what does it mean when
even after agitation
the socks are still paired?
Still Life with Divorce Absolute
By Amanda Hope
It is possible, likely even,
that having been thus sundered,
we will travel so far apart as time goes on,
recoiling from the impact of our years together,
that your life will not be recognizable to me,
playing out somewhere with gleaming floors
and stainless-steel appliances, perhaps
reliably caring for the animals each day,
perhaps putting down the smartphone
that was your escape and anesthetic
for hours at a time, to look a dear one
in the eyes as she speaks,
but whatever happens to you, even this,
I will always remember you
in our run-down apartment, lying
on the couch, flipping me off
when I asked you to get the door,
and later, when I told you it was over,
picking up the kitchen knife and using it
to untie your shoes, as if deciding
what kind of person you were,
or, already knowing, wanting me to guess,
and later still, months after I had left
with that old couch, still sitting on the floor
where it had been, too curdled with resentment
of its absence to bother replacing it.
No Seek
By Ellen Doré Watson
No seek, no prince. No
nervous invite. I know sparks
can spark in late life but me—
now? I can’t say I wouldn’t
sway, but it would take some
big true to lug me from this
good groove—and then no doubt
prove too good to be true.
My yearnings are way more
physical than I am. Sure, I
might yield to sweet heat if
the whole nine yards sashayed
my way, but truly: count these
buts! Months of distance, still
crazy lucky in walking thought
that blooms to words, and each
day’s blood joy, whether y
eye or ear—it’s not more love
I need but hours.
After St. Valentine
By Julia Zhang
And all the women and men and crocuses
distraught in their strange currency of events,
jerked by their hearts across streets, skidding on their kneecaps
scouring for the promises, scattered across treetops
like small flags, issued without dates
expiring silently under cycles of sunset and sunrise,
still could not fill their bodies with enough blood.
And sight and hearing were restored to the girl
inside the prison bars of her bones,
recalling that once, I had been petty as a lover
until time played my bones like a flute,
gushing echoes that levitated me beyond harm.
And again I recognize this chamber of soil and stones,
and step into the quiet pagan sun.
Tongue Tie
By Kale McKenney
I cannot
for the life of me
form the words,
my tongue
Stuck
to the soft palate
roof of
my mouth.
I know for
A fact
you’re bored and
the only way to get
what I want
is to loosen my tongue
spit it out
tiny ball of fire
some draconic phrase
all teeth
all bite
all smoke and
mirrors.
I love
I love
I want
to go home.
And this
some
clandestine pact
some story
an interlude
written in
Lesser stars
in blood
in spit
in teeth
is nothing.
It is only
breath
truth
a malformed oath
something which
to take in
recoil
to spit.