April 26: Butter, Olive Oil, Flour

[Martha]

Butter, Olive Oil, Flour
Lucia Cherciu

Even the grocery list is a love poem, a prayer—
God, let me keep what I love.

Peaches, cheap. Books, brilliant—
mine so I can underline.

How aromatic the apricots,
how sharp the novels.

Together,
we have planted an orchard.

I don’t understand the word defensive:
are you supposed to just sit there?

I don’t think we have this word in Romanian;
we also don’t have a word for camel toe.

Or panty line: if you don’t see one
does it mean you’re going commando?

You always put a spell on me.
And everything I want is here—

but where am I?

--

Today in: 

2024: Origin Story, 1993, Adam Falkner
2023: For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on the Sidewalks in Connecticut, Hanif Abdurraqib
2022: Demeter, Midwinter, Mairead Small Staid
2021: from A Pillow Book, Suzanne Buffam
2020: Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild, J.P. Grasser
2019: After the First Child, the Second, Mary Austin Speaker
2018: A New Lifestyle, James Tate
2017: Anchorage, Joy Harjo
2016: Poem to First Love, Matthew Yeager
2015: Ode to the Reel Mower, Jim Daniels
2014: So Much Happiness, Naomi Shihab Nye
2013: Habitation, Margaret Atwood
2012: About Marriage, Denise Levertov
2011: In Praise of My Bed, Meredith Holmes
2010: Black Swan, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2009: In Me as the Swans, Leslie Williams
2008: Gnosticism V, Anne Carson
2007: American Names, Stephen Vincent Benet
2006: since feeling is first, e.e. cummings
2005: The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

+ Today's poem: Butter, Olive Oil, Flour, Lucia Cherciu