Lines on Love’s (Loss*)

^{what we do not dream we cannot manufacture}

Art follows ear and echo

covers/chooses

selective

eyesight searches the dust

and is surprised by love’s

apophatic blinking

what love sees in daily light

holds open color—ink, roar, melody and quiet

is its own steady gaze

to better endure bumps

“always more song to be sung” between the words

jars memory and its subatomic _____________

moving at the speed of thought _____________

in random thirsts rise_____________

name the sensations, _________________

to fish for breath, ________________________________

combing through hair as tangled as nets, as__________________

thick as the beat of blossoms’ _____________

a fine line between mind and senses spinning ________

in which her/my/their body becomes expert________________

without waiting for unified theory,

loving the body of one’s choice and _________________________

to live so surrounded ______________________

with fewer asterisks and ____________________

more verbs and _____________________

fewer security alerts __________________

there eloquence before ____________________

and above

__________________the grave.
 

^{*For Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor}

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“‘Lines on Love’s (Loss*)’ assembles many aphoristic phrases and fragments gathered over the years into one poem. The poem reads love of many varieties—agape, romantic, communal, and spiritual—as difficult and transformative. The poem was a poem before the blanks were added, but the blanks are important to the sense I wanted to convey that art, like love, stimulates our imaginations through open forms. I use the word ‘apophatic’ to signal how poetic art marks deep ‘truths’ as powerfully as direct citation through sound (music) and form.”
—Erica Hunt