Poetry Magazine
Valentine, Valentine
Valentine, valentine you arrive
in a town car with a chauffered envelope,
scattered pieces of you enrolled in schoolyards
like a recess of paper vanity, litter, old
with red-rimmed "loves," red-rhymed lies in lace.
The verses come, rising as easily as long-stemmed snakes in
bloom where swamps settle down and drowse
by dawn, a night of secrets slid out of drawers like knives nesting, a choice of chimes and slums overrun
by bejeweled heartbreakers. What a lovely
winter, almost skipping February.
Landis Everson, “Valentine, Valentine,” from Poetry (October 2006). Copyright © 2006 by Poetry Foundation. Reprinted with permission from Poetry Foundation.
Source: Poetry (October 2006).
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This poem originally appeared in the October 2006 issue of Poetry magazine
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Poems by Landis Everson
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SUBJECT Relationships
POET’S REGION U.S., Western
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