Temple On My Knees

Temple On My Knees

By Lisa Russ Spaar
When this day returns to me
I will value your heart,
long hurt in long division,
over mine. Mouth above mine too —
say you love me, truth never more
meant, say you are angry.
Words, words we net with our mouths.
Soul is an old thirst but not as first
as the body’s perhaps,
though on bad nights its melancholy
eats us out, to a person.
True, time is undigressing.
Yet true is all we can be:
rhyming you, rhyming me.

Source: Poetry (February 2013).

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This poem originally appeared in the February 2013 issue of Poetry magazine

February 2013

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Lisa Russ Spaar

Biography

Lisa Russ Spaar's most recent book of poems is Vanitas, Rough (December 2012).  A collection of her essays, The Hide-and-Seek Muse:  Annotations of Contemporary Poetry, is due out in March 2013.  Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Weinstein Award for Poetry, the Library of Virginia Award, and a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers. Spaar is a professor at the University of Virginia.

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Poems by Lisa Russ Spaar

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Living, The Body, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Love, Realistic & Complicated

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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