"Love" Poems by Dan Chiasson

These two offerings begin NATURAL HISTORY, a collection from Dan Chiasson that was published in October. I took two poetry classes with Chiasson at Stony Brook. He’s a young, up and coming poet. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was US Poet Laureate some day.

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LOVE SONG (SMELT)

When I say 'you' in my poems, I mean you.
I know it’s weird: we barely met.
You must hear this all the time, being you.

That night we were at opposite ends of
the long table, after the pungent
Russian condiments, the carafes of tarragon vodka,

the chafing dishes full of boiled smelts
I was a little drunk: after you left,
I ate the last smelt off your dirty plate.


LOVE SONG (SYCAMORES)

Stop there, stop now, come no closer
I said, but you followed me anyway.
You made a bed for us in the woods.
There were sycamore boughs overhead.

Stop there. Stop now. I calculated that
the number of birds singing
on any given morning
was a function of the sycamores plus my hangover.

I said, Stop there, but you followed me
even when I tore our bed to pieces,
I did that, I brought anger into the bower
and the sycamores became menacing shoulders.

And the birds cried, scared, a little embarrassed.
And we paced back and forth, under
the menacing shoulders of the sycamores.
The birds made nests inside our heads.

When you held my fist between your two hands,
I pretended to be subdued. But then
I opened my fist easily
and scattered your strength all over the bower.

When you ran towards me, I said, Stop there,
stop now, you'll end up
in a stranger's life; and when you ran away
I said the same words over again, louder.


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from NATURAL HISTORY by Dan Chiasson. Copyright
c) 2005 by Dan Chiasson. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A.
Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part
of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the publisher.
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