A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

Are All the Past and Future Loves in My Poems Real?

Livia Meneghin, Boston-New York, USA

 

After Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s “Are All the Break-Ups in Your Poems Real?” 

and Terrance Hayes’ “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin”

If by real you mean as real as a ladybug

climbing up your shirt with six badges

dotting determination on its back, 

or as real as the tattered eyes of birches 

lining a lake, watching—then yes, 

every last page is true, every line, image, 

and confession. Every she. Every green.

But they aren’t factual, no. Imagine

spending so much time in love, all those

trees and long walks, collecting violets

to fill vases of petals as bees and butterflies 

come out from hiding spots, being kissed

from sun up to far past dusk, when finally,

the little red beetle reaches your lips.

 

Livia Meneghin is a current MFA candidate and writing instructor at Emerson College. She is the author of the chapbook Honey in My Hair. Her individual poems and reviews have found homes in The Academy of American Poets, tenderness lit, Entropy Magazine, Tinderbox, So to Speak, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere.

Wild Flower

Singapore in Black & White, 1994