Love Song

To wear a black

corduroy jumper

with red roses

that your mom picked out

from Lord & Taylor

for ballroom lessons

in the seventh grade

and which you wore

more happily

when you cleared plates

at dinners for

the Junior League

when her friends praised you

as you soaped the bowls

is to be so grateful

when at thirty

and way too late to care

about such things

your stylish lover wraps

her warm arms in clean sheets

around you

in the blue-grey light

and whispers that

she’s glad you were

geeky enough

that no one else

could get to you

before her.

Emily Moore teaches high school English in New York City, and has recently begun to partner with Poets House and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops to teach teachers of creative writing. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and, when she is not careful, the mouth of her infant daughter. She lives in Brooklyn. This poem was selected by Maisha Z. Johnson.

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What would you like to see more of in literature?

As the mother of a nine month old, I’ve been hungry for work that describes the experience of parenthood, for instance the poetry of Sharon Olds or Virginia Woolf’s exquisite portrait of Mrs. Ramsay in “To The Lighthouse.”

Image © Don Gato via Flickr Creative Commons