The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Fri 11/03/06)

[RetroLounge]

I Married You

I married you
for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your
dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging
like hidden weapons
under your shirt,
by your naive ties, the colors
of painted scraps of sunset.

I was charmed too
by your assumptions
about me: my serenity—
that mirror waiting to be cracked,
my flashy acrobatics with knives
in the kitchen.
How wrong we both were
about each other,
and how happy we have been.

Linda Pastan

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Linda Pastan is the author of eleven works of poetry, including The Last Uncle, Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998, and An Early Afterlife. In addition to winning a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement, she was twice a finalist for the National Book Award and has won the Maurice English Award and the Pushcart Prize. Pastan taught at the Breadloaf Writers Conference for twenty years, served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 to 1995, and currently lives in Potomac, Maryland



*******************

RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[reyd reid reed]

1. Oh, Iove this one

So simple and yet it's not.

[wildhorses]

2. sounds like a truly successful marriage

as they learned and grew together instead of learning and growing apart. of course, she says it much more elegantly.

:hi:

[miss_american_pie]

3. Nice that some people get happy endings

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

6. Until the end, everyone has that chance...

:loveya:

RL

[swimboy]

4. Nice surprise at the end.

I'm glad I read it.

Have a great weekend, RL! :pals:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. My dear Retro!

What a clever poem! It just gently leads you down the garden path....

And then the twist at the end.....

I like it!

Thanks........:hug: