Epithalamion by Rickey Laurentiis

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 31, 2015   Epithalamion   Rickey Laurentiis

For Nicole and John      She drew a name full of winning flesh, Victory, I mean, so that any Yes she has to say      We might say is a Yes achieved happily all her own— And he drew a name large as any god,      Large as a wall in the center of the night, and as calm, God in the most gracious, the tenderest way.      To be, like them, in a tenderness now, Chill as April; to feel ourselves, like themselves,      In a communion of that sprung blood; and to trust That in the dark, in even the wild, forbidding dark      Which by fact must come, is no threat, No sudden evidence to break and unheat—      Then we’re complete. Flesh falls away. Gods do. I will make a man out of you, says one      To the other. I will make a woman. Isn’t that What to say I choose you means, means I let go      The name I held only for myself to step sharply into yours, Into that bareness each for the other makes,        Outside the old conceptions, the old laws, No she, no he—but together you become a single self      That spans the sense of the imagination, Wiser than the oldest language, which is love,      More patient than the deepest song.            Copyright © 2015 by Rickey Laurentiis. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I wrote and read this poem on the occasion of the wedding of poets and dear friends, Nicole Sealey and John Murillo. It took the better part of a year, up until the morning of the wedding itself, for me to complete the poem. And it wasn’t, I think, out of confusion about what I wanted to say to and about two people whose union I believe in or, more generally, about love, which I want deeply to believe in. But it took so long to figure out (as is always the case, huh?) how to say it honestly. Here’s to trying. And here’s to black love mattering.” —Rickey Laurentiis   Rickey Laurentiis is the author of Boy with Thorn (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). He teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Poetry by Laurentiis   Boy with Thorn (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015) “Song Out Here” by Juan Felipe Herrera "A Blessing for Wedding" by Jane Hirshfield "The Ecstasy" by Phillip Lopate Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038