'A Geneology of Unfinished Love Poems' by Dean Rader

    

    

[elegy]

I don’t know

what the dead

_____ about love,

if, for instance,

they remember it

the way an amputee

recalls a missing _____—

a necessary part

of the body found

only in a memory

of _____ slick

in water, hot

over flame, delicate

on thigh, in a mouth—

or if the ____ is just sorrow.

[comedy]

Your eyes are so _____.

There is no way

they can be glass,

though the left one

is always a bit

off center.

I wonder if your body

is already on the lookout

for the first _____

of my ear hair.

Your feet are so _____,

I don’t care that they’re webbed.

You’re my duck.

My beautiful little duck.

You can’t imagine the ways

I want to _____ you quack.

And then there is your _____.

_____!

I really like it.

In fact, I wish

I could carry it

around in my knapsack.

I’d _____ it the way

an archeologist

handles a sacred vase,

the way a cop grabs

the most dangerous felon.

I’d handcuff it to my belt loop.

I’d wear it like it was

Two loaded _____.

 [haiku]

With the _____ union

even holy men forget

it is God they _____

[epistolary]

Dear _____,

I want to _____ for lying to you about that Home Ec. teacher. She meant nothing to me. And I need to come clean about the trapeze artist, the pool boy, your _____. What was I thinking?

I hope you realize that I have forgiven you for pushing me into the _____ of that classics scholar. She’s ancient history. That’s a little joke, but I’m not joking about how ____ I feel: Your cousin Sophie. Really … my mistake.

And about the palm reader. All she did was _____ my hand. Honest. But when she traced the creases, the narrow _____ on the map of the future world, she made me think: I want to know you the way she knows these lines. I want you to _____ me the way she knows how to lie.

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

A poem from the book (Twilight at Ocean Beach: 14) was named by Verse Daily as one of the Best Poems of 2010.