Valentine’s Day

Open hearts, featuring poems by Stefan Balan, Arthur Russell, Marda Messick and David Bergman.
7 minutes

TRANSCRIPT

Valentine’s Day . . . a day for romance, a day for telling people how much they mean to us.

Stefan Balan said, “In my poem “Honeysuckle,” I try to capture the awkwardness of youth on a first date. Spring is at work in the couple, at times confusing, at times cajoling. Being young on a first date entails faux pas, shyness, unknowing. Their innocence positions them outside/beside time, comically (and erotically) frustrated. Writing this poem helped me glue back this lost shard/passage of my life.” Here’s Stefan’s poem “Honeysuckle.”

When they first met it was April
and they talked like April
coyly
resolutely
and like April
they walked
everywhere
a cloud in the form of her mind
kept regrouping
in the sun
he knew everything
of course
except where he was
he kept bumping
into her
into himself
but like a balustrade
the honeysuckle was there
they walked the day unaware
of weather
of where
of Rome
time was a pouty adolescent
bored out of his mind
playing astragali
chasing the gadfly
honeysuckle
in the flavescent noon
his tunic kept slipping
off his thigh
nobody was looking

“Honeysuckle,” Stefan Balan, from Passager’s 2024 Poetry Contest issue.

Arthur Russell said that his poem “Love Poem” “. . . was inspired by my girlfriend, of course. I’ve been experimenting with short-line work, like ‘asphodel, that greeny flower’ by William Carlos Williams.” Here’s Arthur’s poem “Love Poem.”

She tapes
a broken
wishbone

to the window
above
her sink,

touches
my cheek
like the bristle

inspector at
a hairbrush
factory,

stops
mid-rant
to assuage

my fear
of female anger,
then resumes.

For as long
as people
stand

in front
of a Rothko,
we embrace.

She calls
my heart
her Jewish piano,

does
to me
what a church

steeple does
to a clear
blue winter sky.

We always
order
the special,

throw
Cheetos
to the crowd,

shed our
clothes to imitate
the full moon.

Like shuffled
decks, our
ribs merge.

We stay
up so long
we fall asleep.

“Love Poem,” Arthur Russell, from Passager’s 2022 Poetry Contest issue.

Marda Messick started writing poetry in 2019 after her husband died of ALS. She said her poem “The Need” is about our human need for intimate connection and the experience of opening to new love after deep grief.

It begins with this epigraph from Galway Kinnell: “The need for the new love is faithfulness to the old love.”

Riptide nights in the empty bed.
No heat to hold, no beat to hear.
No arms enfold.
No one is near.

The mind can’t map or follow where.
The compass spins, the pole star gone.
No trace is left.
The track is wrong.

The days eke out in sorrow’s time.
Indifferent still, the void remains.
The absence lasts.
That does not change.

To the bleakness, greenness comes.
The want begins, desire returns
To famished arms,
To hungry skin.

The vow fulfilled grants kind consent.
Fidelity requites the need.
The old love, grieve.
New love, receive.

Marda Messick’s poem “The Need” from Passager’s 2023 Poetry Contest issue.

David Bergman said, “Even if I don’t fully understand a poem I’ve written right away, it’s the feeling of the work’s honesty that pleases me.” We’ll end with David’s valentine to an old friend, “Finding You Later.” It begins with this epigraph: “on the publication of I’ll Miss You Later, poems of James W. Gaynor.”

Written under the pressure of terror
and the urgency of death’s elusive truth,
these poems packed away for forty years
inside a spiral notebook you never thought
would see the light are glowing in my hands
evidence of the grace that terror gives
our hastiest expression and a music
to which even the dead rise up and sing.

Jim, I knew you before and after AIDS,
not during – thankfully not during – for then
we were too full of fear and grief to give
each other anything more than silence.
Thank you for keeping these words safe until
I could see you as you now were then.

From Passager’s 2022 Poetry Contest issue, David Bergman’s poem “Finding You Later.”

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For Kendra, Mary, Christine, Rosanne, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.