San Francisco poetry - Kim Addonizio

Finally, Maddie and I made it to San Francisco! I never thought it would actually happen, but here we are in this amazing city for a week. And what do I keep thinking about? Yup, you guessed it - poetry. We visited the famous City Lights Bookstore for a little while yesterday (we plan to go back), and it just blew my mind. The store is so small and tucked away in a small corner building near Chinatown, but the charm and intimacy I felt upon entering was unmistakable. Without a doubt, this will be one of my favorite places visited when I reflect on this trip. While I was there, on the second floor (the poetry floor!), I made it about halfway through the A's before we decided to head back to the hotel. I found a poet from the bay area named Kim Addonizio. She also had a fiction book on the shelves. She is on poets.org, so check her out. I thought her poetry was beautiful. Here is a selection from her book What is This Thing Called Love: Poems.

Stolen Moments


What happened, happened once. So now it’s best
in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin
unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge
lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin
membrane between us, the exquisite orange,
tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,
the way he pushed me up against the fridge—
Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss
that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin
flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s
merciless, the way it travels in
and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove
we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers
on the table. And we still had hours.