and I can kiss ennui goodbye

Gillian loaned me Marilyn Hacker's Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, so I could use it for National Poetry Month. Also because who doesn't love a 212-page sonnet cycle about a teacher-student lesbian love affair?

After the supper dishes, let us start
where we left off, my knees between your knees,
half in the window seat. O let me, please,
hands in your hair, drink in your mouth. Sweetheart,
your body is a text I need the art
to be constructed by. I halfway kneel
to your lap, propped by your thighs, and feel
burning my hand, your privacy, your part
armor underwear. This time I'll loose
each button from its hole; I'll find the hook,
release promised abundance to this want,
while your hands, please, here and here, exigent
and certain, open this; it is, this book,
made for your hands to read, your mouth to use.

~Marilyn Hacker, "Future Conditional," from Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, 1986

I'm also rather fond of this one:

Note to Elaine the speech pathologist:
grief tumbles into lust, a crush can cruise
across some conversations, to, good news,
a choice, and ladies who have gone unkissed
beyond a certain age can get a chance
to demonstrate they've not forgotten how
to do it. I am fully forty-two
--there was no disco when I learned to dance--
but there's some girl left in this old life yet.
I think you've noticed that I'm getting some
brand-old ideas (fifty-seven poems
in seven weeks, Elaine!) and I can kiss
ennui goodbye. Just for the record, this
girl got as much girl as she hoped to get.

~Marilyn Hacker, from Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, 1986

Also worth noting in this book is the couplet: "Achilles hung out in his tent and pouted/until they made the Iliad about it," which, in my opinion, never, ever gets old. I actually really love the whole book. And I think sonnet cycles are one of my very favorite means of storytelling.