To love the unlovely as an old, lost art—
It is not loving on a bell-shaped curve,
Nor is it contrived as with a hollow heart.
It cannot be bartered at a local mart,
Nor decreed that the unlovely deserve
To love the unlovely as an old, lost art.
It’s not bearing a cross or plotting a chart
Of when it’s appropriate to reserve
The strange right not to forgive from one’s heart,
Nor is it a dramatic coming apart
At each unseemly seam so as to serve
To love the unlovely as an old, lost art
That few have mastered, and those who have depart
To sainthood on an unreachable preserve
Where their veins are grafted to one perfect heart.
In love, everyone warrants a virgin start.
Some bloom late and watch and wait as I observe.
To love the unlovely as an old, lost art
Is to love oneself as with a child’s heart.
Thomas Locicero’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Roanoke Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Long Island Quarterly, Jazz Cigarette, Antarctica Journal, Hobart, Ponder Review, vox poetica, Poetry Pacific, Brushfire, Indigo Lit, Saw Palm, Fine Lines, New Thoreau Quarterly, and Birmingham Arts Journal, among others. He resides in Broken Arrow, OK.
Guest Editor Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the author or editor of two dozen books, including the recent poetry collection Following the Curve, and collection of prose Everyday Magic: Fieldnotes on the Mundane and Miraculous. Founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, where she teaches, she leads writing workshops widely, and loves watching the poetry of others rise and glow.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 