February 2020
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Of all its equally precious days (29 this year!), the fourteenth is this diminutive month’s most celebrated claim to fame – or infamy. To the unhappily uncoupled, the hype and kitsch of Valentine’s Day are more unwelcomed reminders of their single state. To the giddily partnered, the ubiquitous displays of hearts and cards, chocolates and roses instead confirm what they already suspect – the entire world is reveling in their romance.
Of course, most of us, most of the time, fall into neither camp. Indeed, in a pair of brief but brightly evocative poems, this month’s poet, Jason Tandon, celebrates a type of romantic love that is at once realistic (Listen up, Giddily Partnered!) and abiding. Unhappily Uncoupled – and everyone else - read on and take heart.
Terry House, Poem of the Month, Editor
Matrimony
By Jason Tandon
We lie naked above the sheets
watching the curtains
robe the wind.
Later, in the splotch
of the small hours
I tell you,
“We’re low on dish soap.”
You answer,
“Coffee, too.”
Beatitude
By Jason Tandon
Out of oil
on a cold Sunday morning
we heap the bed with blankets.
Both “Matrimony” and “Beatitude” were originally published in the collection, The Actual World, Black Lawrence Press, 2019.
Jason Tandon is the author of four books of poetry, including The Actual World, Quality of Life, and Give Over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, and North American Review, among others. He is a Senior Lecturer in the College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University.
Visit his book page and website at the following links:
https://www.blacklawrence.com/the-actual-world/
