With Valentine’s Day around the corner, there’s no better way to celebrate the season of love than with poetry from the heart. Emily Zarevich has brought to Burlington’s Got Talent the perfect poetry collection to capture the true experience of love.
A note from Emily for the Valentine’s Day poems: Valentine’s Day is the holiday for celebrating love in every form it takes. It’s easy to forget how many strands of love there are when the narrative is so obstructed by the media. Valentine’s Day should be a time for feeling excitement and awe for how love presents itself in our lives, and the poems I’ve written explore that idea.
Date
They have a late dinner, opposite the sweet pink horizon.
The clouds have decided to perform tonight.
Oh, how beautiful.
The sky is honeyed. The sky is on fire!
It’s a risqué display. The moon is much shyer
than the setting sun.
Love Letters
Everyone can read what you
wrote in the wet cement.
Why was your finger shaking?
You know she loves you back.
You’re so lucky that she left
her name on you, in an
intricate pattern of kisses
with her shy blue lips.
A pretty, shapely, rain-soaked fungus.
We Make Light
Illuminations.
I sew the light into
your splendid eyes.
Distant fireworks
awaken the bonds
and our veins,
our brilliance, our crackling genius.
We rummage for batteries
for our flashlights
in marketplaces long abandoned
and lands poorly guarded.
Purely for show,
it is the thousands of suns
we made rise by ourselves
and I’ll borrow the warmth
from your rose-tinted cheeks.
Shyness
I am a restrained confession on the pier,
quivering beneath the lighthouse’s stern gaze.
I’m not as romantic as they promised
in all the novels and sonnets.
Gasping, I retreat into the dusk’s hazy air.
Potential Friend
We talked about Dorothy Arnold. Jack the Ripper. We liked unsolved mysteries.
Across the cities we piece together puzzles. How planes have vanished into the storming skies.
You have sworn and arranged to be you and I have ceased to be I and together we’ve evolved
into a newborn species that shares a third eye. I only turn my back on you because I trust you.
I need you to do up my dress zipper. I don’t fear being stabbed in the back as much as I fear the loss of our potential, like all the other distressed girls deemed inconsequential.
We will discuss them whenever our hands aren’t touching. You might be my lovely missing half.
We hope you’ve fallen in love with these poems as much as we have! Keep an eye out for more local talent in our “Burlington’s Got Talent” column, where we’ll showcase a variety of skills, artistry, and original work. If you are a local artist, storyteller, or have a unique talent you would like to share, please send an email to talent.localnews@gmail.com for an opportunity to be featured.
