Poem: This, too, is for you
Books & Poetry
Love poems are for readers to read and need no introductions, as is the case with this week’s Poet’s Corner contribution from Jordan White.
This, too, is for you
January is a blur. February rolls into March,
three in the morning into four. I have been
wondering, lately, what is any of this for?
We talk some days but not others. Cars
flash like Christmas lights in the streets.
The rain comes and goes, seasons change.
We wander in and out of city bars, through
cafes, onto bustling streets. Sewing together
strangers’ faces like patchwork, a quilt, a
carpet to cover everything that isn’t us with.
Fill storefronts with curtains, hold pillows to
the windows and dim the golden streetlamps.
Let the people in the city choke, their lungs
fill with smoke, the thick smog above their
countless glass towers. The hours between us.
It has only been minutes, but I want to call you
and ask if you’ve been thinking about me since
I left. Wait, you said. I’ll let the city slow, slower
than glass, trying not to think, to want for you.
The distance, the distance dividing us. I want to
climb inside of you, wear you like a sleeping bag.
Your skin? A cocoon of thistles I was made for.
I have watched and counted and cursed the city’s
clock towers, the rushing strangers at peak hours.
I have watched and realised: all of this is for you.
Jordan White is a third-year marketing and journalism student at the University of South Australia. Previously the comms editor at the university’s online and print ‘Verse Magazine’ and chief of staff at its online student journalism platform ‘On The Record’, his own work has been published in ‘Verse Magazine’, ‘Brain Drip’, ‘Year13’ and ‘Glass’. He is also a research assistant at UniSA’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to poetscorner@solsticemedia.com.au. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.
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