Christina Lovin

Paula Herrera Nobile

Flip Side

Wherever she was
she wanted to be
elsewhere. She sat full
of distance and longing
for open road ahead and no cross
streets to slow for.
Doing, she longed for
undoing, as night fingers
the delicate catches of day’s light
garment. Loosed,
her mind raced, escaped
the course never completed
and leapt the probable
into the realm of fools
and fallen women, falling
but never finding
foothold like seafarers
ashore, their legs unsteady
on terra firma. Wavering
reflection of her own face
in the lying mirror,
unfamiliar as the flip side
of some one-hit-wonder 45.

Two Sijo:

Candy Girl

We’re all singing in harmony
dancing in step to the cha-cha—

our skirts are hiked up to minis,
streaked hair ratted to the rafters—

we’re tuff girls, smelling of stale smoke
Pep-O-Mint, and sweet backseat sex.

I Fall to Pieces

March 5, 1963

You fell among us like a meteor
a sweet dreamer with crimson lips

Your velvet voice, singed with sorrow
like a lovely flame going out

At the crash site, a final song
your red slip hanging in a tree

“I Fall to Pieces” was first published in Alehouse.

Lunar Eclipse

At six the moon is rising in the east—
red wound on the bruised brow
of the hill. The sun is setting, also red,
behind us in the West. As far apart

as two can be and still share the scoop
of blue above this earth. Tonight, the world

will come between them, cast devouring
shadows to the sky, blackening the eye
of night, the only glow remaining,
the hope of foolish Venus in the dark.

Garden Bed Manifesto

Think of parsnips, rosemary, asparagus, cilantro,
sorrel, mushrooms, potatoes, ginger.  –The Greens Cook Book

Breathe in that place on a man that has a scent
like the earth, just-tilled and ready for planting
in a spring that follows the harsh winds of winter.
Think of parsnips, rosemary, asparagus, cilantro,
sorrel, mushrooms, potatoes, ginger. Pungent bite
of leaves and stems, sweet musk of roots still damp
with loam that clings and sullies lips and fingers.
Learn to eat what the earth provides just as it is offered.
Learn to eat it raw, unwashed. Learn to love it that way.

Christina Lovin is the author of the poetry collections, What We Burned for Warmth and Little Fires. A two-time Pushcart nominee and multi-award winner, her writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Southern Women Writers named Lovin 2007 Emerging Poet. Having served as Writer-in-Residence at Devil’s Tower National Monument and the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Central Oregon, in 2010, she served as inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Connemara, the North Carolina home of the late poet Carl Sandburg. Lovin has been a resident fellow at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Prairie Center of the Arts, Orcas Island Artsmith Residency at Kangaroo House, and Footpaths House to Creativity in the Azores. Her work has been supported with grants from Elizabeth George Foundation, Kentucky Foundation for Women, and Kentucky Arts Council. She resides with four dogs in a rural central Kentucky, where she is currently a lecturer in the English and Theater Department at Eastern Kentucky University.

Christina Lovin’s website

Christina Lovin at Red Room

Christina Lovin at Winning Writers