The Ragged End of Love: Belated Valentines

Anka Zhuravleva

Valentine

I’m thrown at you like
a bean bag in a carnival game.

I send you a valentine with a picture
of a Temple of Doom barbarian
pulling out a man’s heart.

You send me a valentine
raked with Catwoman’s claws.

Jessy Randall

Postcard Written in the Lobby of the Hotel du Nord

We are sipping iced gin, we are watching the rain we are
waiting and hoping for the temperature to fall

and the rain to turn to snow, as if the last
sodden flowers

might be enchanted into birds, a snow that makes
small children

happy and black Labradors bark. Dim the light
over this table.

Bring some peanuts if you have them and yes,
I guess

another round. Let’s talk about poetry, and ragged end
of love.

Let the beautiful curtains of the snowstorm
arrive.

Robert McDonald

P.S.  See “Love Story” by Jeannine Hall Gailey!