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Today I spent a good 20 minutes trying to remember the name of a poem I discovered in a high school literature book of all places over a decade ago (public school lit seemed generally milquetoast). It turned out to be

Her Lips Are Copper Wire by Jean Toomer:

whisper of yellow globes

gleaming on lamp-posts that sway

like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog

and let your breath be moist against me

like bright beads on yellow globes

telephone the power-house

that the main wires are insulate

(her words play softly up and down

dewy corridors of billboards)

then with your tongue remove the tape

and press your lips to mine

till they are incandescent

While not well read in poetry enough to claim it as a favorite, I will say that it is very special to me as a piece that showed me what poetry could be.

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~bucketfish wrote:

this is such a pretty poem. a lot of people think that love is overrepresented in poetry and art in general, but there are so many forms of love; perhaps love is the point of it all.

(and i also learnt the meaning of the word 'milquetoast'. that's fun!)

i'm taking literature in school now—we just finished a unit on short stories, and Oh Boy did it give me such an insight into the power of symbolism and stories.