Jean Valentine Poems

So what use was poetry
to a white empty house?
...

We met for supper in your flat-bottomed boat.
I got there first: in a white dress: I remember
Wondering if you'd come. Then you shot over the bank,
A Virgilian Nigger Jim, and poled us off
...

Jane is big
with death, Don
sad and kind - Jane
though she's dying
...

I have decorated this banner to honor my brother.
Our parents did not want his name used publicly
-- from an unnamed child's banner in the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
...

Late have I called &
late my
beloved
was blessing me
...

You came in a dream, yesterday —
The first day we met you showed me
...

In the elephant field tall green ghost elephants
with your cargo of summer leaves
...

Friend I need your hand every morning
but anger and beauty and hope
...

one arm still a swan's wing
The worst had happened before:
...

She saying, You don't have to do anything
you don't even have to be, you Only who are,
you nobody from nowhere,
without one sin or one good quality,
...