I'm saying your name in the grocery store, I'm saying your name on the bridge at dawn. Your name like an animal covered with frost, your name like a music that's been transposed, a suit of fur, a coat of mud, a kick in the pants, a lungful of glass, the sails in wind and the slap of waves on the hull.
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep affection and the intimate recognition of a loved one in everyday life.
In this quote, Richard Siken conveys the profound connection and resonance one feels for a loved one, illustrating how their presence permeates various moments and places. Through vivid imagery, he portrays the name of the beloved as a powerful and tactile element that invokes strong emotions and memories, transforming ordinary actions into sacred acts of recognition and longing.
In practice
During a wedding speech to express ongoing love.
All night I streched my arms across him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing with all my skin and bone ''Please keep him safe. Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed to pieces.'' Makes a cathedral, him pressing against me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars.
You are playing cards with three Jeffs. One is your father, one is your brother, and the other is your current boyfriend. All of them have seen you naked and heard you talking in your sleep. Your boyfriend Jeff gets up to answer the phone. To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room.
Everything affects my poetry, every day something happens that changes me forever. I’m susceptible and plastic, thin-skinned and moody.
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable. Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it.
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.
...you're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.
There's no race, no religion, no class system, no color - nothing - no sexual orientation, that makes us better than anyone else. We're all deserving of love.
Beloved, till life can charm no more; And mourned, till Pity's self be dead.
I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise?
It's total bullshit," he said. "The whole thing. Eighty percent survival rate and he's in the twenty percent? Bullshit. He was such a bright kid. It's bullshit. I hate it. But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh?
There is no salvation for the soul but to fall in Love. Only lovers can escape out of these two worlds. This was ordained in creation. Only from the heart can you reach the sky: The Rose of Glory can grow only from the heart.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.