Instant Noodles is an online lit magazine formerly curated by me, alone, and now curated by Old Scratch Press.
For Valentine’s Day, here are a few of my favorite poems about love from the magazine, pieces that I chose for publication.
FIRST MORNING AFTER MOVING ~ Greg Hill
My bureaus and dressers,
all crossed with blue tape,
a sea of cubed cardboard
spilling out into the hallway
and into all the other rooms.
Where is my bedside table?
Why does the morning smell
like fresh coats of paint,
and why a sound
like a parade of identical cars?
My muscles still burn
from the hours of unpacking
from yesterday’s move.
Where is my toothbrush? My comb?
Then I see you,
tranquil and sleeping
and I know
I am home.
Greg’s poem, so sweet, simple about the things that are not fireworks about love, but make us exceedingly happy all the same.
MUTUAL INTERDIGITATION ~ R. Gerry Fabian
We were linked long before we met.
We have been down the same wrong path
at different times with the same rancid rogues.
When we met, I was coming out the wrong side;
you were still there floundering hopelessly.
At first, I didn’t pay you much notice at all.
The death of a dear mutual friend
brought us together at the freshly dug gravesite.
We are good, now, together, walking that tightrope
of ‘fall off the wagon at any time’ good
that depends so much on breathing love’s balance.
Gerry’s poem, about all the ways that love connects us, adds wholeness to our lives, even as we get past the frenzy of youth.
THE BARBARIANS HAD ACTED REGRETTABLY ~ Colin James
My son found the dragon’s tooth amongst
some rocks and fine white sand. He washed
it clean in a tidal pool. A Hermit crab stole it,
scraping the tip then sucking the remnant root.
The boy threw some sand and stole it back.
He climbed up on the rocks with me to sit.
We examined the hard fire, inner blackened.
Easily sold to tourists later, paying us much more
to guarantee their safe return passage .
Colin’s poem I always took to be about parental love: how our children absolutely make us filled and absorbed and imaginative and plain old grateful to be in their magical world.
UNDER KEEL ON LITTLE DOE LAKE ~ Robert Fleming
moon over wooden hull
us under birch wood
left hand forward 4 ur bow
thwarted by ur stern pry stroke
back stroke 2 ur gunnel
seeking ur back sweep stroke
u j-stroke away
non-swimming clothes on
prefer clothes off
cross draw stroke 2 ur dock
u eskimo roll out
ur knee on deck
solo under skin
draw stroke my wood
Robert, a member of Old Scratch Press, may correct me, but I always took this to be a poem at the beginning, heady stage of love, and so much about the abandonment that I always feel in the time of transition from spring to early summer.
WISTFUL DREAM ~ Bethany A. Beeler
Betahany’s poem always seemed like lust to me, which is beefy and delicious, in my view, like biting into a huge strawberry covered in dark, dark chocolate, and certainly an important part of romantic love.
Lastly, on this hopefully gentle day that comes to you with a hug, or, perhaps a kiss, another from Greg Hill, possibly my favorite poem submitted to Instant Noodles to date. Happy Valentine’s Day. May you find love, or love find you!
SATURDAY ~ Greg Hill
the day
starts in bed
we make
coffee and
something from milk
flour eggs
water
in the shower
warming us together
after breakfast
you brush
a dollop of shampoo
on my nose
as I rinse my hair
even the nothing
you do
is something
to me
OLD SCRATCH PRESS 