Three Poems About Unrequited Love

One cool tip for having a laid-back morning is to not fall down the rabbit hole of the Poetry Foundation’s “unrequited love” tag, and yet, here we are. This tiny one, “I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t,” from Richard Brautigan is the best, and here it is in its entirety:

I feel horrible. She doesn’t

love me and I wander around

the house like a sewing machine

that’s just finished sewing

a turd to a garbage can lid.

Here’s the end of “The Consolations of Sociobiology,” by Bill Knott:

Ah that movie was so faraway the stars melting

Made my thighs icy. I see: it’s not you

Who is not requiting me, it’s something in you

Over which you have no say says no to me.

And the end of the heart-punch “Epithalament,” by Brenda Shaughnessy:

Because it is a sinking,

because today’s perfect weather is a later life’s

smut. This soiled future unplans love.

I keep unplanning the same Sunday. Leg

and flower, breeze and terrier, I have no garden

and couldn’t be happier. Please, don’t lose me

here. I am sorry my clutch is all

tendon and no discipline: the heart is a severed

kind of muscle and alone.

I can hear yours in your room. I hear mine

in another room. In another’s.