Poetry post: Amourette, by Sarah Arvio

[indigo419]

I've had this up over my desk for eons, because it makes me think of pilots.  But it's so clever and pretty that I wanted to share it for its own sake!  I suppose I should find a poetry comm or something...

Amourette
by Sarah Arvio

It lasted many moons--in fact decades--
but, you know, never morphed into marriage.
Slow amour, as slow as a snail,

and as armored as an armadillo.
Was imperfect love a peccadillo,
or wasn't it love, this purgatory;

in the end I think I was mortified.
Speaking of petite mort , there was also
petty murder. O ambrosia. I was

amortized, you know, or slowly murdered
while waiting for a metamorphosis.
It was disarming that it was over.

There was harm in him, and a dose of smarm--
that I wasn't dead was the miracle.
I wasn't quite dead, but almost, you know,

arm over arm with my malefactor.
And, you know, alarmingly amorous.
In marital, martial and lunar law

the dead girl can't marry her mortician.
No one was left but the Necromancer,
not the Romancer and not Amore,

something like heavens to murgatory,
and all the morphology of remorse.
To think purgatory led to heaven!

An armchair, mon cher, not a chariot,
all that old passion put out to pasture
for grazing, you know, on "past" memories.

~

I would love to read fic about pilots, decades later.  Mmm.

(Sarah Arvio's poem "Amourette" is from her book "Sono: Cantos." Knopf. Copyright © 2006 by Sarah Arvio.)