Quadruple Sonnet To My AWP Lit Crush

I chose you because I recognize you

from Twitter and because you’re a poet,

which means you understand me better

than the fiction and CNF writers

in this bar; they tell me they don’t get poetry.

It’s complicated and intimidates them.

But, you don’t need character development

or the whole story, you know it’s good enough

just to invoke a feeling; I love how you’re

taller than I thought you were and how you

turn nouns into verbs that shouldn’t.

Under these purple stage lights you look so

purple. What if we make light into shadows

we can see into? Fuck,

I bet you give good poet voice. I bet you

give it soft and intentional but aren’t afraid to yell loud

when it’d be effective. Maybe I don’t want this

line end-stopped, I want you to enjamb it. So, what are we

working on? I need a project, and I want

to collaborate. I do that. I run

a literary journal called Icebreakers Lit.

We only publish collaborative writing.

We’re open right now for subs. We could mutually

publish each other. How do you feel about

bugs? Isn’t it sweet they mate for life?

Even though their lifespan is only 12 hours.

I don’t know if that’s true. I might have made this all up.

Do you like your women irreverent?

When they don’t feel like poems?

Do you get excited whenever a form breaks

unexpectedly? I’ve never been capable

of a rhythm that’s steady. What percentage

of your poems are about being afraid to die?

Mine are all of them. If you’re asking what this poem wants,

then i’ll give you an allusion: here’s Pam and Jim

from The Office (but only before their first kiss scene).

I’m hoping we can be a montage of offsite readings and bars

and long hugs with fingertips always sliding away

but lingering. I want this ending to feel earned,

or leave off on an image completely different

than how it started. Maybe this isn’t a sonnet

but an elegy. And everything is a poem

if you let yourself lust hard enough. Tell me where

your last poem published? I want to close-read your syntax

and admire your diction. Listen, now I can use

sibilance; like I want to see you sun-drenched

tomorrow morning, and I can say it softly so it sounds like sex

but isn’t. And if you don’t feel the same, remember

it’s not me, it’s really just the poem’s speaker.

Now i’m imagining your eyes are dark grey

like Drake’s Passage, the most dangerous sea in the world,

Is it weird I remember you prefer metaphor to simile?

For you—I put on red lipstick every time you see me.

Here’s the metaphor: red lips are handcuffs. I need you;

help me write the ending