"Sailaway" by Eileen Myles
In Conversation with "Aging Love Poem" by Rose Lesniak
Sailaway
Listen I will chase you to the ends of the earth It’s so heavy I’m embarrassed by my emotion its sheer scare quality I know it is completely too much it’s how you play which drives me makes me follow through my love of storm breeze my uneasy boat. Appears in Sappho's Boat, (Little Caesar, 1982) and recently republished in Birdwatching from Fonograf
“Sailaway” is a love poem for the poet Rose Lesniak, in conversation with Lesniak’s own poem, “Aging Love Poem,” re-published below
Aging Love Poem
Love the whiskey on your breath love your puffed lips hips the way your eyes light & turn before you say, "my I moves everywhere" I love you, I love you woman alive the way your hair curls up the steam your skin love the way you sing to me so bold & naked you are coming into a cup of coffee morning & I love the way you look as if you never slept your perfect face, your oval face the way your mouth forms & your stutter with a racing heart under I am all lovers, let the bodies of woman ride take over & under the covers your knees are rashed pinker than the rest of you I love to watch, no lie. And there is no one else shaking me tonight. There is no sound or any more words and I will eat your body for thousands of years. Appears in Young Anger (Toothpaste Press, 1979)
Photo Credit: Shae Detar
Eileen Myles (they/them, b. 1949) is a poet, novelist and art journalist whose practice of vernacular first-person writing has made them one of the most recognized writers of their generation. Pathetic Literature, which they edited, came out in Fall of 22. a “Working Life”, their newest collection of poems, is out now. They live in New York & in Marfa, TX.
I don't get the connection between the 2 poems. "Aging Love Poem" was written for a girlfriend Rose knew in ChIcago in winter 1977.