Poem of the Week: 3.16.23

“After the Art Exhibit”

After the Art Exhibit

by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira

Strawberry glaze. Meeting your eyes
in the glass protecting the triptych. You
saw each stroke; I wanted to trace
the space between us and inside

The room of mirrors and lights where
you wanted to know the dimensions.
You found the edges, each corner, the box 
we were in. I wanted to look past that,
see the infinity around us, capture 
a forever shared, but we only had a minute 
before the next group. Blurry photos.

When I got home I wanted to remember 
each moment, so I plucked every hair you 
touched, stapled each thread to the wall 
in the shape of my heart. It looked like two 
fish caught in a net. Reeling bite.

I framed it all, fucked up and raw 
and mailed it to your place. Instead of wax
a kiss. Instead of stamp a wish.

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Read by the poet:

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Thank you for reading the Poem of the Week! Here’s last week’s poem in case you missed it.

I went on a really nice date on Sunday. That’s about it.

One thing, though—I ended with rhyme. This is something I NEVERRR do in my writing. In my humble opinion, rhyme has lost its shine in contemporary poetry. The best rhyming poems I have read are hundreds of years old, and those who dare to write with rhyme schemes now are often either experimental academics trying to prove a point or inarticulate amateurs who should stop getting all their poetry from the internet. No offense, but also a little offense. Honestly, I think rhyme currently has a better home in music (rap, melodies, etc.) than the lonely and cold office of decent poetry. In the same way that Lil Baby, try as he might, will never overtake Lil Wayne’s lyrical legacy, no poet is successfully bearing the flame of Emily Dickinson’s neatly rhymed poems—she’s just too good to copy! The shift to free verse in contemporary poetry has been freeing, but I think we may have rhymed a little too much to keep the scheme going effectively. If you can think of a good rhyming poem from the last 50 years, drop it in the comments! Prove me wrong! Maybe you can make me eat my rant-words.

Anyway—why the rhyme in “After the Art Exhibit?” Like I said, I went on a really nice date.

Sticky, Ricky

Takashi Murakami, the Broad museum, Los Angeles