Just in time for St. Valentine's Day--CGP 25: Jessica Rogers' HOT WATER

CGP 25: Hot Water
by Jessica Rogers  (16 pp. Saddle-Stitched) $7 ppd.
SOLD OUT!

 

In 1979 the philosophers the Brothers Gibb noted that nobody gets too much love anymore.  Thirty-two years later their postulation seems to hold even greater validity.  Jessica Rogers tries to even the score with her expansive love poem Hot Water.  Like the love-child of Walt Whitman and Joe Brainard (& they certainly would have had one), Rogers’ poem is a brazen love letter to the world, mining memory & returning with precious jewels for everyone, all of the time.

From Hot Water
by Jessica Rogers

I loved a young man

on the subway last week;

I want to describe him.

I want to say

how he reminded me

of you,

of so many other loves

(like the way Todd says

he loves the women

who jog toward him

on bridges:

as they get closer,

you can imagine

the whole thing going down.

She would look

so beautiful,

soft

in her private moments,

so that as she jogs by,

you can’t help but tear up

to be that close to her,

having already lived and died

in your racing thoughts,

and so sigh

at some memory,

and turn to look

with relief—at least

you didn’t share any names).

But then

my stranger

got off the subway

and I loathed him for it,

and missed him a little bit—

his reading a book,

shirt half tucked

(just like a real relationship,

Brooklyn-bound).