love notes

sam raps hers on stage at a dive
somewhere in the south, rhyming, alliterating,
spouting love for an audience, being hugged for it

seth pulls out a calculator to measure his love
L-O-V-E your lucky numbers are 12 15 22 5 and i don’t know
whether to buy a lotto ticket or if i need four more digits –
after all, 1 215 could be my new boyfriend’s phone number

randall needs a card catalogue to keep track of his lady friends – the
dewey decimal system may have failed ashbery but randall is perhaps better
versed in the ways of the library

and i translate my love, amor, eros, agape
and make notes, a voyeur of enscribed love.

Adrienne D. Mishkin