Kim Addonizio

Kim Addonizio is an Italian-American poet.

She was asked in an interview what her other interests were, besides writing.

“Sex and death are right up there. Consciousness, which I guess is really the subject of all writing. Life on earth, in a body that’s going to decay and die, while everything changes and changes again. Being caught in time. The world beyond the world, or within it.”

Now, that… that is what I call a dating site profile.

I would practically demand a date with a woman who wrote that and drag my heart through barbed wire to get it. Maybe that’s just me, though. Some guys might find it… off-putting.

It’s certainly better than “Hi I’m a bubbly chatterbox and I like ‘avin a laff”. Run away, Paul, just

Run Away Now

Here is one of her poems. It’s good. I like it.

For Desire

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look.