Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Related Poems
God Went to Beauty School
by Cynthia Rylant
Hey Allen Ginsberg Where Have You Gone and What Would You Think of My Drugs?
by Rachel Zucker
Page 34 / if your complexion is a mess
by Harryette Mullen
If My Voice Is Not Reaching You
by Afzal Ahmed Syed
Contemporary Love Poems
Coda
by Marilyn Hacker
corydon & alexis, redux
by D. A. Powell
Credo
by Matthew Rohrer
Epithalamium
by Matthew Rohrer
Fons
by Pura López-Colomé
Footprint on Your Heart
by Gary Lenhart
Hotel Berlin
by Cynthia Cruz
It Was Raining In Delft
by Peter Gizzi
Long Distance II
by Tony Harrison
Love Poem
by Graham Foust
My Heart
by Kim Addonizio
Rime Riche
by Monica Ferrell
San Antonio
by Naomi Shihab Nye
syntax
by Maureen N. McLane
The Ear is an Organ Made for Love
by E. Ethelbert Miller
The Ecstasy
by Phillip Lopate
The Embrace
by Mark Doty
The Emperor
by Matthew Rohrer
The Kiss
by Stephen Dunn
The Love-Hat Relationship
by Aaron Belz
The Meaning of Zero: A Love Poem
by Amy Uyematsu
To Dorothy
by Marvin Bell
When a Woman Loves a Man
by David Lehman
When Someone Says I Love You the Whole
by Karyna McGlynn
Related Prose
A Brief Guide to Slam Poetry
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

Hey You

 
by Adrian Blevins

Back when my head like an egg in a nest  
was vowel-keen and dawdling, I shed my slick beautiful 
and put it in a basket and laid it barefaced at the river 
among the taxing rocks. My beautiful was all hush 
and glitter. It was too moist to grasp. My beautiful 
had no tongue with which to lick—no discernable 
wallowing gnaw. It was really a breed of destruction 
like a nick in a knife. It was a notch in the works 
or a wound like a bell in a fat iron mess. My beautiful 
was a drink too sopping to haul up and swig!
Therefore with the trees watching and the beavers abiding 
I tossed my beautiful down at the waterway against 
the screwball rocks. Even then there was no hum.  
My beautiful was never ill-bred enough, no matter what 
you say. If you want my blue yes everlasting, try my 
she, instead. Try the why not of my low down, 
Sugar, my windswept and wrecked.









From Live from the Homesick Jamboree by Adrian Blevins. Copyright © 2010 by Adrian Blevins. Used by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.