Lee Varon, “Billy’s Valentine”

Amy Lowell Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Martha Collins


Billy’s Valentine

I sent her a valentine
everything is red    red
red wavy lines
nervous tics
it sicks not sucks some
hearts write terror    no error
where kisses disappear    peer
on the side of a face appear
face like an ace
race down
red lace    loneliness
 
I wrote her a 
a valentine can’t send
just end
end here
fear hear 
 
valentines
litter the floor
just send
don’t end
 
you    you    you don’t
don’t know    no way
loneliness
don’t know loneliness
 
yes    no    grasp
love lapsed
grasp try
 
a beautiful thing
grasp a beautiful
 
what loneliness is   you
 
you have to start somewhere 


Lee Varon is co-editor of the 2018 Ibbetson Street Press Spare Change News Poems: An Anthology by Homeless People and Those Touched by Homelessness. In 2018, Sunshot Press published her poetry collection, Shot in the Head, and Encircle Publications her chapbook, Letters to a Pedophile.