Cover

Title Page

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE

kim addonizio

w. w. norton & company new york london

Dedication

DEDICATION

For Robert—
lightning twice

Epigraph

EPIGRAPH

The wind was shaking me all night long;

shaking me in my sleep

like a definition of love,

saying, this is the moment,

here, now.

—Ruth Stone, “Green Apples”

The blues are the true facts of life.

—Willie Dixon

ONE

ONE

First Kiss

FIRST KISS

Afterwards you had that drunk, drugged look

my daughter used to get, when she had let go

of my nipple, her mouth gone slack and her eyes

turned vague and filmy, as though behind them

the milk was rising up to fill her

whole head, that would loll on the small

white stalk of her neck so I would have to hold her

closer, amazed at the sheer power

of satiety, which was nothing like the needing

to be fed, the wild flailing and crying until she fastened

herself to me and made the seal tight

between us, and sucked, drawing the liquid down and

out of my body; no, this was the crowning

moment, this giving of herself, knowing

she could show me how helpless

she was—that’s what I saw, that night when you

pulled your mouth from mine and

leaned back against a chain-link fence,

in front of a burned-out church: a man

who was going to be that vulnerable,

that easy and impossible to hurt.

Stolen Moments

STOLEN MOMENTS

What happened, happened once. So now it’s best

in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin

unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge

lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin

membrane between us, the exquisite orange,

tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,

the way he pushed me up against the fridge—

Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss

that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin

flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s

merciless, the way it travels in

and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove

we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers

on the table. And we still had hours.

Blues for Dante Alighieri

BLUES FOR DANTE ALIGHIERI

. . . without hope we live on in desire . . .

Inferno, IV

Our room was too small, the sheets scratchy and hot—

Our room was a kind of hell, we thought,

and killed a half-liter of Drambuie we’d bought.

We walked over the Arno and back across.

We walked all day, and in the evening, lost,

argued and wandered in circles. At last

we found our hotel. The next day we left for Rome.

We found the Intercontinental, and a church full of bones,

and ate takeout Chinese in our suite, alone.

It wasn’t a great journey, only a side trip.

It wasn’t love for eternity, or any such crap;

it was just something that happened . . .

We packed suitcases, returned the rental car.

We packed souvenirs, repaired to the airport bar