Anti-Valentines
He bought me a rose for Valentine’s Day.
I was so choked up I could hardly speak.
“Our love’s like a rose,” I managed to say.
“Roses are dead by the end of the week.”
♥
A Valentine in the shape of a heart
Could do with a big replacement part—
Something official with a printed border.
A cashier’s check or a money order?
♥
My boyfriend’s card arrived today—
A photo of a shapely leg.
His gift card took my breath away—
A membership to Jenny Craig.
J. Patrick Lewis‘s first book of poems, Gulls Hold Up the Sky (Laughing Fire Press), appeared in October 2010. He has published over 130 verses in Light, as well as poems in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, New Letters, Southern Humanities Review, new renaissance, Kansas Quarterly, Fine Madness, and many others. In May 2011 the Poetry Foundation named him the third U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate (2011-2013). He has published 90 children’s picture books to date with Knopf, Atheneum, Dial, Harcourt, Little, Brown, National Geographic, Creative Editions, Chronicle, Candlewick, Scholastic, and others.