• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

Monica Joy Claesson: “To my Lover in Cusco”

December 3, 2018 by PBQ Leave a Comment

To My Lover in Cusco

You stopped to kiss me by the twelve-sided stone,
then we laughed and you said I’m hiking the Salkantay
tomorrow. I leave in four hours. We kept walking
and I knew, already, how you would become
one of the men I never loved; knew also
how the one who speaks in my poetry always falls
for the men I never loved. When at last we lay in silence,
breathing thin mountain air into each other’s lungs,
I wondered how best to say it: in poems I adore you.

Filed Under: Contributors 98, Issue 98, Poetry 98

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ @ the Pen & Pencil!

PBQ Slam Session!

Slam Session with PBQ!

PBQ @ Poetry Tent!

PBQ @ AWP!

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org