Ghazal Beginning with a Line by Frank O’Hara

Adam Gianforcaro

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
For the loveless world to rile in empathy and reflect itself in the love- 

drenched puddles of tenderness. To not consider how the floods 
have drowned the crops and carried away our children. To love

something the way other men love guns: boundless in their violence
and difficult in their want for more. On an otherwise love-

ly day—sun, frost, citrus fruits in a basket somewhere—we bask
in the cold crisis of calamity. We picnic on its lawn and love

each other through its chokehold. In our loveless world, I consent
to its grip, but only so I can look it in the eye and show it the love

God forgot to create during His residency. I, too, am forgetful. 
Sometimes the love I try to create in light is a love

that only shines in shadow—a glowing and angular anger.
A black hole is perhaps best known for its boundless search for love

but it often gets lost in the difficult equations of eating light. 
Find me a bushel. Light me a wick. Grant me an earth that will love

itself into immolation. Like morning time, it is an easy and boundless defeat. 
But until then—and in spite—we will love and we will love and we will love.

Adam Gianforcaro is the author of the chapbook Poems to Stage Dive to (Stanchion Books, 2026) and full-length collection Every Living Day (Thirty West, 2023). A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his work can be found in The Offing, The Harvard Advocate, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere.

“I Didn’t Invite Ewe” by Robin Young
collage

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