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Best Poems Written by Evelyn Augusto

Below are the all-time best Evelyn Augusto poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Poem For Billy Collins

You are the soup and the spoon.
You are the moist, warm vapor of
tarragon rising from the bowl,
you are the wooden bowl.

You are that same vapor morphed
into the morning mist that flags across
the tops of hemlock and pine on its
journey toward an evening sky so
perfectly clouded and colored it
could be a painting. You are that sky
at dusk. You are the canvas that
caught the silhouette of a tardy
mourning dove racing home.

And I am that mourning dove lost in
reverie while foraging beneath a Mock Orange.
I am the Mock Orange. I am the perfume lifting
out of the center of its creamy, white petals—
pursed like a pouting mouth. I am the hunger.
I am the mouth that will not hesitate to open
for the offered spoon of soup.

By:  Evelyn Augusto

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U R Not Your Gun

You are: The sound of your mother's 
voice calling your name and your father's 
chance for a better life--not his, 
but yours, because it's too late for him, 
but not for you...not yet, unless you forget 

U R Not Your Gun.

You are your greatest fantasy and 
someone's best friend and another's 
first love.  You are shelter                                             
        from the storm.
You are memory and risk and reward. 
You are tougher than your 
disappointments, you are kinder 
than you imagine, you are everything 
that child you once were 
wanted to be and more.  But

U R Not Your Gun--

not grey and cold and lifeless.  
Not unforgiving like that.  Not hollow or predictable.  Not dangerous.

U R Not Your Gun.  

You are someone I can love.


Evelyn Augusto for GUNS DON'T SAVE PEOPLE POETS DO.  Oct. 4th, 2019

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My Poem Speaks

I will leave sorrows for
the journalists to report--
the way the cat deposits 
dead birds on 
my WELCOME mat.

I will pass on riddles like:
What is the survival 
rate of betrayal 
among women who
were once
father-less girls?
Or do broken promises
ache like broken bones?

Now, I prefer only to study:
the sound of your breath giving 
life to the room, the way your 
strong hand grasps mine 
as you recover,  and the tastes
of morning after I've filled 
my mouth with you.

Details | Evelyn Augusto Poem

Caravaggio: a Study of Man Bathing

Caravaggio:  A Study of Man Bathing

                     "Amor Vincit Omnia 
                      (Love conquers all)"
                                  M. Caravaggio 

He said:   Turn back the drapes,
                  this requires an early morning light....

He said:   How rare...that pervasive 
                  primary color.

He said:   There was dew left on the skin
                  from the bath.

He said:    I have painted holy men!

He said:    The brush wasn't wet enough. 

He said:    Notice that triangle of sable 
                   below the navel?  A difficult 
                   color...

He said:    I never saw Matthew and Paul                                      
                   like this.

He said:    There's no mistaking his aura. 

He said:    Turn more to the right.

He said:    If I were a woman--
                   I would love him too.

Details | Evelyn Augusto Poem

Paradise

Here the jealous sun
stings
the eye that turns
west to Marquesas.
Don't gaze west.

And the sway of the sea
moving out of The Gulf
seduces those with memory--
those who hear
love's movement in all things
rhythmic.
Cover your ears.

Watch too for the bird
frigatidae,
black kites hovering--
they are thieves
offering a gullet of rubies,
a belly of pearl to the 
unsuspecting. 

They long ago gave up on paradise.

Details | Evelyn Augusto Poem

Love Poem

I have forgotten
more than most women
know of how 
the body yearns.     
                                               
Late night, my poems of you 
are read out loud
in strange women’s
bedrooms.   My words
cling to their tongues like 
the sweet heat of
penny  candy.                           
They can’t stand it!                                                    
Still, they want more
and they refuse to spit you out. 

Isn’t that how love is?    

They question themselves    
as they recycle each line
while, maybe, a tabbycat 
presses closer 
beneath the sheet and digs
in familiar places.  
                                   
Women  wonder:  Is it their 
lack of something or just
their misfortune  
for never having met 
someone like you?   
                                                 
And they lean hard against  
the porcelain sink, night gown 
clinging to damp thighs,                                    
as they scrub the syrup
off their teeth.

Isn’t that how love is?     

So tonight, while you are  
too far from me,
I write this poem
and somewhere, 
some woman,          
someday
will read it
and tell herself that 
she will ask for
nothing more,
ever, if she is given the 
chance to be close enough 
to press an ear against her 
own lover's chest,   
close enough, to lose count 
of the rhythm  of a heart that 
only beats for her, close enough 
to breath in his exhale--
grateful for the gift of it.   

Because isn’t that how love is?

Details | Evelyn Augusto Poem

What's Left

What's Left

I like dimly lit bars and beer.

I like how you walk purposefully 
to me.  I like smelling need in
your swet.   I like your reserve.

And I like how you stand when you pee.
I like the shape of your feet
and how you touch me here 
and there with them.
I like how you never go directly for me.

I like when we  rub our bodies
together like two sticks, then
warm ourselves
on the heat we generate.  

I like how you saved me from my despair.

I liked you--
but  now there is only
this dimly lit bar and the beer.

By:  Evelyn Augusto

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Gunning At Walmart

“Give up trying to do anything.   
               nothing works works.”   
 From a note written by Scott Allen Ostrem


If only you came to buy
another cell phone, a pen and 
note card, some crayons &
paper.  Anything.  Anything
that would give you a voice.

If only you bought the
fixings for a satisfying supper, 
or a gift for a lost lover.
Anything. Anything to help 
you express your distress.

Anything to free your 
words from the prison of
your maddness, anything 
to thaw your frozen tongue,
anything to return your
manhood,  other than that gun!

Anything.  Anything.   If only . . .

By:  Evelyn Augusto 
For GUNS DON'T SAVE PEOPLE POETS DO 2017

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I Don'T Like Guns But

I don't like guns ... but

they make my husband feel
like a man and help him bond 
with our sons.  

I don't like them or how he 
describes the way they feel in 
his hand:  "Better than a tit",  
I heard him confide to his pal, Joey...

but something has to protect  us.  
I mean it's our right to be on guard.  
It's our right.

My husband spends all his
time with his guns:  cleaning them, 
polishing the barrels, studying their 
details.  And talking...talking about 
his gun rights, about his next NRA 
meeting or  what happened at the 
last or that he can't believe how 
good the right gun in his hand feels.  

I don't like guns...they made me                   disappear.