Some Anti-Love Poems for Valentine's Day

In case today is not the Valentine's Day of movies and songs, here are some "Anti-Love Poems" about breakups, heartache, and unrequited love. The Poetry Foundation describes these as more “Screw Cupid” than “Be Mine.”

A few samples:

“The Glass Essay” by Anne Carson

In the days and months after Law left
I felt as if the sky was torn off my life.

   

“The Flurry” by Sharon Olds

I mutter, “I feel like a killer.” “I’mthe killer”—taking my wrist—he says,
holding it. 

“Cuckoldom” by B.J. Ward

if you look
for alimony,
it follows
acrimony

“Semele Recycled” by Carolyn Kizer

After you left me forever,

I was broken into pieces,

and all the pieces flung into the river.

“The Breather” by Billy Collins

All that sweetness, the love and desire—
it’s just been me dialing myself
then following the ringing to another room

“Time Does Not Bring Relief: You All Have Lied” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim. 

“Sonnet [You jerk you didn’t call me up]” by Bernadette Mayer

I’m through with you bourgeois boys
All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts