First Sight

Love at first sight is such a cliché
you thought
until it happened to you,
an invisible wave
passing through every particle of you
like a ghost playing a pinball machine,
instantly realigning your being,
re-magnetizing you to a new true north.
If she were an iron filing
she’d be clinging to you already.
You aren’t the first
and you won’t be the last.
It happened to Dante
the moment he laid eyes on Beatrice
and he immediately did the only sensible thing–
begin composing an epic poem
about the nine circles of hell.
Your fate, it seems, is kinder
and less grand–
merely to toss and turn all night
with thoughts of her,
then to rise in the morning
somehow magically refreshed.

Kurt Luchs has poems published or forthcoming in Into the Void, Right Hand Pointing, Antiphon, and The Sun Magazine. He placed second for the 2019 Fischer Poetry Prize, and won the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. He has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as writing comedy for television and radio. His books include a humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny) (2017 Sagging Meniscus Press), and a poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other (2019 Finishing Line Press). More of his work, both poetry and humor, is at kurtluchs.com.