"I am Trying to Break Your Heart" by Kevin Young

As a student at Harvard, Kevin Young joined the Dark Room Collective. He earned a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and earned an MFA from Brown University. He has published many books of poetry, and is now the poetry editor of the New Yorker and the director of New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Check him out here.

What drew me to this poem was the title, which matches the title of a Wilco song I like. Then I noticed he weaved a line from the song, "I assassin down the avenue," in his poem, which confirmed for me he is a Wilco fan and that's all I need to know to appreciate him and his work. 

I am Trying to Break Your Heart
by Kevin Young

I am hoping
to hang your head

on my wall
in shame—

the slightest taxidermy
thrills me. Fish

forever leaping
on the living-room wall—

paperweights made
from skulls

of small animals.
I want to wear

your smile on my sleeve
& break

your heart like a horse
or its leg. Weeks of being

bucked off, then
all at once, you're mine—

Put me down.

I want to call you thine

to tattoo mercy
along my knuckles. I assassin

down the avenue
I hope

to have you forgotten
by noon. To know you

by your knees
palsied by prayer.

Loneliness is a science—

consider the taxidermist's
tender hands

trying to keep from losing
skin, the bobcat grin

of the living.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.