50 Great Love Poems for Valentine’s Day:
2017 Edition

Hey poetry lovers (and poetry-loving lovers)! It’s Valentine’s Day, so we’ve updated our playlist of love poems for you to enjoy! Click through to the full playlist here, or check out the individual poems below.

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Asia Samson – “90s Love”
“I want to love you like the 90s, back when we made book covers out of paper bags.”

Bernard Ferguson – “Message (after Khary Jackson)
“I think that man was born whole, but for all this time I have been the piece that completes him.”

Jamie Mortara – “Some Things You Need to Know Before Dating Me”
“I like long walks on the beach, directly into the bottom of the ocean.”

Sabrina Benaim – “How to Unfold a Memory
“Love, the great and handsome terrible beast; trace me back to it by a trail of smoke.”

Anis Mojgani – “Today’s Love”
“Damn if we humans aren’t a trifling animal at times, but still I love you, you mountains of trifle and futility, of perseverance and lightness.”

Haley Mosley – “Walls Waltz”
“My bed smelled like him today, and he’s never been in this one.”

Eric S. – “Virginity Lost”
“My only secret is that sex already meant little to me, even before I had it.”

Khary Jackson – “Carolina”
“When you first said you loved me I stopped being a slave.”

Aaliyah Jihad – “Ode to Aaliyah’s Mission to Sex Something for the First Time”
“Maybe this isn’t the rose petal, candle lit, promise ring, virginity tale everybody talks about, but fuck a love story.”

Erin Schick – “Identity: A Love Story”
“Asexual identity is permission to love myself the most.”

Sarah Kay & Phil Kay – “When Love Arrives”
“Love will tell you you are beautiful, and mean it, over and over again.”

Edwin Bodney – “Good Morning”
“You will be my first home, the song I listen for at sunrise, the first place I am content to dwell in.”

Neil Hilborn – “OCD”
“I leave the door unlocked. I leave the lights on.”

Theresa Davis – “Like Like”
“He is more like me than he knows, because I, too, am a sucker for a pretty, smart, nice girl, who eats food, and has conversations.”

Sabrina Benaim – “First Date”
“My heart is a messy bedroom I always distract myself from cleaning.”

Jesse Parent – “Hotbox Love”
“There are rings inside of me that are black and burned with the memory of you that I would carve away the bark of me to get at.”

Rachel Wiley – “Ten Honest Thoughts on Being Loved by a Skinny Boy”
“He tells me he loves me with the lights on.”

Dominique Christina – “Crushes Suck and Everybody Knows It”
“Can’t you see yourself dangling from the end of my pen? Well, I am waiting to write you down in cursive, in ink, in everything.”

Kevin Yang – “How to Love Your Introvert”
“Understand that just because I do not wear my heart on my sleeve for everyone to see does not mean that it beats any softer than yours.”

Joy Young – “The Dress Poem”
“It feels like staring at the sun, hard; so when I look away it stays, printed in my mind, making other images melt.”

Bryan Roessel – “History of Collisions”
“We held hands for the first time, spun slow into the sweet orbit of mutual embrace, a gravity so unlike the crashing of bodies.”

Talia Young – “The Virgin’s Lament”
“I want to touch you like people want to jump off Niagara Falls.”

Jared Singer – “Love”
“Love is not a muscle. It cannot atrophy from lack of use.”

Bianca Phipps – “Almosts”
“I never felt so at ease as the day you called me precocious.”

Victoria Morgan – “How to Succeed in Heartbreak”
“Do not be okay, because heartbreak is not about being okay, it is about remembering you were okay before.”

Jillian Christmas – “Just How some Folks Play the Blues”
“The first time a woman kissed me, I heard the music.”

Joyce Lee – “Mad Love”
“Everything happens for a reason. For instance, I busted the windows out your car so you could get the air I assumed you were talking about when you said I was suffocating you.”

Lauren Bullock – “Love Notes”
“I may never be the one who sleeps next to you at night, but at least let me be the love letter tucked beneath your pillowcase.”

Ollie Schminkey – “Two Twin Beds”
“Loving someone means inventing your own language.”

Melissa Lozada-Oliva & Jonathan Mendoza – “Date My Mom!”
“My mom’s so independent, she doesn’t even need to date you. That’s how dateable my mom is!”

Neil Hilborn – “Future Tense”
“Because she filled something in you thats still full, even though she’s gone.”

Sean Patrick Mulroy – “Letter to a New Crush”
“Look- I have been single long enough to watch entire porn careers bloom and wilt.”

Kay Kron – “Poem for Greg”
“You carry gigantic wood flats like a careless child carrying bouquets of daisies and I want to be a bouquet of daisies carelessly carried by you.”

Sam Cook – “On Feeling Safe”
“I would know, from the way we moved together, I was okay.”

Will Evans – “My Wife Is Shaped Like”
“My wife is shaped like home.”

Shane Hawley – “Sequins”
“When you sleep with your high school crush… eleven years after high school… not everything about it is magical.”

Khary Jackson – “How to Make Love”
“This is why both of you are here. Not to reserve a breath of tomorrow’s air, not to promise that you’ll stop whispering warm nothings to death, but because right here, right now, you are two people beaten but not gone.”

Emilee Nimetz – “The Warning Poem”
“Don’t shower because you will be clean and I will want to make a baby with you.”

Paul Canada – “Cummunication”
“I wanna explore every inch of your body, consensually. Let’s put the come back in communication!”

Gage Wallace – “Joseph Speaks to Mary”
“Years from now, our son will turn water into wine. Tonight, if you want me, I would turn this wine into an ocean.”

Aja Monet – “Weathering”
“Every poem before you was me just trying to scratch the words to reach you, to speak you into existence.”

Christopher Stanly – “Fat Love”
“Fat love is like nothing you see in magazines, on TV or movies. We proudly rip these shirts off and fill the air with the skin only we are familiar with.”

Lauren Zuniga – “Team F%&* Up Your Sheets”
“I have no idea where this is going. I just want to be captain of Team Fuck Up Your Sheets.”

Cam Awkward-Rich – “A Prude’s Manifesto”
“Often, I fantasize about tying a blond boy down to his own bed, leaving him splayed and panting, and then… just leaving.”

J. Scott Brownlee – “English 301”
“I understand the word desire now, I think, mostly because of you.”

Adam Segal & Mikkel Snyder – “Raptors”
“Love is a velociraptor.”

Sarah Kay – “Private Parts”
“We spelled love G-I-V-E.”

T Miller – “Halloween Suggestions for Your Ex-Lover”
“You should go down to Wal-Mart and see if they sell any face paint that makes you look less like the monster you are, and more like a person who actually gives a fuck about other people.”

Kate Bailey – “Sex in Warzones”
“These bodies are our only defiance. The marksman finds us all in time.”

Sierra DeMulder – “The Unrequited Love Poem”
“A soul mate is not the person who makes you the happiest, but the one who makes you feel the most.”