"No Table I Could Dress" by Carey Salerno
So far, I've identified two possible options, but there were a few others that came to mind that seemed worth mentioning.
"I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)" came to mind from the line, "How long were we out? Whatever. I can warm anything / even by stepping on it. I told myself." It definitely has the feel of the song, the narrator trying to convince herself that only she can change her man. As an aside, the final line of the song, "Whoa, maybe I can't," is so perfect in the most Swiftian of ways.
Later in the poem, the line, "I can't / from the dead place I placed you undeaden you," reminded me of the line in "End Game" - "I bury hatches / but I keep maps of where I put 'em." Although now the more I think about it, it could also align with "coney island" - "Did I close my fist around something delicate? Did I shatter you?"
The more obvious are my two contenders - "tolerate it," which is a song about a partner trying their very best to do all the right things, but their significant other doesn't value them or celebrate their love in any way. The title of the poem certainly parallels with the line in the chorus, "Lay the table with the fancy shit / And watch you tolerate it." And, overall, I think this could very well be the match.
But, at the risk of being too literal, I'm going to choose "Cold as You" for this poem. The song itself doesn't seem to contain much symbolism, but the poem focuses so much on cold, using the words "cold," "frost," ice," "zero kelvin," liquid nitrogen," "lack of warmth," "frosted," "snow," "shiver," "freezer," "frostkiss," and "winter." If this is the correct pairing, it's an interesting, much darker, response to the song. The poem feels like a story, almost reminiscent of an Edgar Allan Poe tale, and the fact that the poet was able to tell it in a mere two pages is impressive.
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