Wise Poets, Personal Writings, Clouds And Wisdom
Marilyn Nelson (April 26, 1946 -) A new grad student far away from home,I took every step on trembling ground.I knew no one. Who were my friends?The other black student in the programducked and rushed away when our eyes met.Seminar rooms were full of hungry dogssnapping up scraps of nodding approval.At the end of a …
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Beck Anson / By now I know the drill—stuff clothes into a bag, pullthe strings out of my sweatpants,slip on my black slip-on Vans,clip my fingernails into the trash canbecause who knows when I’ll be able to next.I can’t bring my deodorant becauseit has alcohol in the top three ingredients, and yes,patients actually try to …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Beck Anson – I Admit Myself to the Psych Ward in a Pandemic"
George Bilgere When the doctor called at 3amto tell me that only a ventilatorcould keep my aunt alive at that point,I stood shivering in the dark kitchen,thinking about that word, ventilator. I envisioned a dark shaft of some sortin an old office building from the fifties,when my aunt was a young woman.Then I imagined being …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – George Bilgere – Living Will"
Jacinta V White Gumbo soil is great for growing cotton& blueberries & heirloom rosesbut is better for burying the dead& stories & roots & family ties& nonsense & quarrels & letters & coins & cigarette butts& moonshine & past lives & past wives with boyfriends& all things unspeakable & guilt & sin & worn shoes& …
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Donald Andrew Hall (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) When I was twelve I sat by myself in the steamlinerwith a shoebox of sandwiches and deviled eggsmy mother made, and ate everything right awayas the train headed north by the Sound where trestlesof derelict trolley lines roosted nations of seagulls.From South Station I took …
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Víctor Fowler Calzada Now, when he is at your side, you discoverthat it is a man, still young. The same one as the time he proceeded through the corridorof the bus, an other on the stump of bothknees when you did not understand the jokes his friend was tellingto keep him company. That is how …
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Pattiann Rogers Straight up away from this road,Away from the fitted particles of frostCoating the hull of each chick pea,And the stiff archer bug making its wayIn the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,Up the stem of the trillium,Straight up through the sky above this road right now,The galaxies of the Cygnus A clusterAre …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Pattiann Rogers – Achieving Perspective"
Sandra Cisneros (December 20, 1954 -) A Song For Guitar I liked being youngwith you once.A moment or two,here and therewith you once.When youwere a poet,and I was a poet.Wordsmiths afraidof the wordsshimmeringright before us.I remember censoringmyself when I was sober.Spontaneous combustionwhen I wasn’t.We did a lot of thingsback thenunder the courageof alcohol.We were a …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Sandra Cisneros – Back Then or Even Now"
Zang Di At the IKEA checkout, a tiny curiositynearly stirred your pocket money.Each time I brought you along,the wait in line made human creativityseem as funny as showing off.It was already hard to keep youfrom seeing through a father’s teachings. I tried all the tricks,but mostly I steeled myselfand showed that hidden behind the father’s …
Kristal Leebrick I remember our breathin the icy airand how the northern lights gatheredin a haze at the horizon,spread up past the water towerthen vanished into the dark.I remember that January night in North Dakota:We left the dance,the hoods of our dads’ air force parkas zipped tight,our bare hands pulled into the coat sleeves.We raninto …
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Joyce Sutphen (August 10, 1949 -) It was hard work, dying, harderthan anything he'd ever done. Whatever brutal, bruising, back-Breaking chore he'd forced himself to endure—it was nothingcompared to this. And it took so long. When would the jobbe over? Who would call him home for supper? And it washard for us (his children)— all …
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Jim Peterson For Harriet You have done everythingThere is nothing left to do Your wrongs are now rightYour rights are still rightYou can let go now Let go of your eyesthat have seen too muchand too little,your hands that have playedthe strings, the keys,the skins of animalsstretched tight over the drums Let go of the …
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) The need comes on me nowto speak across the yearsto those who finally will live hereafter the present ruin, in the absenceof most of my kind who by noware dead, or have given their mindsto machines and become strange,"over-qualified" for the hardhandwork that must be doneto remake, so far …
Stephen Dunn (June 24, 1939 – June 24, 2021) And so you call your best friendwho’s away, just to hear his voice,but forget his recording concludeswith “Have a nice day.” “Thank you, but I have other plans,”you’re always tempted to respond,as an old lady once did, the clerkin the liquor store unable to laugh. Always …
Mary Angelino Struck with purpose, my father and grandfather worked silently together, in a languageof pointing and nods. My brother and I knewnot to ask questions when we brought them lunch on plastic trays: tuna salad sandwichesswaddled in napkins, the pitcher of lemonade that left vanishing halos on top of the brick wall. They’d work until the sky forgot …
Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:our friend the poet comes into my roomwhere I’ve been writing for days,drafts, carbons, poems are …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Adrienne Rich – Twenty-One Poems (Poem II)"
Danusha Laméris Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste budsall over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imaginethe dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of applespermeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.I’d always thought theirs a …
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Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) Of the terrible doubt of appearances,Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing …
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Rachel Betesh coarse skin, like a laborer;shoulders up, like horses;made for cold, like fire is,a radish holds its heat.in winter, we keepthe leastbecoming, what’s not bright,what burns your throat,these old,strong roots.black radishes:my back ached, i suppose,from taking them—the way you feel sorewhen you’ve lovedwith effort. when you’vestilled your thoughtswith work.bitter flesh, like wanting;smoky gray, like …
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Jeffrey Morgan They know by now about the bananas—yellow stippled with brown spotslike cheetahs—and our subsequent conversations about who should step up and bake a pie.They know by now our music, and can therefore construct an intimacy both sacred and mythological. They know what we say in our sleep better than we do ourselves,even as rain whispers promises to the darkness, even as …
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Joanna Fuhrman "Being in a funk" is what the cool people call it. It's the purple that surrounds the scene at the lake.Not sad enough to actually drown. You say, "I'm in a funk," and I think you thinkyou're too pretty, too well groomed,too stylishly disheveled, to actually sulk. Have you ever tried drinking a …
Tom Hennen Toads are smarter than frogs. Like all of us who are not good-looking they have to rely on their wits. A woman around thebeginning of the last century who was in love with frogs wrotea wonderful book on frogs and toads. In it she says if you placea frog and a toad on …
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Gabrielle Calvocoressi What you thought was the sound of the deer drinkingat the base of the ravine was not their soft tonguesentering the water but my Love tying my bow tie.We were in our little house just up from the ravine.Forgive yourself. It’s easy to mistake her wristsfor the necks of deer. Her fingers move …
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Jamey Hecht After Lattimore’s Homer We live on the flat surface of the world, and compared with a god,We can do nothing. If the god or the god’s divine messengerWere to come to Manhattan and approach this parkbench and sit beside me—And there is plenty of space for him or her and there is no …
Kate Barnes At eighteen, in Paris,I just woke up out of a dreamjust before dawn, and stepped through the long windowfrom my cold room with its red silk walls.Shivering a little in my dressing gown,I leaned on the balustradeand, look, overnight a light snow had fallen;no car had driven over it yet, it lay in …
José Antonio Rodríguez Don’t misunderstand me, I love a good poemLike half my Facebook friends, one that transports youTo a corner of the soul you didn’t know was thereBecause you couldn’t find the precise metaphor,Even if you felt it, like that time my parents sawA local news story of an older woman asking for helpWith …
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Marianne Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) What is our innocence,what is our guilt? All arenaked, none is safe. And whenceis courage: the unanswered question,the resolute doubt, —dumbly calling, deafly listening—thatin misfortune, even death,encourage othersand in its defeat, stirsthe soul to be strong? Hesees deep and is glad, whoaccedes to mortalityand in his …
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Jack Ridl (April 10, 1944 -) My grandfather grew up holding rags,pounding his fist into the pocketof a ball glove, gripping a plumb linefor his father who built what anyoneneeded. At sixteen, wanting to work onhis own, he lied about his ageand for forty-nine years carried his lunchto the assembly line where he stoodtightening bolts …
In war one nation may win, another nation may lose but the innocent victims who wish only to live, to survive, always lose. I cry each time I read this poem but I still read it’s story. The poet has a responsibility to truth whether it is found in the beauty of a sunset, the …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Nicholas Christopher – Terminus"
Faith Shearin They go to the dark, unloved places: into buildingswhere no one lives, where windows have brokenand walls have fallen and all the furnitureis full of birds. Secrets are at the bottomof each tea cup, at the bottom of the oceanwhere fish swim through their ruined remains.Secrets are in hospitals where doctorshide them in …
Adam Zagajewski (June 21, 1945 – March 21, 2021) You shout from the other roomYou ask me how to spell boogie-woogieAnd instantly I think what luckno war has been declaredno fire has consumedour city’s monumentsour bodies our dwellingsThe river didn’t floodno friendshave been arrestedIt’s only boogie-woogieI sigh relievedand say it’s spelled just like it soundsboogie-woogie …
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Maja Lukic I was as blank today as you canimagine, lost the way to circle backto the beginning or even last summer.I remember those days we wore matchinglemon flower dresses. I remember themorbid anatomy of lemons and suburbanfront yards. We posed for photographsin our lemon dresses. We were little girlson film, locked in a disposable …
I have the most intense erotic dreams now. I have a sense of taste in my dreams, I have soundtracks, I have original works of art. It’s like the movies but better, ’cause I’m in it. My best dream was that I put a credit card down on a reception desk in a fancy hotel …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Sandra Cisneros – Making Love After Celibacy"
Lucille Clifton (June 27, 1936 – February 13, 2010) people who are going to bein a few yearsbottoms of treesbear a responsibility to somethingbesides people if it was onlyyou and mesharing the consequencesit would be differentit wouId be justgenerations of men …
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Bob Hicok In deciding what I am, I’ve ruled out cat, vulture, shoe,a sadist who tortures people to death in a Syrian hospital,a president who separates families at the border,a handful of purple irises at the beginning of the pathto heaven. Is there memory in the shade of a treeof a lynching fifty years ago, …
Alison Townsend At sunset the russet oak turns into a lamp.Each polished leaf glows amber, lit by sun.As a child, I raked leaves with my mother each fall.We burned small pyres, their flames the color of loss. Each polished leaf glows amber, lit by sun.I could not know my mother would die young.We burned small …
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Maria Mazziotti Gillan At eleven, my granddaughter looks like my daughterdid, that slender body, that thin face, the gracewith which she moves. When she visits, she sitswith my daughter; they have hot chocolate togetherand talk. The way my granddaughter moves her hands,the concentration with which she does everything,knocks me back to the time when I …
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Jacinta V White women in white dresses surroundme after service like absent motherslonging for baby's return to their breasts rejoicing—prayers for a daughter's return are answered while they wait in line to tell me they knew my folks, and how …
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Scott Owens Pulling the house down piece by piece,we see each other at our worstbefore we've even had our first date,my face itching with black insulation,yours covered with white dust of sheetrock.We scrape off paint and paper, buff outspots, old glue, unexplainedstains, remove tacky panelingrevealing forgotten charm, originalbeadboard, hard woods, solid ceilings.We're woefully unprepared, untrained,undertooled, …
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Edna St Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) 🌹In memory of those whose lives ended on September 11, 2001 I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:Into the darkness …
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Elizabeth Train-Brown I feel unraveledI feel like scriptureI feel like the words of prophetstorn aparttranslatedretranslatedrewrittenspread to countries that don’t carewhat I have to say. I feel like taking out the middle mantaking out the writerthe penthe pageburrowing my face through the undergrowthslithering through the cracksof a confession boothand whispering my sinsthrough a mouthful of leaves. …
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Rita Dove (August 28, 1952 -) Imagine you wake upwith a second chance: The blue jayhawks his pretty waresand the oak still stands, spreadingglorious shade. If you don’t look back,the future never happens.How good to rise in sunlight,in the prodigal smell of biscuits –eggs and sausage on the grill.The whole sky is yoursto write on, …
Toi Derricotte (April 12, 1941 -) How I thrived from the triflesin my aunt Lenora’s handbag—Tums,pencils, Lifesavers, fancycolored cards—how, in the early morningbefore dawn, beforemy parents rose, her welcoming sheetshid me from the house’sstorms. She’d listen tomy far-fetched taleswhile I (standing on a stool) “helped”her dry dishes; or, after, when we’dwalk through the neighborhood’sdeep night, …
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) To see a World in a Grain of SandAnd a Heaven in a Wild FlowerHold Infinity in the palm of your handAnd Eternity in an hourA Robin Red breast in a CagePuts all Heaven in a RageA Dove house filld with Doves & PigeonsShudders Hell thr' …
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Jo McDougall From a wood beyond the fields,something dark has not yet advancedtoward the yellow lightof the kitchen.A woman puts away the dishes.A man goes through the mail.A child leans over the table,saying her homework. The dog looks up once and growlsas if not meaning to, a soundalmost inaudible.He clicks across the floor, nosing for …
Perie Longo For my husband Everything I see or hear is about him.This morning, the Dalai Lamasays there is so much sufferingin the world he can’t do much. With his monks he sifts colored sandinto an intricate design for peace,then sweeps it away. They collectthe remains in a small jar, sprinkle a littleon top of …
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Steven Espada Dawson That summer we’d hop fencesand call them gates. You’d shark pool, then we’d hunt deerwith all the quarters you tricked. You smiled when they leaptout of view. Passed me that orange rifle, told me to aimthen close my eyes for ten years. My antlered brother, momwon’t sell the house so you can …
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Anthony Hoagland (November 19, 1953 – October 23, 2018) Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,up to my neck in that most precious element of all, I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon featherfloating on the tension of the water at the very instant when a dragonfly,like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin, hovered over …
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Heather Allen Gradually along the rangeAll things exchange their lightFor darkness. Single oaksOn hills that burned with goldMerge now in shadow, And hawks sail outOver the valley,Its air like a mirror Filling with night,That takes our imagesAnd does not return them, Just as the pinesBlot out our voices,And even the stones at our feet Fade …
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June Adrienne Su The lazy Susan, in antiquity, would have been a fire.Drinking all night, the parents never get drunk.This is an ancient brew, with nuts, seeds, fruitto fuel the hours, to light a center.The tea dispenser’s orange light reminds us:they’re in the dining room, laughing in Chinesewhile we play Scrabble or Monopoly out here.They’re …
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Alicia Elsbeth Stallings (July 2, 1968 -) Dear A., Even before the virus, theseWere nearly empty galleries,But now we have these cluttered shelvesAnd halls of statues to ourselves.Stickers on the floor, in Greek,Tell us “Watch your apostasies”: “Mind your distance,” so to speak.But since the guards outnumber usThere is no nearness we need fear,No tourists …
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May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) Oh wild and gentle beast,Immense antlered shape,This morning in the meadow!Like something ancient, lostAnd found now, promise kept,Emerging from the shadow,Emerging while I slept—Wilderness and escape!You set me free to shirkThe day's demanding workAnd cast my guilt away.You make a truant of meThis moose-enchanted dayWhen all …
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Ron Padgett (June 17, 1942 -) The best thing I didfor my motherwas to outlive her for which I deserveno credit though it makes me gladthat she didn't haveto see me die Like most people(I suppose)I feel I shouldhave done morefor her Like what?I wasn't such a bad son I would have wantedto have loved …
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Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 – February 14, 2015) We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and Augustwhen the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clayof this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchardwhen suddenly the wind cools and for a momentyou get a whiff of salt, and …
Gabrielle Calvocoressi The days I don’t want to kill myselfare extraordinary. Deep bass. All the peoplein the streets waiting for their high fivesand leaping, I mean leaping,when they see me. I am the sun-filledgod of love. Or at least an optimisticunder-secretary. There should be a word for it.The days you wake up and do not wantto …
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Barbara Quick That hair’s breadth of a moment,knowing that the body has lurched outsidethe mind’s controland is falling. The head-first journey of nine feetpowered by a thirty-pound backpack–seeing not lights, but the hubrisof that one false, resentful stepupwards onto the fallen tree-trunkblocking the trail–that one unpracticed vaultup to a place where balance–my balance–is suddenly gone. …
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) There is a smile of love,And there is a smile of deceit;And there is a smile of smiles,In which these two smiles meet. (And there is a frown of hate,And there is a frown of disdain;And there is a frown of frownsWhich you strive to forget …
RA Villanueva Yanked free at the gills from cartilage and spine,these fish heads my mother cleans, whose bodies she scales, throwsall into salt water and crushed tamarind. At dinner she alonewill spoon out their eyes with her fingers, suck down each pair as we watch. See, this is why the three of youcould never hide …
Louise Elisabeth Glück (April 22, 1943 -) Today I went to the doctor—the doctor said I was dying,not in those words, but when I said itshe didn't deny it— What have you done to your body, her silence says.We gave it to you and look what you did to it,how you abused it.I’m not talking …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Louise Elisabeth Glück – A Slip of Paper"
Kristene Kaye Brown Let the world come hungry at me.Let the hours learn the tender curve of this neck. For so long I've wanted to believe that I'm made of star stuff, a glittering spigot funneled from the blue spiraling armsof our milky way. I hearthe clap of hands inside my chest.I swallow. The body …
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) For Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms The modern biographers worry“how far it went,” their tender friendship.They wonder just what it meanswhen he writes he thinks of her constantly,his guardian angel, beloved friend.The modern biographers askthe rude, irrelevant questionof our age, as if the eventof two bodies …
Elinor Morton Wylie (September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928) My bands of silk and miniverMomently grew heavier;The black gauze was beggarly thin;The ermine muffled mouth and chin;I could not suck the moonlight in. Harlequin in lozengesOf love and hate, I walked in theseStriped and ragged rigmaroles;Along the pavement my footsolesTrod warily on living coals. …
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Kim Robert Stafford (October 15, 1949 -) Things pretty much worked out for you—you have what you need, and if you need more,you have people ready and able to provide. Sure, someday your luck will run out,you’ll be helpless, then gone, and your peoplewill gather in your honor. There will be music, and tears. People …
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Linda Pastan (May 27, 1932 -) In the ordinary weather of summerwith storms rumbling from west to eastlike so many freight trains haulingtheir cargo of heat and rain,the dogs sprawl on the back steps, panting,insects assemble at every window,and we quarrel again, bombardingeach other with small grievances,our tempers flashing on and offin bursts of heat …
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John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,Sylvan historian, who canst thus expressA flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shapeOf deities or mortals, or of both,In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?What men or gods are …
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Roxane Beth Johnson I am trying to remember the lyrics of old songsI’ve forgotten, mostlyI am trying to remember one-hit wonders, hymns,and musicals like West Side Story.Singing over and over what I can recall, I hum remnants onbuses and in the car. I am so often alone these days with echoes of these old songsand …
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Dana Gioia (December 24, 1950 -) She wasn't lookingwhen they took this picture:sitting on the grassin her bare feetwearing a cotton dress,she stares off to the sidewatching something on the lawnthe camera didn't catch.What was it?A ladybug? A flower?Judging from her expression,possibly nothing at all,or elsethe lawn was like a mirror,and she sat watching herself,wondering …
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David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) There is a faith in loving fiercelythe one who is rightfully yours,especially if you havewaited years and especiallyif part of you never believedyou could deserve thisloved and beckoning handheld out to you this way.I am thinking of faith nowand the testaments of lonelinessand what we feel we areworthy of …
William Shakespeare (April 26, 1564 – April 23, 1616) Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolveAnd, like …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – William Shakespeare – Excerpt from The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1"
Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) I was going to write a poemI made a pie instead it tookabout the same amount of timeof course the pie was a finaldraft a poem would have had somedistance to go days and weeks andmuch crumpled paperthe pie already had a talkingtumbling audience among smalltrucks and a fire …
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Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) Let America be America again.Let it be the dream it used to be.Let it be the pioneer on the plainSeeking a home where he himself is free.(America never was America to me.)Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—Let it be that great strong land of …
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Hazem Fahmy Hours before the TV, my mouthagape, repeating after every American cartoonendlessly. Call it a meditation; was I not emptying my mindof language? Mouthing every syllable,like prayer–God, make me a true American,i.e. invisible, yetever-present. What a rush it wasto speak empireat such a young age. Later, I am asked: how did you getthis accent? …
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Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) I love you but I'm married.I love you but I wish you had more hair.I love you more.I love you more like a friend.I love your friends more than you.I love how when we go into a mall and classical muzak is playing,you can always name the composer.I love …
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Albert Garcia Here, take this palmful of raspberriesas my gift. It isn’t muchbut we’ve often said our needsare simple, some quiet timealone on the patioin the cool morning, coffee,a few words over the newspaper.I’ve rinsed these berriesso you can tumble themright into your cereal, one minuteon the vine, the next in your bowl,my hand to …
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) The railroad track is miles away,And the day is loud with voices speaking,Yet there isn't a train goes by all dayBut I hear its whistle shrieking. All night there isn't a train goes by,Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,But I see …
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Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) Wait, for now.Distrust everything if you have to.But trust the hours. Haven’t theycarried you everywhere, up to now?Personal events will become interesting again.Hair will become interesting.Pain will become interesting.Buds that open out of season will become interesting.Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;their memories are what …
Francesca Bell In the audiologist’s booth I clutch the device with the buttonI’m to press if I hear a tone, hand clammy, the waya child holds the finger of an adult she thinks can save her. Behind the one-way glass, my ears are cupped in the pinching headset, cilia becalmed, the quiet so thick I cannot …
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Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) Today, when I could do nothing,I saved an ant. It must have come in with the morning paper,still being deliveredto those who shelter in place. A morning paper is still an essential service. I am not an essential service. I have coffee and books,time,a garden,silence enough to fill cisterns. …
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Maxine Kumin (June 6, 1925 – February 6, 2014) You have forty-nine days betweendeath and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.Even the smallest soul could swimthe English Channel in that timeor climb, like a ten-month-old child,every step of the Washington Monumentto travel across, up, down, over or through—you won't know till you get there which to …
Robert Herrick (August 24, 1591 – October 15, 1674) Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles todayTomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,The higher he’s a-getting,The sooner will his race be run,And nearer he’s to setting. That age is best which is the …
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Matthew Olzmann So here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriagemight work: Because you wear pink but write poemsabout bullets and gravestones. Because you yellat your keys when you lose them, and laugh,loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercialsfrom thirty years back …
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Tiana Clark Everything wanted to be touched:My bottom lip, the freshly bustedcherry blossoms, creamy drippingslike soft fluttering pearls that edgedthe lack (I meant to write lakebut kept the mistake) as I rimmedthe risky desires. And you, youwere all new, suffused with muskand sadness, height and a milk-chocolate sweater that curledat the collar rim, filling outyour …
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Raymond Carver Jr (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) From The Archives Originally Published August 06, 2019 The Hotel Del Mayo The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book.The man in the lobby using a broom.The boy in the lobby watering plants.The desk clerk looking at his nails.The woman in the lobby writing …
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Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) (War Time)There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;And frogs in the pools singing at night,And wild plum trees in tremulous white,Robins will wear their feathery fireWhistling their whims on a low fence-wire;And not one will know …
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Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939 – June 24, 2021) As a child, some of his prayers were answeredbecause he prayed out loud for a kite or bike,which his mother would overhear, and pass onto her husband, his father, the Lord. Later, he understood that when he prayedhe was mostly talking to himself—albeit a better,more …
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William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) When I was youngerit was plain to meI must make something of myself.Older nowI walk back streetsadmiring the housesof the very poor:roof out of line with sidesthe yards clutteredwith old chicken wire, ashes,furniture gone wrong;the fences and outhousesbuilt of barrel stavesand parts of boxes, all,if …
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Naomi Long Madgett (July 5, 1923 – November 4, 2020) If I were blind and could not watch the late sunmelting into a simmering seaor wish on the first starlight-starbright hope of evening,it would not be the lost sunsetthat would deprive mebut the oak-gold contour of your smile.And your hand never rising in a benediction …
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Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947 – April 22, 1995) A second crop of hay lies cutand turned. Five gleaming crowssearch and peck between the rows.They make a low, companionable squawk,and like midwives and undertakerspossess a weird authority. Crickets leap from the stubble,parting before me like the Red Sea.The garden sprawls and spoils. Across the lake …
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Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) When summer time has come, and allThe world is in the magic thrallOf perfumed airs that lull each senseTo fits of drowsy indolence;When skies are deepest blue above,And flow'rs aflush,—then most I loveTo start, while early dews are damp,And wend my way in woodland trampWhere …
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Wayne Miller When the dog finally died, dad dug a hole beside the fence and buried her in a boot box. She's gone, but she had a good life,mom said. It's OK to be sad. Next day, the boy came into the kitchen holding the box in front of him. She's not gone. She's still in there, he said. Look.Mom …
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Eleanor Lerman It is a mild day in the suburbsWindy, a little gray. If there issunlight, it enters through thekitchen window and spreadsitself, thin as a napkin, besidethe coffee cup, pie on a plateWhat am I describing?I am describing a dreamin which nobody has diedThese are our mothers:your mother and mineIt is an empty day; …
Busisiwe Mahlangu the old chair is pushed against the door/ the windows are closed/the gate is locked/ the fence has barbed wire to hook the flesh/a good night’s sleep is bought with “caution”:/ pull all the keysout of the doors/do not switch off the lights/ turn over the welcome mats/ tell thedog to start barking …
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Emma Hine My mother calls to tell me a story.She and my father were drivingon a mountain road, and all around,the aspen trees were dying—each one on the mountainside leafless,clutching a sticky gold web in its brancheslike it had caught a rotten cloud.Where the road turned along a cliffthe guardrail was missing.Far below, a red …
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) I lived in the first century of world wars.Most mornings I would be more or less insane,The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,The news would pour out of various devicesInterrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.I would call my friends on other devices;They …
James Harrison (December 11, 1937 – March 26, 2016) Coming out of anesthesia I believedI had awakened in the wrong body,and when I returned to my snazzy hotel roomand looked at Architectural DigestI no longer recognized large parts of the world.There was a cabin for salefor seven million dollars, while mine had costonly forty grand …
Diane Seuss I could do it. I could walk into the sea.I have a rental car. It’s blue and low on fuel.I have feet, two, and proximity. I could do it.Others have before me. Jeff Buckley (1997) hewas only 30. Carol Wayne (1985) the Matinee Ladyand a photo spread in Playboy. Dennis Wilson (1983)after diving …
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Maya Pindyck Today I am my sister’s sister,my father’s brow,my mother’s squirm,urging my spirit to light. I touch my abdomen,each daughters’ doorwayopened for a few fluorescent minutesthen sewn shutfor good, if not for now. I remain here,even when my form bruises, blooms,or falls away, by way of what it doesor does not say. Instead of …
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Kwame Opoku-Duku Blessed be the bitternessat your core, that quiet lightgrowing quieter still,like the dull moan that escapesyour lips while you dream.They’ll ask you, child,what you know of suffering.They’ll ask you where it hurtsthe most, when the pain changeslike wavelengths of lightin the evening sky, when the criesof the ancestors ring out to youfrom the …
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Jane Shore Jay and Linda moved to Plateau Roadand brought with them a pair of horses:old Kahlua and his longtime mare.When her heart failed suddenly, Kahlua—a paint the color of the Mexican liqueurand swaybacked like a hammock—went on a hunger strike. Fearingthat he might die from loneliness,Jay and Linda heard about a donkeyhoused unhappily an …
Matthew Arnold (December 24, 1822 – April 15, 1888) The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line …
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Robert Pinsky (October 20, 1940 -) Walking among the graves for exerciseWhere do you get your ideas how do I stop themLooking for Mike Mazur’s marker I lookedDown at the grass and saw Stanislaw BaranczakOur Solidarity poetry reading in PoznanYears later in Newton now he said I’m a U.S.Liberal with a car like everybody elseWhen …
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Heather McHugh (August 20, 1948 -) I. Daily, the kindergartenerspassed my porch. I lovedtheir likeness and variety,their selves in line like littlemonosyllables, but huggable—I wasn't meant to grab them, ever,up into actual besmooches or downinto grubbiest tumbles, my lot was notto have them, in the flesh.Was it better or worse to lettheir lovability go by …
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Tadeusz Dąbrowski Paulina, the gardener’s daughter, caresabout flowers doomed to die.If I bring her a bouquet, she frees itfrom the ribbons and gently places it in the hospiceof a vase. When the flowers weaken, she trims their stemsand plucks off their wilting leaves. She takesthe dead ones to the compost, from the restshe forms a …
Mark Bibbins In case what Yoko Ono said is true that to name one’s enemy is one’s art injures the art more than the enemyI won’t tell you whois president now I forget the name of the womanwho gave you acupuncture but notof …
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Matthew Dickman I haven’t done drugs for threedays so I name each one aftermy sister and mother and brotherand take them out with meon a walk, each one taking turnsleading, each one the leaderof a pack that was bred in the mid-seventies, each leash the colorof glass and the density of a star,I hold each …
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Clint Margrave In memory of Gerald Locklin Nobody is more surprised than he is.First of all, Toad doesn’t believe in heaven,and secondly, even if he did,he never expected to visit. In fact, he’s minorly disappointed.Has he failed to achieve the properlydebauched life he so often courted? But the food tastes good.And you can drink all …
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Dilruba Ahmedq To test your pulse as you sleep.Bring the healer the howler the listening ear— Bring an apothecary to mix the tincture—We need the salvethe tablet the capsuleof the hour— Bring sword-eatersand those who will swallow fire—Fetch the guardian to flatten the wheelchair,to hoist it toward heaven:the public shuttle awaitsthe ceaseless trips to the …
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Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 – January 18, 1936) If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied …
Yesenia Montilla i have diver’s lungs from holding mybreath for so long. i promise youi am not trying to break a recordsometimes i just forget toexhale. my shoulders held tightlynear my neck, i am a ball of tenseliving, a tumbleweed with steel-toedboots. i can’t remember the last timei felt light as dandelion. i can’t rememberthe …
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Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) Living in the earth-deposits of our historyToday a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earthone bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-oldcure for fever or melancholy a tonicfor living on this earth in the winters of this climateToday I was reading about Marie Curie:she must have known she suffered from radiation sicknessher body bombarded for years by …
Now out of this vast silencethe cherry trees scraping their gnarled limbson the sky, and the wind hurls downa flurry of petals, a snowstorm really,a thousand prints on the wet pavement,each one a pair of white shutters, opening.Numinous, the souls of the dead, and now you,. . . among them—an intake of breath.How little it …
Meghan Dunn I too am sick of the body.I too am sick of being a body,am sick of being sick about my body,have made myself sick over how to care forand clothe it, how to make it behave,make it need less. Walking in the street,I have wished it might dissolveso that I might more clearly …
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) Before us great Death standsOur fate held close within his quiet hands.When with proud joy we lift Life's red wineTo drink deep of the mystic shining cupAnd ecstasy through all our being leaps—Death bows his head and weeps.
Jane Mead (August 13, 1958 – September 8, 2019) I wonder if I will miss the mossafter I fly off as much as I miss it nowjust thinking about leaving. There were stones of many colors.There were sticks holding bothlichen and moss.There were red gates with oldhand-forged hardware.There were fields of dry grasssmelling of first …
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Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) Time says “Let there be”every moment and instantlythere is space and the radianceof each bright galaxy.And eyes beholding radiance.And the gnats’ flickering dance.And the seas’ expanse.And death, and chance.Time makes roomfor going and coming homeand in time’s wombbegins all ending.Time is being and beingtime, …
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Louis Burke Jenkins (October 28, 1942 – December 21, 2019) "It's no use," he says, "she's left me." This is afterseveral drinks. It's as if he had said, "Van Gogh ismy favorite painter." It's a cheap print he has addedto his collection. He's been waiting all evening toshow it to me. He doesn't see it. …
Patricia Fargnoli (November 16, 1937 – February 18, 2021) I wake up to a world that is invisible,no golden trees, no picnic spread on the lawn.The ladies in hats have finished their teaand moved on. None of the questions I spent life askinghave been answered.Transience, evanescence, the dispersal of dust.God knows where, and is no …
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Nicholas Laird A human is not such a perfect machine.I didn’t design it for interaction particularlywith other machines—not closely—not non-stop.I made the campfire, for example, to be nature’stelevision but with a human being basicallyI was thinking of a tree, of what a tree needs.A root system, distance, light and air. Even livingyou are tearing through …
Theodore J. Kooser (April 25, 1939) In the musty light, in the thin brown airof damp carpet, doll heads and rust,beneath long rows of sharp footfallslike nails in a lid, an old man standstrying on glasses, lifting each pairfrom the box like a glittering fishand holding it up to the lightof a dirty bulb. Near …
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Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, 1880 – June 10, 1958) Little grey dreams,I sit at the ocean’s edge,At the grey ocean’s edge,With you in my lap. I launch you, one by one,And one by one,Little grey dreams,Under the grey, grey, clouds,Out on the grey, grey, sea,You go sailing away,From my empty lap,Little grey dreams. Sailing! …
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Afaa M. Weaver This wall is a great stairway, wallsare things that shoot up, keep out, linethe places where we mark the halls that carry our names. The bustsof this one and that one, this historyis in the hard labor of hearts, thrusts of piston and valve. I sit downat the first house, dizzy at …
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Florence Margaret Smith, better known as Stevie Smith (September 20, 1902 – March 07, 1971) Nobody heard him, the dead man,But still he lay moaning:I was much further out than you thoughtAnd not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larkingAnd now he’s deadIt must have been too cold for him his heart gave …
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Ellen Bass(June 16, 1947 -) Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeletonyou will need skill to expose, maybe the flyingsilver carp that’s invaded the Great Lakes, tumblingthe others into oblivion. If you don’t livenear a lake, you’ll have to travel.Walking is best and shows you mean it,but you could take a train …
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Yalie Saweda Kamara While sipping coffee in my mother’s Toyota, we hear the birdcall of two teenage boysin the parking lot: Aiight, one says, Besaydoo, the other returns, as they reachfor each other. Their cupped handshake pops like the first, fat, firecrackers of summer, their fingers shimmy as if they’re solving a Rubik’s cube just …
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Sarah Freligh I’m driving home from school when the radio talkturns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exitthe here and now of the freeway at rush hour, travel back into the past, where my mother is readingto my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggsand dying, and though this is the …
John Paul Martinez For Lolo Ma says not to swat at the houseflychirring in our headspace for the past two hoursbecause it just might be you. Ma shows me the flimsy browned picturesof you & me in your workshop, a scored-leather tool belt strapped acrossyour chest like a bandolier. My whole body smaller stillthan a …
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James Crews The night my mother turned back the clocksI thought that while we slept the hours stolenfrom everyone on earth would collect like coinsin a bank vault, so we’d wake up rich at last.Even as my mother explained that it meantonly extra dreams in winter, only late lightreturned to us with daffodils and rain …
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Guillaume Apollinaire (August 26, 1880 – November 09,1918) I stand here in the sight of everyone a man full of senseKnowing life and knowing of death what a living man can knowHaving gone through the griefs and happinesses of loveHaving known sometimes how to impose his ideasKnowing several languagesHaving travelled more than a littleHaving seen …
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Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) His vision, from the constantly passing bars,has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else.It seems to him there are a thousand bars;and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,the movement of his powerful soft stridesis like …
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Charlotte Mary Mew (November 15, 1869 – March 24, 1928) I remember rooms that have had their partIn the steady slowing down of the heart.The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,The little damp room with the seaweed smell,And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide—Rooms where for good or ill—things died.But there is the …
Elsa Gidlow (December 29, 1898 – 08, June 1986) I shall never have any fear of love,Not of its depth nor its uttermost height,Its exquisite pain and its terrible delight.I shall never have any fear of love. I shall never hesitate to go downInto the fastness of its abyssNor shrink from the cruelty of its …
Kim Dower Barbara, my childhood piano teacherplayed Chopin like he was whisperinginto her hands, all us kids from the buildinghad our Saturday morning lessons, apartment 6C,our giddy fingers trotting in the key of G,lifting high for Mozart, metronome tickingas her coffee brewed, her sandy-haired husbandat the wooden breakfast table, mug, cigarettetight in his hands, he …
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Li-Young Lee (August 19, 1957 -) I loved you before I was born.It doesn’t make sense, I know. I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.And I’ve lived longingfor your every look ever since.That longing entered time as this body.And the longing grew as this body waxed.And the longing grows as this body …
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She wasn’t a good cat. Wouldn’t let us pick her upor cuddle on the bed. Sometimes she’d permit petting, but only if she was in the mood, and onher own terms. If she was perched on a chair, perhaps you might approach. But now, at fifteen, she’s stoppedeating and drinking, sleeps all day. Instead of …
Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) Very slowly burning, the big forest treestands in the slight hollow of the snowmelted around it by the mild, longheat of its being and its will to beroot, trunk, branch, leaf, and knowearth dark, sun light, wind touch, bird song.Rootless and restless and warmblooded, …
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1962) In the room where we lie, lightstains the drawn shades yellow.We sweat and pull at each other, climbwith our fingers the slippery ladders of rib.Wherever our bodies touch, the fleshcomes alive. Head and need, like invisibleanimals, gnaw at my breasts, the softinsides of your thighs. What I wantI simply reach …
Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939 – June 24, 2021) The room has no choice.Everything that’s spoken in itit absorbs. And it must put up with the bad flirt, the overly perfumed,the many murderers of mood—with whomever chooses to walk in. If there’s a crowd, one personis certain to be concealing a sadness,another will have …
Emily Jane Brontë (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) No coward soul is mineNo trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphereI see Heaven's glories shineAnd Faith shines equal arming me from Fear O God within my breastAlmighty ever-present DeityLife, that in me hast rest,As I Undying Life, have power in Thee Vain are the thousand …
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Priscilla Denise Levertov (October 24, 1923 – December 20, 1997) When I opened the doorI found the vine leavesspeaking among themselves in abundantwhispers. My presence made themhush their green breath,embarrassed, the wayhumans stand up, buttoning their jackets,acting as if they were leaving anyway, as ifthe conversation had endedjust before you arrived. I likedthe glimpse I had, though,of …
Joseph Stroud Trying to tie my shoes, clumsy, not able to work outthe logic of it, fumbling, as my father stands there,his anger growing over a son who can’t even dothis simplest thing for the first time, can’t even managethe knot to keep his shoes on—You think someone’sgoing to tie your shoes for you the …
David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) Sometimesif you move carefullythrough the forest,breathinglike the onesin the old stories,who could crossa shimmering bed of leaveswithout a sound,you come to a placewhose only taskis to trouble youwith tinybut frightening requests,conceived out of nowherebut in this placebeginning to lead everywhere.Requests to stop whatyou are doing right now,andto stop what …
George Bilgere Jane, the old woman across the street,is lugging big black trash bags to the curb.It's snowing hard, and the bags are turning white,gradually disappearing in the storm. Jane is getting ready to put her house on the marketand move into a home of some sort. A facility.She's just too old to keep the …
Sophie Jewett (June 3, 1861 – October 11, 1909), aka Ellen Burroughs I have read somewhere that the birds of fairyland are white as snow. W B Yeats (June 13, 1865 – January 28, 1939) Where all the trees bear golden flowers,And all the birds are white;Where fairy folk in dancing hoursBurn stars for candlelight; Where …
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Alfonsina Storni (May 29, 1892 – October 25, 1938) Teeth of flowers, bonnet of dew,hands of grass, you, lovely nursemaid,turn down the earthen sheets for meand the quilt of weeded moss. I’m going to sleep, my nurse, tuck me in,put a lamp on my headboard;a constellation; whichever you like;both are fine; lower the light a little. Leave …
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Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) I have no Life but this —To lead it here —Nor any Death — but lestDispelled from there — Nor tie to Earths to come —Nor Action new —Except through this extent —The Realm of you —
Alex Dimitrov (November 30 1984 -) I was just beginningto wonder about my own lifeand now I have to return to itregardless of the weatheror how close I am to love.Doesn’t it bother you sometimeswhat living is, what the day has turned into?So many screens and meetingsand things to be late for.Everyone truly deservesa flute …
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, lightThy bright torch of love; thy radiant crownPut on, and smile upon our evening bed!Smile on our loves; and, while thou drawest theBlue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dewOn every flower …
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Richie Hofmann You were my second lover.You had dark eyes and hair,like a painting of a man.We lay on our stomachs reading books in your bed.I e-mailed my professor. I will be absentfrom French Novel due to sickness. You put onsome piano music. Even thoughit was winter, we had to keepthe window open day and …
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Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 11, 1889 – 05, March 1966) better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,not sticks of burning incense.You lived aloof, maintaining to the endyour magnificent disdain.You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,and suffocated inside stifling walls.Alone you let the terrible stranger …
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Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926) After writing for a week alone in my old shack,I guide the car through Ortonville around midnight. The policeman talks intently in his swivel chair.The light from above shines on his bald head. Soon the car picks up speed again beside the quarries.The moonspot on the steel tracks moves …
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He stands at the window baffledby pleasure and how brief it is.Pleasure followed by the memoryof pleasure. Lightthen dark with a splinterleft in. Something like that.The woman in the chair is reading,drinking tea in the ground glasshaze of evening.The sudden swell he feelswatching herilluminates the past she spentgetting to this place:a lover who left, perhaps. …
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) I leave behind evenmy walking stick. My knifeis in my pocket, but thatI have forgot. I bringno car, no cell phone,no computer, no camera,no CD player, no fax, noTV, not even a book. I gointo the woods. I sit ona log provided at no cost.It is the earth I've …
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Cathy Song (August 20, 1955 -) To prepare the body,aim for the translucent perfectionyou find in the sliced shavingsof a pickled turnip.In order for this to happen,you must avoid the sun,protect the faceunder a paper parasoluntil it is bruised whitelike the skin of lilies.Use white soapfrom a blue porcelaindish for this. Restrict yourself.Eat the whites …
David Watts He stands at the window baffledby pleasure and how brief it is.Pleasure followed by the memoryof pleasure. Lightthen dark with a splinterleft in. Something like that.The woman in the chair is reading,drinking tea in the ground glasshaze of evening.The sudden swell he feelswatching herilluminates the past she spentgetting to this place:a lover who …
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Ariel Francisco I heard them and I still hear themabove the threatening shrieks of police sirensabove the honking horns of morning traffic,above the home-crowd cheers of Yankee Stadiumabove the school bells and laughterlighting up the afternoonabove the clamoring trudge of the 1 trainand the 2 and 4, 5, 6, the B and the Dabove the …
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) Apple Here’s to the crazy ones.The misfits.The rebels.The troublemakers.The round pegs in square holes.The ones who see things differently.There’re not fond or rules.And they have no respect for the status quo.You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,disbelieve them, glorify them or vilify them.About …
Kathleen A Dale i. Nine thousand years seems long but for the imagination: see a Siberian girl smile as she reaches out to touch the saggital crest (shaped like an arrow, indicating strong jaw muscles) on the head of a Husky, once-removed from wolf, panting by the fire after pulling home a sled of reindeer meat. Now, see them …
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Jorie Graham (May 09, 1950 -) you ask meagain—whyputting your tiny hand onthe not yetunsheathedbud on therhododendronand I seeI need to be skyI need to be soilthere are no wordsfor why that Ican find fastenough, whyyou say atthe foot of the cherry’s wideblossomfallis it dead now whydid it let go, why,tossed outinto what appearsto be …
Maurice Manning One morning when the weather was strangeand haunted following a rain—I believe a fog had settled likea thought over the field and the sunthat peered through it troubled the thought—I remember saying to myself,for no one was around, it’s likewe’re living in a Turner painting,a haunted cave of melodyso indistinct, almost unseen.As if …
Seamus Justin Heaney (April 13, 1939 – August 30, 2013) I can feel the tugof the halter at the napeof her neck, the windon her naked front.It blows her nipplesto amber beads,it shakes the frail riggingof her ribs.I can see her drownedbody in the bog,the weighing stone,the floating rods and boughs.Under which at firstshe was …
Jim Peterson For Harriet I followed you up the faceof that cliff-riddled mountain.I am tall, stiff, scared of heights. You are small, lithe, quick and notscared of anything in the physicalworld. At first the easy handholds and footholds gave me confidence.But narrow ledges curving underoverhangs began to take their toll. I stalled, my face pressed …
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Mi-Mi Monahan Her mother makes her dinner every night.We sit at the table and say grace with hands pressedlike clenched thighs and I pray they can’t tell my motherdoesn’t believe in god and doesn’t cook. So I eatall the peas off my plate while she complains over the two bites she’s forced to takefor a …
James Davis May Even on the night my friend died after a long illness— I won’t use the word battle, but the cancer was gone, and then it came back, like some slasher film killer— even on that night, the feral cat, the one that’s white and fluffy and sometimes affectionate, still crossed our driveway, …
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Eleanor Rand Wilner For years he had been hidden, quiet,huge head on his paws,almost a sphinx in his composure,a figure waitingfor a breeze to move the densegreen canopy of leaves overhead,enough to bring a hair-thin laser lineof light downinto the endless twilightbelow;he had been patient, waitingfor the underbrush to open, for a lowwind to enter, …
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Phillip Lopate It's good we only see each other once a week.A young man about to move in with his fiancéedied of a sudden heart attack at twenty-six.One hears these stories all the time.The heart is trained to handle deprivation,not unforeseen happiness. Just as when youthrow your arms around me I start to overflow,but then …
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Ellen Bass (June 16, 1947 -) I try to look at the big picture. The sun, ardent tonguelicking us like a mother besottedwith her new cub, will wear itself out. Everything is transitory.Think of the meteorthat annihilated the dinosaurs.And before that, the volcanoesof the Permian period — all those burnt fernsand reptiles, sharks and bony fish —that …
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Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (September 29, 1810 – November 12, 1865) Sunday July 4th 1836 I made a vow within my soul, O Child,When thou wert laid beside my weary heart,With marks of death on every tender partThat, if in time a living infant smiled,Winning my ear with gentle sounds of loveIn sunshine of such joy, …
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer What could be more valuablethan nothing? The nothing thatframes “The Thinker,” the nothingthat holds every bowl,every vase, every bust, every thought.Let others buy the clay, the steel,the papier-mâché. I will be satisfiedwith nothing more than nothing.Nothing pleases me. Nothingenchants me. Nothing,as Heisenberg says,has a weight. Just thinkof the space here beside mewhere …
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JR Solonche Go out and listen to the frogs, he said.They speak for you. So I went out to listen to the frogsas he said, for he was a poet and spoke with passion and audacious authority.And in the moonlight at the pond, I listened to the frogs speaking to one another,and after a while …
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Tracy K Smith (April 16, 1972 -) I wish it would grab me by the ankles and pull.I wish its shadow would dance up close, closing in.When I close my eyes a presence forms, backs away.I float above a lake, am dragged backfrom a portion of sky. Down, down, the falling doesn’t end.Every marked body …
Anya Krugovoy Silver (December 22, 1968 – August 6, 2018) There’s no doubt it’s the most glamorous,the one you reach for first—its luscious gloss.Russian Roulette, First Dance, Apéritif, Cherry Pop.For three days, your nails are a Ferris wheel,a field of roses, a flashing neon Open sign.Whatever you’re wearing feels like a tight dressand your hair …
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Philip Schultz (January 06, 1945 -) To pay for my father’s funeralI borrowed money from peoplehe already owed money to.One called him a nobody.No, I said, he was a failure.You can’t remembera nobody’s name, that’s whythey’re called nobodies.Failures are unforgettable.The rabbi who read a stock eulogyabout a man who didn’t belong toor believe in anythingwas …
Nate Marshall today i offer my selfall the small kindnesses. i’m out herewith breath in my bodythough it may be stank& body in my controlthough it may be too muchor not enough. today i offer the whole criba jam we ain’t heard in a minute& permission to turn the news down& move a hip like …
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You are the bread and the knife,The crystal goblet and the wine… —Jacques Crickillon Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) Litany You are the bread and the knife,the crystal goblet and the wine.You are the dew on the morning grassand the burning wheel of the sun.You are the white apron of the baker,and the marsh …
Ishion Hutchinson In memoriam Adam Zagajewski (June 21, 1945 - March 21, 2021) Cool as the breeze, springcomes and proves the provenblank which was sorrowa turbulent need, a healing.Who am I kidding? To say “spring,”and to say so on the front stepsjust after noon in the bright cool of the day,is a form of dissolution.How …
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) We bring our hands togetherin applause, that absurd noise,when we want to be silent. We might as wellbe banging pots and pans,it is that jarring, a violationof the music we've listened towithout moving, almost holding our breath.The pianist in his blindinglywhite summer jacket bowsand disappears and …
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Adam Zagajewski (June 21, 1945 – March 21, 2021) To go to Lvov. Which stationfor Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew gleams on a suitcase, when expresstrains and bullet trains are being born. To leave in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September or in March. But only if Lvov exists,if it is …
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John Keats ( October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump …
Neil Gaiman (November 10, 1960 -) For Arthur Eddington 1.To find the many in the onehe sweated under foreign skiesto see the stars behind the sun.So space and time were now undonereality was undisguised.We found the many in the one.There is no photograph, not one,that shows the mind behind the eyes.He saw the stars behind …
WS Merwin (September 30, 1927–March 15, 2019) When they start to wear your clothesdo their dreams become more like yourswho do they look likewhen they start to use your languagedo they say what you saywho are they in your wordswhen they start to use your moneydo they need the same things you needor do the …
Diane di Prima (August 6, 1934 – October 25, 2020) For Jackson Allen My friend wears my scarf at his waistI give him moonstonesHe gives me shell & seaweedsHe comes from a distant city & I meet himWe will plant eggplants & celery togetherHe weaves me cloth …
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Deborah Landau So whatever’s the opposite of a Buddhist that’s what I am.Kindhearted, yes, but knee deep in existential gloom,except when the fog smokes the bridges like this—like, instead of being afraid we might juice ourselves up,eh, like, might get kissed again? Dwelling in bones I go straightthrough life, a sublime abundance—cherries, dog’s breath, the …
Alejandra Pizarnik (April 29, 1936 – September 25, 1972) Once again, someone falls in their first falling–fall of two bodies, of two eyes, of four green eyes or eight green eyes if we count those born in the mirror (at midnight, in the purest fear, in the loss), you haven’t been able to recognize the …
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Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) ‘Tis good — the looking back on Grief —To re-endure a Day —We thought the Mighty Funeral —Of All Conceived Joy —To recollect how Busy GrassDid meddle — one by one —Till all the Grief with Summer — wavedAnd none could see the stone.And though …
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Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1952 -) On the street outside the windowsomeone is talking to someone else,a baffling song, no words, only the musicof voices—low contralto of questions,laughter’s plucked strings—voices in darknessbelow stars where someone straddles a bikeup on the balls of his feet, and someone elsestands firm on a curb, her arms crossed, twodogs …
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Thomas Hardy (June 02, 1840 – January 11, 1928) Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,Saying that now you are not as you wereWhen you had changed from the one who was all to me,But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let …
Ada Limón On the black wet branches of the linden,still clinging to umber leaves of late fall,two crows land. They say, “Stop,” and still I wantto make them into something they are not.Odin’s ravens, the bruja’s eyes. What newsare they bringing of our world to the worldof the gods? It can’t be good. More sufferingall …
Aracelis Girmay (December 10, 1977 -) When I get the call about my brother,I'm on a stopped train leaving town& the news packs into me—freight—though it's him on the other endnow, saying finefine— Forfeit my eyes, I want to turn awayfrom the hair on the floor of his house& how it got there Monday,but my …
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Robert von Ranke Graves (July 24, 1895 – December 07, 1985) Every choice is always the wrong choice,Every vote cast is always cast away—How can truth hover between alternatives?Then love me more than dearly, love me wholly,Love me with no weighing of circumstance,As I am pledged in honour to love you:With no weakness, with no …
Vanessa Jimenez Gabb There will be workBy late fallRaining inHabana ViejoIt’s so hardTo not think of youPrivacy is complicatedThe famous hotelBy the seaWhere did you come fromWhere did you come fromSometimes the verbsAren't importantThank youFor this organizationThe conspicuous absenceOf logosThese mountains I believeWill absolve meWhen I rememberTo look upMoney doesn't alwaysMean what I thinkIt doesIt …
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James Harrison (December 11, 1937 – March 26, 2016) Night and dayseize the day, also the night —a handful of water to grasp.The moon shines off the mountainsnow where grizzlies look for a placefor the winter’s sleep and birth.I just ate the year’s last tomatoin the year’s fatal whirl.This is mid-October, apple time.I picked them …
Margaret Hasse After being a student, then an hourly worker,I became a career girl and earned real money.I left behind a provisional furnished apartmentwith its stained curtains, butt-burned tableand Goodwill mattress I was never sure about. Alone I bought a house with an attic,a basement and a skirt of flowers.Freely I spent on white paint, …
Mary Jane Olive (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) Who made the world?Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?This grasshopper, I mean—the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up …
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Franz Xaver Kappus (May 17, 1883 – October 09, 1966) Through my life there trembles, without complaintor sighs, a deep, dark pain.My dreams of pure snowblossomsconsecrate the stillest day.But oft my path encountersthe great question. I become smalland cold, like a lakewhose waters I dare not measure.Then a sorrow overcomes me, a sorrowlike the dullest …
David Budbill (June 13, 1940 – September 25, 2016) Winter is the best timeto find out who you are.Quiet, contemplation time,away from the rushing world,cold time, dark time, holed-uppulled-in time and spaceto see that inner landscape,that place hidden and within.
Victoria Chang The Blue Dress—died on August 6, 2015, along with the little blue flowers, all silent. Once the petals looked up. Now small pieces of dust. I wonder whether they burned the dress or just the body? I wonder who lifted her up into the fire? I wonder if her hair brushed his cheek …
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Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,Then Baxter and Calabro,Davis and Eberling, names falling into placeAs droplets fell through the dark.Names …
Dawn Lundy Martin They will tell you that I was sick, that I was a drug addict. They will tell you I died a natural death. Sometimes young people just die, they will say, we don’t know why. They will say I was lazy, that I could not work because of disease and just general …
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 11, 1889 – March 05, 1966) better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova Not under foreign skiesNor under foreign wings protected -I shared all this with my own peopleThere, where misfortune had abandoned us.[1961] INSTEAD OF A PREFACE During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, Ispent seventeen months waiting …
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) You don't believe — I won't attempt to make ye.You are asleep — I won't attempt to wake ye.Sleep on, sleep on, while in your pleasant dreamsOf reason you may drink of life's clear streamsReason and Newton, they are quite two things,For so the swallow and …
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Skye Jackson at the parades, everyone wants to touch my hair. on the corner of st charles and marengo, i am cold & smashed & puffy AF when two white women try to convince me that they love my hair no they really really do they say because it is soblack and thick and curly and soaking up all of thewater in …
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Maria Mazziotti Gillan (March 12, 1940 -) A friend sends me a picture of herselffrom the 70s—bell bottoms, platform shoesa patterned button down shirt,hair puffed up from a perm. I can see the outline of the person she is nowand she reminds me of myself in the 70s—married for eight years to a manI knew …
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Gregory Djanikian There's something to be said for banality,the way it keeps everything on a level plane,one cliché blithely following anotherlike cows heading toward the pasture. How lovely sometimes not to thinkabout Russian Futurism, or the second lawof thermodynamics, or how thinking itselfrequires some thoughtfulness. I'd like to ask if Machiavelliever owned a dog named …
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Ha Jin (February 21, 1956 -) I sing of an old landwhere the gods have taken shelter underground,where the human idols eat human sacrifice,where hatred runs the business of philanthropy,where blazing dragons eclipse the wronged ghosts,where silence and smiles are the trace of wisdom,where words imitate spears and swords,where truth is always a bloody legend. I …
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Michael Waters (November 23, 1949 -) Seth wrestled the Camaro with one fist & poppedHandfuls of pills while the pistol rode my thigh.I shouted Is it loaded? over Grandmaster Flash.Amateur thug, he slipped the piece into his boot& swaggered like a bouncer into the funeral home. Sunglass’d still & jittery, he scanned the room,Swept past uncles …
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) One day everything that’s over or deadwill come back, oil painting & God,chivalry & the kings (even the madold rotters, why not, while the headsof the plotters are removedfrom their iron spikes & carefully gluedon again)— why not believe in the miracle— plaidhas already come back so why not …
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Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) Before you know what kindness really isyou must lose things,feel the future dissolve in a momentlike salt in a weakened broth.What you held in your hand,what you counted and carefully saved,all this must go so you knowhow desolate the landscape can bebetween the regions of kindness.How you ride …
William Wordsworth (April 07, 1770 – April 23, 1850) My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began;So is it now I am a man;So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!The Child is father of the man;And I could wish my days to …
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Alfred Tennyson (August 06, 1809 – October 06, 1892) For Arthur Hallam Dark house, by which once more I standHere in the long unlovely street,Doors, where my heart was used to beatSo quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp’d no more—Behold me, for I cannot sleep,And like a guilty thing I …
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Barbara Quick I learned how to make Nana’s chicken soupby shadowing her steps in the kitchen,taking notes on a white paper napkin.A cauldron of sorts is required, as well as aonce-animate chicken submerged abovethe stove’s blue flame.“You put in the onions,” Nana said,her Russian accent as fresh as the breezemust have felt on her face …
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Diane Ackerman (October 07, 1948 -) Especially in early spring,when the sun offers a thin treacle of warmth,I love to sit outdoorsand eat sense-ravishing apricots.Born on sun-drenched trees in Morocco,the apricots have flown the Atlanticlike small comets, and I can tastebroiling North Africa in their flesh.Somewhere between a peach and a prayer,they taste of well …
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Joan Glass If rust can grow on the moon’s surface,240,000 miles away from oxygen,if solar wind can traverse that vacuum,confounding scientists, turning red the crustof such a scarred and lonesome celestial body,maybe I am capable of more than I think.Maybe everything I need for alchemyis already here, in my core and cells,in this room where …
Eleanor Channell If you weren’t here, I’d fear the surgeof surf. I’d watch the moon wax and wane,feel the constant pulling of tides, the urgeto drown myself in pity and booze, to explain my life as “Cape Disappointment” with hard luckspinning and winning souls like mine, a jettyof riprap pointing to my faults, the muckof my …
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) Black shadows fallFrom the lindens tall,That lift aloft their massive wallAgainst the southern sky; And from the realmsOf the shadowy elmsA tide-like darkness overwhelmsThe fields that round us lie. But the night is fair,And everywhereA warm, soft vapor fills the air,And distant sounds seem near, …
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Kenneth Ronkowitz A star chart tells methat the star I am seeing tonightis 500 light years away.It may have died 499 years ago,and I am still seeing its last light.Stars are born, they live, and they die.What is the light that remains when we leave?If I die after writing this poem, is this my light,and …
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Tadeusz Dąbrowski Yesterday I sent you a letter. And today on the phoneyou tell me you are pregnant. I pack up and return,you greet me at the airport, you’re even lovelier thanin my letter that’s on its way to you. We builda house, our child grows, our parents shrink,then a few years of sweat and …
Aria Aber Last night it startled me again—I dreamedof the corn maze through which we walked,almost a decade ago, in the presenceof our other lovers. It was all burned down.Purple corn glowed in the fields envelopingthe ruined maze, the woodlands washedby October sun. Instead of you, I found in the salt-white musicof that familiar landscape …
Toi Derricotte (April 12, 1941 -) How many of us were fingered?A soft thing with a hole in it,a thing that won’t tell, that can’t.I forget how many times I was broken, a soft thing with a hole in it.Some remember, grateful it wasn’t worse;I forget how many times I was broken.Someone faceless rolled on …
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Louis Jenkins (October 28, 1942 - December 21, 2019) I'm out of it these days. I guess I have less interest inkeeping up to date on what's happening. I don't knowthe names of most of the current movie stars and have notseen their movies. Same for the music scene. I have notread what everyone is …
James Cushing I know a man who carries a corpse on his shoulders.Yesterday, at sunset, I thought I sawa lump of what had been a foot, or a smear of whatmaybe was a face, just to the side of my friend’s pant legdown by the unshined toes of his brown saddle shoes.It was the dead, …
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David Baker (December 27, 1954 -) Even the night cooling down is slick with heat.Even the sheet we share like a humming skin.From three stories up the sounds of the street,drinkers at the curb, a wet hiss of dry tires,is a rhythm through our box fan, like panting.When we sleep it is piecemeal until morning. …
David Romtvedt My Uncle Will wanted to be on Broadway.After family dinners, when everyone sat arounddrinking coffee, he’d do a little tap dance or shuffle.Of course it was embarrassing to have a grown manwho worked at the lumberyard dancing after dinner. On my ninth birthday, I became his reluctant partner.We wore white shirts, red jackets, …
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Heidi Seaborn I fall in love todaywith the man fixing my water faucets,how he crouches in his boots, feelshis way deftly to salve the leak.I’m in love with dandelions & ugly bobs& even morning glory as I yanktheir roots free from this dark & luscious soil.O I love, love the rhododendronblushing newborn pink, lovethe neighbor’s …
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Claudia Rankine (September 15, 1963 -) There was a time I could say no one I knew well had died. This is not to suggest no one died. When I was eight my mother became pregnant. She went to the hospital to give birth and returned without the baby. Where's the baby? we asked. Did …
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Alexandra Umlas That night, the clouds roll in,as if on a whim, just at the momentyou decide to take the dog you rescuedoutside to pee—and you’ve discoveredhow the dog is scared of the rain,the wind shattering the stillnessof the trees, how the dog won’t move,not even an inch, but stands solidly,his four legs statued to …
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Arthur Sze(December 1, 1950 -) Leafing branches of a back-yard plum—branches of water on a dissolving ice sheet—chatter of magpies when you approach—lilacs lean over the road, weighted with purple blossoms—then the noon sun shimmers the grasses—you ride the surge into summer—smell of piñon crackling in the fireplace—blued notes of a saxophone in the air—not …
David Kirby Rilke said he wanted a room “with a few old things and a window opening onto great trees,” which makesme think of my favorite rooms and their furnishings, an obvious choice being this brightly-lit bedroom, newspapers and coffee cups on the floor, bedclothesscattered everywhere, perfumed with the smell of sex, maybe, or maybe …
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Ted Kooser (April 25, 1939 -) What once was meant to be a statement—a dripping dagger held in the fistof a shuddering heart—is now just a bruiseon a bony old shoulder, the spotwhere vanity once punched him hardand the ache lingered on. He looks likesomeone you had to reckon with,strong as a stallion, fast and …
Kamilah Aisha Moon I. Their noises make you thinkthey are crying or suffering.They have learned to bow.Even the fawns bow, centuriesof bowingin their blood. They are not considered wild.Precious pests litter parkswith dung, take over the roads.Sweet nuisance worthsaving, thinning these herdsis a last resort — oncea capital offense to spilltheir endangered blood. They are …
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Devon Balwit Each day, we wake again if we are lucky,reassembling with only minor variations. Too many, and we are no longer ourselves.Too few, and we despair, the symmetryuncanny. Like fractals, we fissure at regular intervals, blind to our beauty,the larger patterns we are part of. We must look outside ourselves to discover what we …
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John Clare (July 13, 1793 – May 20, 1864) I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;My friends forsake me like a memory lost:I am the self-consumer of my woes—They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host,Like shadows in love-frenzied stifled throes—And yet I am and live—like vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,Into …
Joyce Sutphen (August 10, 1949 -) Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed,cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rubof watery fingers along its edge.The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe,remembers being a veil over the face of the sun,gathering itself together for the fall.The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and underits belly, …
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The Lovers II, 1928 by Rene Magritte Jiordan Castle Magritte is saidto have said thateverything we seehides another thing, thatwe always want to seewhat is hiddenby what we see,& in his second paintingof the lovers,with their mouthsseeminglypressed againsteach other’s throughthick white veils,I don’t know what ismeant to be hiddenfrom me,except perhapsMagritte’s dead mother, who diedby …
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Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide;The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are …
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[Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) I measure every Grief I meetWith narrow, probing, Eyes —I wonder if It weighs like Mine —Or has an Easier size.I wonder if They bore it long —Or did it just begin —I could not tell the Date of Mine —It feels so old a pain …
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Daniel Arias Gómez (April 01, 1972 -) Tío, you learn there’s alwaysa border—I imagine a poor family in Jocotepec takes youin. You work as a gardener at the clubacross the lake where rich peoplevacation. The town’s children runshoeless on the dirt roads, stareat the people on the other sidesun-tanning on the decks of theirboats, riding …
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Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) I have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the watchman on his beatAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I …
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Edward Hirsch (January 20, 1950 -) I used to mock my father and his chumsfor getting up early on Sunday morningand drinking coffee at a local spotbut now I’m one of those chumps. No one cares about my old humiliationsbut they go on dragging through my sleeplike a string of empty tin cans rattlingbehind an …
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Marie Howe The soul has a story that has a shape that almost no onesees. No, no one ever does. All those kisses, The bedroom chair that rocked with me in it, his bodyhis body and his and his and his. More, I said, moreand more and more. . . . What has it come to?Like …
Hayden Saunier A dog and I stare at each otherfrom our separate cars, waiting for our people to return.He’s a shepherd mix, big head, big ears,like me, he’s riding shotgun.Heat blares inside my car,exhaust plumes from the pickup truck he’s in,so I know he isn’t freezing but I don’t knowif he’s a he or a …
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) They call me and I go.It is a frozen roadpast midnight, a dustof snow caughtin the rigid wheeltracks.The door opens.I smile, enter andshake off the cold.Here is a great womanon her side in the bed.She is sick,perhaps vomiting,perhaps laboringto give birth toa tenth child. Joy! …
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Maxine Kumin (June 6, 1925 – February 6, 2014) If I could only live at the pitchthat is near madness, Eberhart wrotebut there was his wife Betty hanging ontohis coattails for dear life to the end of her life.No one intervened when my mother’s brother’swife ran off with the new young rabbievery woman in the …
Hayden Carruth (August 3, 1921 – September 29, 2008) What does it mean? Lord knows; least of all I. Faced with it, schoolboys are shy,And grown-ups speak it at moments of excess Which later seem more or lessUnfeasible. It is equivocal, sentimental, Debatable, really a sort of lentil—Neither pea nor bean. Sometimes it’s a muscle, Sometimes courage or at …
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) We wear the mask that grins and lies,It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—This debt we pay to human guile;With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise,In counting all our tears and sighs?Nay, let them …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Paul Lawrence Dunbar – We Wear The Mask"
Sean Hill She, being the midwifeand your mother’slongtime friend, saidI see a heart; can yousee it?And on the greydisplay of the ultrasoundthere you were as you were,our nugget, in that momentbecoming a shrimpor a comma punctuatingthe whole of my life, separatingits parts—before and after—,a shrimp in the seaof your mother, and I couldn’thelp but see …
Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947 – April 22, 1995) Let the light of late afternoonshine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let …
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Francesca Nemko Who’d have thoughtThat reaching 84Would feel like adolescence?All pimples and unmanageable hairStammering over long wordsBeing totally irresponsibleAnd forgetting what timeI’m supposed to be home. I am NOT aging gracefully(even though I may appear to beon the outside)And, to be honest, I don’t reallyWant to grow up!I did that when I was 3040, 50, …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Francesca Nemko – On Being 84"
Jim Moore 1I’ve always wanted to write a poem that endsat the ocean. How the poem gets theredoesn’t much matter, just so at lastit arrives. The manatee will be therewe saw all those years ago,almost motionless under the waterlike a pendant swaying at an invisible throat,the one my mother used to wearon the most special …
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Belén Atienza Give me back the hours you swore mine foreverand take away this grief hidden in my wardrobeand when you remember me, do not whisper my namenor think of me as yours, though yours you know I was. I shall be asleep and forget the scent of youI shall awaken alone, as then, before, …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Belén Atienza – Solitude Is a Life’s Work"
Elinor Morton Wylie (September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928) 1 When the world turns completely upside downYou say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern ShoreAboard a river-boat from Baltimore;We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gownHomespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color.Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,We’ll swim …
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 11, 1889 – March 05, 1966) better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova We aged a hundred years and this descendedIn just one hour, as at a stroke.The summer had been brief and now was ended;The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke. The hushed road burst in colors …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Anna Akhmatova – In Memoriam, July 19, 1914"
Alison Hazle No one calls me that anymore. But that long Y,it licks the space. I longfor that Y in my name. Am I still young? These other dykesare young, wetfrom their clamshellwombs. I am dry having smoked and smokedand not slept and been notwell for quite a while. But I am a dyke, I …
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,I have forgotten, and what arms have lainUnder my head till morning; but the rainIs full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sighUpon the glass and listen for reply,And in my heart there stirs a …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Edna St. Vincent Millay – What Lips My Lips Have Kissed"
Diane di Prima (August 6, 1934 – October 25, 2020) Sweetheartwhen you break thruyou’ll finda poet herenot quite what one would choose. I won’t promiseyou’ll never go hungryor that you won’t be sadon this guttedbreakingglobe but I can show youbabyenough to loveto break your heartforever
Meena Alexander (February 17, 1951 – November 21, 2018) In a crumpled shirt (so casual for a god)Bow tucked loosely under an arm still jittery from battleHe balanced himself on a flat boat painted black.Each wave as I kneel closer a migrant flagA tongue with syllables no script can catch.The many births you have passed …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Meena Alexander – Krishna, 3:29 A.M."
Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901[1] – May 22, 1967) Way Down South in Dixie(Break the heart of me)They hung my black young loverTo a cross roads tree. Way Down South in Dixie(Bruised body high in air)I asked the white Lord JesusWhat was the use of prayer. Way Down South in Dixie(Break the heart of me)Love …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Langston Hughes – Song For ADark Girl"
Michael Mark After I write Temporary on each sticky noteand press them onto socks, silverware, bills,my hair, I put one on each maple tree in the yard,and notice I don’t think of them as eternalas much. All it takes is a single written wordon red, yellow, green tags to remind methe car isn’t mine. The …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Michael Mark – A Daily Practice"
Natasha Trethewey (April 26, 1966 -) We tell the story every year—how we peered from the windows, shades drawn—though nothing really happened,the charred grass now green again. We peered from the windows, shades drawn,at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,the charred grass still green. Thenwe darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps. At the …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Natasha Trethewey – Incident"
Raymond Carver (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) Now that you’ve gone away for five days,I’ll smoke all the cigarettes I want,where I want. Make biscuits and eat themwith jam and fat bacon. Loaf. Indulgemyself. Walk on the beach if I feellike it. And I feel like it, alone andthinking about when I was …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Raymond Carver – Still Looking Out for Number One"
Ellen Bass (June 16, 1947 -) to love life, to love it evenwhen you have no stomach for itand everything you've held dearcrumbles like burnt paper in your hands,your throat filled with the silt of it.When grief sits with you, its tropical heatthickening the air, heavy as watermore fit for gills than lungs;when grief weights …
Eavan Aisling Boland (September 24, 1944 – April 27, 2020) Back from Dublin, my grandmotherfinds an eviction notice on her door.Now she is in court for rent arrears.The lawyers are amused.These are the Petty Sessions,this is Drogheda, this is the Bank Holiday.Their comments fill a column in the newspaper.Was the notice well served?Was it served …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Eavan Aisling Boland – Eviction"
Kristene Kaye Brown I too have had my hands full of what keeps mecontained, a vastness softened by restraintand made more terriblebecause of it. I think it’s time we talkabout the safety of distance,how the tire tread of rush hour trafficsounds like something being patiently worn down,how the cars parked along the streetnever seem to …
Aracelis Girmay (December 10, 1977 -) You, selling roses out of a silver grocery cartYou, in the park, feeding the pigeonsYou cheering for the beesYou with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding catsYou protecting the river You are who I lovedelivering babies, nursing the sickYou with henna on your feet and a gold …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Aracelis Girmay – You Are Who I Love"
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) Grief is a Mouse —And chooses Wainscot in the BreastFor His Shy House —And baffles quest —Grief is a Thief — quick startled —Pricks His Ear — report to hearOf that Vast Dark —That swept His Being — back —Grief is a Juggler — boldest …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Emily Elizabeth Dickinson – Grief Is A Mouse"
Linda France (May 21, 1958 -) 1 Because we love watching the flock’s precision glide upstroke for height, tilt of wing spun mid-flightjust for a moment we’re in the frenzied swirling rush home for the winged owls hoot their love through the dark chiffchaff creeps up stalks fennel and flowdipper and wagtail Arctic terns like dartsgeese honking each note weigheda duck sits on …
Derek Jarman (January 31, 1942–February 19, 1994) to whom it may concernin the dead stones of a planetno longer remembered as earthmay he decipher this opaque hieroglyphperform an archeology of soulon these precious fragmentsall that remains of our vanished dayshere — at the sea’s edgeI have planted a stony gardendragon tooth dolmen spring upto defend …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Derek Jarman – To Whom It May Concern"
Wisława Szymborska (July 02, 1923 – February 01, 2012) As long as nothing can be known for sure,(no signals have been picked up yet),As long as earth is still unlikeThe nearer and more distant planets,As long as there’s neither hide nor hairOf other grasses graced by other windsOr other treetops bearing other crowns,Other animals as …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Wisława Szymborska – The Ball"
Richard Cecil Beyond the waves that lap the sandy beachesmy balcony looks down on, there must beno distant shoreline, only open seathat stretches toward the west until it reachesthe sky to make an infinite horizon,which the sun sinks into with a hissof surf as afternoon and evening kissgood night and sky turns on its constellations. …
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) So your device has a low battery & seems to drain faster each day.Maybe you should double your medication.You might feel queasy, but also as if the spatula flattening you to the fry panhas lifted a little.So your breath comes out scorched, so what.Inside, trust me on this,there’s a …
Czesław Miłosz (June 30, 1911 – August 14, 2004) Of those at the table in the caféwhere on winter noons a garden of frost glittered on windowpanesI alone survived.I could go in there if I wanted toand drumming my fingers in a chilly voidconvoke shadows. With disbelief I touch the cold marble,with disbelief I touch …
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquility. The emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears. William Wordsworth (April 07, 1770 - April 23, 1850) Surprised by joy—impatient as the WindI turned to share the transport—Oh! with whomBut Thee, long …
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Walter Everette Hawkins Ask me why I love you, dear,And I will ask the roseWhy it loves the dews of SpringAt the Winter’s close;Why the blossoms’ nectared sweetsLoved by questing bee,—I will gladly answer you,If they answer me. Ask me why I love you, dear,And I will ask the flowerWhy it loves the Summer sun,Or …
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Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) I watched themAs they neared the lakeThey wheeledIn a wide arcWith beating wingsAnd thenThey put their wings to sleepAnd glided downward in a driftOf pure abandonmentUntil they touchedThe surface of the lakeComposed their wingsAnd settledOn the rippling waterAs though it were a nest.
Ross Gay (August 01, 1974 -) Friends I am here to modestly reportseeing in an orchardin my towna goldfinch kissinga sunfloweragain and againdangling upside downby its tiny clawssteadying itself by snapping openlike an old-timey fanits wingsagain and again,until, swooning, it tumbled offand swooped back to the very same perch,where the sunflower curled its giantswirling of …
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens.
Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) I open my eyes to see how the nightis progressing. The clock glows green,the light of the last-quarter moonshines up off the snow into our bedroom.Her portion of our oceanic duvetlies completely flat. The wordsof the shepherd in Tristan, "Wasteand empty, the sea," come back …
Danusha Laméris Do they ever want to escape?Climb out of the white pagesand enter our world?Holden Caulfield slipping in the movie theaterto catch the two o'clockAnna Karenina sitting in a diner,reading the paper as the waitressserves up a cheeseburger.Even Hector, on break from the Iliad,takes a stroll through the park,admires the tulips.Maybe they grew tiredof …
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Bartholomew Griffin Fair is my love that feeds among the lilies,The lilies growing in the pleasant garden,Where Cupid’s mount, that well-beloved hill is,And where that little god himself is warden.See where my love sits in the beds of spices,Beset all round with camphor, myrrh and roses,And interlac’d with curious devices,Which her from all the world …
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Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) The way the dog trots out the front doorevery morningwithout a hat or an umbrella,without any moneyor the keys to her doghousenever fails to fill the saucer of my heartwith milky admiration.Who provides a finer exampleof a life without encumbrance—Thoreau in his curtainless hutwith a single plate, a single …
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) From the porch at dusk I watcheda kingfisher wild in flighthe could only have made for joy.He came down the river, splashingagainst the water's dimming facelike a skipped rock, passingon down out of sight. And stillI could hear the splashesfarther and farther awayas it grew darker. He came backthe …
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) I stop the car along the pasture edge,gather up bags of corncobs from the back,and get out.Two whistles, one for each,and familiar sounds draw close in darkness—cadence of hoof on hardened bottomland,twinned blowing of air through nostrils curious, flared.They come deepened and muscular movementsconjured out of sleep: each small …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Jane Hirshfield – After Work"
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow—You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,Is it therefore the …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Edger Allan Poe – A Dream Within A Dream"
Gregory Loselle (1963 -) The box of papers on the closet floorcontains his discharge papers from the war,a couple letters, dog tags: amuletsagainst prospective dangers, even betson futures filed away, here; telegramsmy grandmother amended in shorthandnotes (“May God protect you,”) on their backs;her death certificate, its seal (not waxlike his diplomas also here with hers)stamped …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Gregory Loselle – The Whole Of Him Collected"
Tess Gallagher (July 21, 1943 -) We had our heads downbaiting hooks—three wild salmonalready turned back that morningfor the in-season hatchery silversnow out there somewherecounting their luck—whenunder our small boat the seagave a roll like a giant turning overin sleep, lifting us so high I thoughtan ocean liner or freighter hadslipped up on us, the …
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 - October 6, 1979) Although it is a cold evening,down by one of the fishhousesan old man sits netting,his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,a dark purple-brown,and his shuttle worn and polished.The air smells so strong of codfishit makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.The five fishhouses have steeply …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Elizabeth Bishop – At The Fishhouses"
Natalie Diaz (September 04, 1978 -) He sat cross-legged, weeping on the stepswhen Mom unlocked and opened the front door. O God, he said. O God. He wants to kill me, Mom. When Mom unlocked and opened the front doorat 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown, Dad was asleep. He wants to kill me, …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Natalie Diaz – My Brother at 3 A.M."
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) Let it come down: these thicknesses of airhave long enough walled love away from love;stillness has hardened until words despairof their high leaps and kisses shut themselvesback into wishing. Crippled lovers lieagainst a weather which holds out on them,waiting, awaiting some shrill sign, some cry,some screaming …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Lisel Mueller – A Prayer For Rain"
Jimmy Pappas Not because she wanted him to let her go.She wanted to stay on her bed. Not because shewanted him to remove his arms from around her.She wanted them to remain. Not because shewanted him to go away. She wanted him to be there. But because she wanted him to let her go, just …
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Karen Moulton Charlie Daniels is blaring from the jukeboxas she strolls into the bar, surveys tonight’sselection, then sidles up to the guy on the end.He admires her ass, curls his arm around her waist.“Hammer’s the name,” he says in a loud voice.She looks him over: alligator boots, green cords,plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned to show offhis …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Karen Moulton – It’s Getting Late"
Sarah P. Strong At first we did not know what was happening.The tea on the porch table cooled several degreeswhile she stood up, clutchedthe scrollwork back of the chair. The lineson her face arranged themselves in a waywe’d never seen, her nostrils flaredand the bird in the tree behind her stoppedsinging. Someone, not me, tooka …
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Karen Benke Each day he left our shallow bed at sunrise.All that remained: the black snake lie.Yes, he remembered his watch, the cream for his coffee.He unloaded the dishwasher, carried the recycling to the curb.How can you say I’m not here for you?The house creaked quiet.The woman who was me curled under the stiff sheet …
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Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) On the beach at night alone,As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.A vast similitude interlocks all,All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, …
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Tracy K Smith (April 16, 1972 -) Being called all manner of thingsfrom the Dictionary of Shame—not English, not words, not heard,but worn, borne, carried, never spent—we feel now a largeness coming on,something passing into us. We knownot in what source it was begun, butrapt, we watch it rise through our fallen,our slain, our millions …
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Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) I want a red dress.I want it flimsy and cheap,I want it too tight, I want to wear ituntil someone tears it off me.I want it sleeveles