poem name stringlengths 7 245 | content stringlengths 4 88.7k | author stringlengths 2 57 | type stringlengths 4 411 ⌀ | age null |
|---|---|---|---|---|
My Mother's Penmanship Lessons
|
In her last notes, when her hand began
to tremble, my mother tried to teach it
the penmanship she was known for,
how to make the slanted stems
of the p's and d's, the descending
roundness of the capital m's, the long
loops of the f's crossed at the center,
sending it back again and again
... | Wesley McNair | null | null |
The Air Smelled Dirty
|
Everyone burned coal in our neighborhood,
soft coal they called it from the mountains
of western Pennsylvania where my father
grew up and fled as soon as he could, where
my Welsh cousins dug it down in the dark.
The furnace it fed stood in the dank
basement, its many arms upraised
like Godzilla or ... | Marge Piercy | null | null |
[I would drive to your grave]
|
I would drive to your grave but your grave is the crash
the froth foam pebbles small rocks the sand smoothed
soothed each rising each leaving tide you lie in the ocean
the water in the waves your home the stern the back
the wake of a boat those curled white lines of leaving
I would visit your grave but you... | Leslie Harrison | Living,Death,Sorrow & Grieving,Relationships,Family & Ancestors | null |
[Wilt thou play with him as with a bird]
|
For I have loved the blade with all my crippled
with all my awkward soul loved it for the shine
sheen for the ease and grace of doing what it was
made to do for I have loved the stubborn womb
its beloved intent have loved the hope and then
learned to love the lack for I have loved the water
the way it co... | Leslie Harrison | Love,Heartache & Loss,Religion,Christianity,Faith & Doubt | null |
[Stutter]
|
I said love because it came closest said leave
because you did we do this peeling off each
from each each from suddenly other said
come back but meant don't go I said dead
and meant every one of those instances of
vanishment how the dead swim away from us
in time their tide their closed wooden boats
I ... | Leslie Harrison | Love,Break-ups & Vexed Love,Relationships,Men & Women,Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics | null |
[That]
|
That this is the morning in which nothing much
that the sky is still there and the water dresses
accordingly that only at night does the water rest
vanish from sight that the stars are too small too far
to register there that all our names too are writ
invisibly on water that abiding requires more hope
t... | Leslie Harrison | Living,Death,Sorrow & Grieving | null |
Coquí
|
One tiny tree frog
with big eyes
sings happily,
“Kokee! Kokee!”
His brother comes to bother.
Coquí doesn't push him.
Coquí doesn't bite him.
Coquí tells him,
“Kokee-Kee! Kokee-Kee!”
Two tiny tree frogs
with big eyes
sing happily,
“Kokee! Kokee!”
| Carmen Bernier-Grand | Nature,Animals | null |
The Vanity of the Dragonfly
|
The dragonfly at rest on the doorbell—
too weak to ring and glad of it,
but well mannered and cautious,
thinking it best to observe us quietly
before flying in, and who knows if he will find
the way out? Cautious of traps, this one.
A winged cross, plain, the body straight
as a thermometer, the old gla... | Nancy Willard | null | null |
God, God
|
We dressed for church. I had a white hat
and white gloves when I was fifteen, no joke.
You had to do that to show God you cared.
God's eyes were stained glass, and his voice
was pipe organ. He was immortal, invisible,
while my panty-hose itched and my atheist
father chewed his tongue and threate... | Fleda Brown | null | null |
For Elizabeth, Who Loved to Square Dance
|
I wore Grandma Liz's pearls
for play, a plastic strand long
enough to pool on the carpet
over my stubbed toes. When I pull
them over my head now, I smell
phantoms: cigarettes, Esteé
Lauder. I don't smoke or spritz
on perfume. I don't layer polyester
or perm my hair. I've slipped off
my wedding ring... | Christine Stewart-Nuñez | null | null |
Midnight Snow
|
Outside in the creek that feeds the lake
and never freezes, an otter slaps the water
with his paw to feel the current's pulse—Slip in, lie back. Slip in, lie back. He shuts
his eyes and obeys, knowing the layers
of hair and underfur will warm him while
he floats on a faith we wish could carry us.
The... | James Crews | null | null |
Aquarium
|
The fish are drifting calmly in their tank
between the green reeds, lit by a white glow
that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank
glass that holds them in displays their slow
progress from end to end, familiar rocks
set into the gravel, murmuring rows
of filters, a universe the flying fox
and glass c... | Kim Addonizio | null | null |
From where I stand
|
at the third floor window of the tenement,
the street looks shiny.
It has been washed and rinsed by rain.
Beyond the silver streaks of the streetcar tracks
a single streetlight stands
in a pool of wet light. It is night.
St. Louis. Nineteen forty-seven.
I have just come home from the orphanage
to sta... | Pat Schneider | null | null |
Monopoly
|
We used to play, long before we bought real houses.
A roll of the dice could send a girl to jail.
The money was pink, blue, gold, as well as green,
and we could own a whole railroad
or speculate in hotels where others dreaded staying:
the cost was extortionary.
At last one person would own everything... | Connie Wanek | null | null |
Final Shirt
|
After my father died, my mother
and my sisters picked the shirt, the tie;
he had just the one suit.
I left them to it, I didn't
want to choose, I loved him
all those years. They took a shirt
from the closet, I don't remember
which one, I'm sure he had worn it
to church and hung it up again.
They he... | Marjorie Saiser | null | null |
The Day
|
We walked at the edge of the sea, the dog,
still young then, running ahead of us.
Few people. Gulls. A flock of pelicans
circled beyond the swells, then closed
their wings and dropped head-long
into the dazzle of light and sea. You clapped
your hands; the day grew brilliant.
Later we sat at ... | Peter Everwine | null | null |
An After Hour
|
When one thing is becoming another, when writing is morphing, when the writing of an hour becomes the desire to write at all hours and into the night, fueled on caffeine or wine and desiring instruments of writing; typewriters, even a nib and ink well, and considering all the ways of stretching a space, digital or h... | Brenda Coultas | Living,Time & Brevity,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets,Social Commentaries,History & Politics | null |
Relaxing or Voluntarily Having Dumb, Unpleasant Experiences
|
Some people like to relax
and kick back with their friends
just talking and having a drink
which is obviously
highly pleasurable.
Some people like to be entertained
by music or a movie;
some people like to make some jokes
with people they like,
maybe at a bar
or at someone’s house.
... | Marie Buck | Activities,Social Commentaries,History & Politics | null |
Graduation Day
|
Drawn by ceremonial obligation
up from sleep I woke and stepped
into the borrowed black robes
all ghost bureaucrats trained
to redirect dreaming pretend
we do not like to wear. I drove
my black car to the stadium
to sit on stage and be watched
watching young expectant spirits
one by one with... | Matthew Zapruder | Living,Coming of Age,Youth,Activities,School & Learning,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Graduation | null |
Picking up Your Spilled Pills off the Floor Is Briefly Humbling
|
I was humbled when my boss mocked me
for calling from vacation
I’m broke again
until Friday
from my bed
I see the lights, I see
the party lights
it’s torture
a post-Fordist allegory?
I appropriated a corporate apology
and saved it
in case something happened
but my end date came
and my vacat... | Ben Fama | Activities,Jobs & Working,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics | null |
Your Kingdom
|
if you like let the body feel
all its own evolution
inside, opening flagella
& feathers & fingers
door by door, a ragged
neuron dangling like
a participle to
hear a bare sound
on the path, find
a red-eye-hole rabbit, fat
of the bulbous stalk pecked out
to the core so you can
bore ... | Eleni Sikelianos | Living,The Body,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Nature,Animals,Trees & Flowers,Arts & Sciences,Sciences | null |
At the Other End of a Wire
|
When he called, there were 261 emotions
at play. I thought there were only wistfulness,
humiliation, and mere bitterness left, but lo,
I see now the brilliance in the numbers.
Emotions 75 and 78 made me happy just to know
they existed. I felt less alone, more impervious.
I was emboldened by the existen... | Sandra Lim | Living,The Mind,Relationships,Men & Women | null |
Amor Fati
|
Inside every world there is another world trying to get out,
and there is something in you that would like to discount this world.
The stars could rise in darkness over heartbreaking coasts,
and you would not know if you were ruining your life or beginning a real one.
You could claim professional fondness... | Sandra Lim | Living,The Mind,Time & Brevity | null |
Certainty
|
Perhaps you can tell children that the world is always a more beautiful place than you can suppose,
and then you release them into their future, the black row of trees in the distance.
She died suddenly in midwinter, in the same bed in which her husband died years earlier; it still sagged on his side. Her sec... | Sandra Lim | Living,Coming of Age,Sorrow & Grieving,Relationships,Family & Ancestors | null |
"You hear the sun in the morning"
|
You hear the sun in the morning
through closed shutters. As you sleep
the early sky is colored
in fish scales, and you open your eyes
like a street
already lined with fruit.
| Daniel Nadler | null | null |
"A lamb blinking over a patch of earth"
|
A lamb blinking over a patch of earth
does not know what you have done. Feed it,
and it will eat from your hand
as if you wore the skin of a washed grape.
| Daniel Nadler | Nature,Animals,Religion,Christianity | null |
"Your husband is stretched out on the ground"
|
Your husband is stretched out on the ground
as if he were listening for something.
Ask him to come back to the table.
Whatever was there is now here.
| Daniel Nadler | Living,Marriage & Companionship | null |
We Are Not Responsible
|
We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives.
We cannot guarantee your safety if you disobey our instructions.
We do not endorse the causes or claims of people begging for handouts.
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.
Your ticket does not guarantee that we will honor your reserv... | Harryette Mullen | Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment,History & Politics | null |
Promise
|
I try not to cast too much shade.
Sin would be
to use the excuse
of her growth in my womb,
to imagine her as a limb of myself.
She is her own tree,
late-winter’s indomitable shoot.
She takes cupfuls of sun.
I stand well clear
as the branches stretch
like flutes playing allegros.
Not for anythin... | Mary O'Donnell | Living,Parenthood,Nature,Trees & Flowers | null |
Unlegendary Heroes
|
'Life passes through places.'
–P.J. Duffy, Landscapes of South Ulster
Patrick Farrell, of Lackagh, who was able to mow one acre and one rood Irish in a day. Tom Gallagher, Cornamucklagh, could walk 50 Irish miles in one day. Patrick Mulligan, Cremartin, was a great oarsman. Tommy Atkinson, Lismagunshin,... | Mary O'Donnell | Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality,History & Politics,Mythology & Folklore,Heroes & Patriotism | null |
Present Tense IV
|
We Had Stalked the Doe
Commerce. Production. Consumption. Who makes? Who takes?
It's useless to give up cashmere shawls, gold armatures, SUVs, furs
and silks to achieve cross-cultural pollination or transcendence.
Since we've ceased to celebrate works-in-progress or cutting-edge sound... | Anna Rabinowitz | Living,Growing Old,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics | null |
Notes: Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources
|
HOW TO SUCCEED IN TORTURE
WITHOUT REALLY TRYING
1. FIRST THINGS FIRST:
Surprise,
catch your source off balance when he least expects it: At the moment he opens his eyes in the morning
While he shits on the can.
Detain and confine,
quickly, quickly... | Anna Rabinowitz | Living,The Mind,Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment | null |
Flores Woman
|
A species of tiny human has been discovered, which lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores just 18,000 years ago. . . . Researchers have so far unearthed remains from eight individuals who were just one metre tall, with grapefruit-sized skulls. These astonishing little people . . . made tools, hunte... | Tracy K. Smith | Living,The Body,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Mythology & Folklore,Fairy-tales & Legends | null |
Parturition
|
I am the centre
Of a circle of pain
Exceeding its boundaries in every direction
The business of the bland sun
Has no affair with me
In my congested cosmos of agony
From which there is no escape
On infinitely prolonged nerve-vibrations
Or in contraction
To the pinpoint nucleus of being
Locate an i... | Mina Loy | null | null |
Elegy
|
I saw you fall to the ground.
I saw the oaks fall. The clouds collapsed.
I saw a wildness twist through your limbs
and fly off. The river fell, the grasses fell.
The backs of six drowned cattle
rose to the surface ice—nothing moved.
But a wind touched my ankles when the snow began.
You left that nig... | Joanna Klink | Living,Death,Health & Illness,Sorrow & Grieving,Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Nature,Weather | null |
Let Me Explain
|
after Neruda
Go ahead, ask: where are
the pomegranates, the dates,
the girls with skin brown as hash,
the hash?
Listen to what’s happening
One morning bonfires
began to leap from the earth,
devouring human beings,
lit by matches flicked across
the sky with joysticks.
And from ... | David Shook | Living,Death,Youth,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets,Social Commentaries,War & Conflict | null |
The Demon
|
This is a demon that can take a grown brain and squash it to sponge. There is no loving the state
of a decrepit mind that encourages a decrepit body. Is he sleeping or just not there? States of
awareness flicker inside a gauzy lens. We’ve seen this before—in a film, the man disappearing
as he stands right ther... | Jennifer Firestone | Living,Death,Health & Illness,The Mind,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Religion,The Spiritual,Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics | null |
No People in It
|
for JA
I flutter in order
to enter
the phrase’s silver.
Jackdaws have launched nearby
this time, silk green and ripped,
the movement a kind of chafing thinking.
Oh he’s marking
terrain right there—
right there with his
unmade song. The shadow kids
whip frond... | Emily Skillings | Living,Death,Sorrow & Grieving,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets | null |
The Thin Man Goes Home
|
You are as even tempered as a frying pan
In a sudden downpour
A campsite in disarray
A long time coming
Laughter from two yards over
The neighborhood a claim on space
Involving multiple parties
It must be Father’s Day
Judging by the heightened attentions of daughters and sons
Thus a man en... | Kit Robinson | Living,The Mind,Time & Brevity,Relationships,Family & Ancestors | null |
Man In Boat, 1998
|
It’s unbearable to shadowdrift along the
seabed. It’s unbearable to grieve when
sleeping is more important.
The boat is a hammock without strings.
As the body is a sleeve not strung to the
soul. The boat is chained to the shadow;
when the shadow drifts, the boat drifts
too.
Is it at sea? Or i... | Vi Khi Nao | Living,Death,The Body,Activities,Travels & Journeys,Arts & Sciences,Painting & Sculpture | null |
[I have become wealthy in a foreign land]
|
I have become wealthy in a foreign land
gravity makes me sick in
my slippery throat the devil makes me lousy
with summer like I'm buried in the sun
in its sounds
with my mother
there's something about having
a heart beat like traffic
like wind I did it afterall: I had a sweaty
body in Berlin it was... | Johannes Göransson | Living,The Body,Activities,Travels & Journeys,Nature,Summer,Religion,The Spiritual | null |
One Bite
|
Miracle fruit changes the tongue. One bite,
and for hours all you eat is sweet. Placed
alone on a saucer, it quivers like it's cold
from the ceramic, even in this Florida heat.
Small as a coffee bean, red as jam—
I can't believe. The man who sold
it to my father on Interstate 542 had one
tooth, one ... | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Activities,Eating & Drinking | null |
The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer
|
Fredonia, NY
Of course I regret it. I mean there I was under umbrellas of fruit
so red they had to be borne of Summer, and no other season.
Flip-flops and fishhooks. Ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs
of mint to slip in blue glasses of tea. I was dusty, my ponytail
all ask... | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Desire,Nature,Summer | null |
Hell Pig
|
To keep me from staying out late at night,
my mother warned of the Hell Pig. Black and full
of hot drool, eyes the color of a lung—it'd follow me
home if I stayed past my curfew. How to tell my friends
to press Pause in the middle of a video, say their good-byes
while I shuffled up the stairs and into my ... | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Living,Coming of Age,Love,Desire,Nature,Animals,Mythology & Folklore,Ghosts & the Supernatural | null |
Baked Goods
|
Flour on the floor makes my sandals
slip and I tumble into your arms.
Too hot to bake this morning but
blueberries begged me to fold them
into moist muffins. Sticks of rhubarb
plotted a whole pie. The windows
are blown open and a thickfruit tang
sneaks through the wire screen
and into the home of ... | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Love,Realistic & Complicated,Activities,Eating & Drinking | null |
from Aurora Leigh, First Book
|
In those days, though, I never analysed
Myself even. All analysis comes late.
You catch a sight of Nature, earliest,
In full front sun-face, and your eyelids wink
And drop before the wonder of ‘t; you miss
The form, through seeing the light. I lived, those days,
And wrote because I lived–unlicensed else:... | Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Relationships,Men & Women,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality | null |
from Aurora Leigh, Second Book
|
'There it is!–
You play beside a death-bed like a child,
Yet measure to yourself a prophet's place
To teach the living. None of all these things,
Can women understand. You generalise,
Oh, nothing!–not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts,
So sympathetic to th... | Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Relationships,Men & Women,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality | null |
from Aurora Leigh, Third Book
|
Why what a pettish, petty thing I grow,–
A mere, mere woman,–a mere flaccid nerve,-
A kerchief left out all night in the rain,
Turned soft so,–overtasked and overstrained
And overlived in this close London life!
And yet I should be stronger.
Never burn
Your letters, poor Auror... | Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Relationships,Men & Women,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality | null |
down like a shot
|
falling into unearthed light or something like that is who I was last night. you brought
me a drink you didn’t know the name of & told me I could get it. you
not the drink which I downed even though it was my 9th
of the night the drink not you. dancehall. always
dancehall. a manner of movement learned
& no... | Aziza Barnes | Love,Desire,Realistic & Complicated | null |
alleyway
|
As fresh garbage is. As dirt sucked out of a fingernail. As a wall clean of prostitutes. When I am this I am at the mercy of my nakedness. A pillar of undress whose power I do not know how to wield. I watch porn. I study the geometry of limbs splayed. Not the moan but the angle of a moan. I swallow. In this way I am... | Aziza Barnes | Love,Desire,Realistic & Complicated | null |
my dad asks, "how come black folk can't just write about flowers?"
|
bijan been dead 11 months & my blue margin reduced to arterial, there’s a party at my house, a house held by legislation vocabulary & trill. but hell, it’s ours & it sparkle on the corner of view park, a channel of blk electric. danny wants to walk to the ledge up the block, & we an open river of flex: we know what ... | Aziza Barnes | Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment,Race & Ethnicity | null |
The Poet Contemplates the Nature of Reality
|
On the side of the road a deer, frozen, frigid.Go back to your life, the voice said.What is my life? she wondered. For months she lost
herself in work—Freud said work is as important
as love to the soul—and at night she sat with a boy,
forcing him to practice his violin, helping him recite his notes.
Then th... | Jill Bialosky | Living,Parenthood,Nature,Animals,Arts & Sciences,Music | null |
In Syrup
|
In syrup, in syrup,
In syrup we drown,
Who sell ourselves
With a sparkling smile.
Padded with pathos
Our winding sheet.
The bomb bounded
By buxom beauties.
Horror gelded
By the happy ending.
How can we swim
Who hold to our haloes?
Down we go, down
In syrup, in syrup.... | Naomi Replansky | null | null |
Ring Song
|
…When that joy is gone for good
I move the arms beneath the blood.
When my blood is running wild
I sew the clothing of a child.
When that child is never born
I lean my breast against a thorn.
When the thorn brings no reprieve
I rise and live, I rise and live.
When I live from hand to ... | Naomi Replansky | Living,Time & Brevity | null |
Wind in a Box
|
—after Lorca
I want to always sleep beneath a bright red blanket
of leaves. I want to never wear a coat of ice.
I want to learn to walk without blinking.
I want to outlive the turtle and the turtle’s father,
the stone. I want a mouth full of permissions
and a pink glistening bud... | Terrance Hayes | Love,Desire,Religion,The Spiritual | null |
The Blue Terrance
|
If you subtract the minor losses,
you can return to your childhood too:
the blackboard chalked with crosses,
the math teacher’s toe ring. You
can be the black boy not even the buck-
toothed girls took a liking to:
this match box, these bones in their funk
machine, this thumb worn smooth
as th... | Terrance Hayes | Living,Coming of Age,Disappointment & Failure | null |
For Robert Hayden
|
Did your father come home after fighting
through the week at work? Did the sweat change
to salt in his ears? Was that bitter white
grain the only music he’d hear? Is this why
you were quiet when other poets sang
of the black man’s beauty? Is this why
you choked on the tonsil of Negro Duty?
Were... | Terrance Hayes | Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Social Commentaries,Class,Race & Ethnicity | null |
Jumping Jack: The M16 Mines
|
In standing position
with arms to the side,
jump while
spreading the legs
and lift arms
above the head.
Jump back into
standing position
and up again,
spreading the legs
and lifting the arms
above the head.
Repeat
When a M16 landmine
is triggered, it will
spring into the... | Teresa Mei Chuc | Social Commentaries,History & Politics,War & Conflict | null |
Pencil
|
"In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing."—Vincent Van Gogh
A missile is shaped like a pencil—
its long, slender body and pointed
end creates history.
A girl walking down ... | Teresa Mei Chuc | Social Commentaries,War & Conflict | null |
Rainforest
|
I close my eyes so that I can see it.
What we so freely eliminate. Who is
not guilty of it? We reek of paper.
Everywhere we go is paper. Our
hands are stained with paper.
Walls. What echoes from our walls.
The sweet whisper of rainforest—
even the name makes the sound of
rushing water... | Teresa Mei Chuc | Nature,Trees & Flowers | null |
Names
|
I am tired of having five different names; -
Having to change them when I enter
A new country or take on a new life. My
First name is my truest, I suppose, but I
Never use it and nobody calls me by this Vietnamese
Name though it is on my birth certificate—
Tue My Chuc. It... | Teresa Mei Chuc | Living,Life Choices | null |
Hoping to Hear from a Former Friend
|
Is it you on the other end of the line
hesitant to speak to me, pausing for a moment
to register my hello so you know my number
stayed the same, my last name remains mine?
Though my voice isn’t young as when we last spoke,
don’t you hear a familiar timbre?
Still you hesitate so as not to s... | Margaret Hasse | Living,Sorrow & Grieving,Relationships,Friends & Enemies | null |
Come Home, Our Sons
|
Come home, our sons, young drivers,
tell us you’re safe, not detained again
by police for your dark color,
sprocketed hair and a crime
you didn’t commit.
Maybe your car’s the wrong make
or rusty in a neighborhood
where cars park in garages at night.
Once, when you saw a squad car
you remembered... | Margaret Hasse | Living,Parenthood,Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment,Race & Ethnicity | null |
Day after Daylight Savings
|
Blue numbers on my bedside clock
tell I forgot to change the hour.
This sets routines on haywire.
Like a domestic goat staked
to its circle of earth.
I don’t do well untethered.
I have no hunger for early dinner,
become confused by the sound
of children who seem out
too late for a schoo... | Margaret Hasse | Living,Time & Brevity | null |
After His Diagnosis
|
Weeks after ice-out,
last fall’s leaves
make a pathway
to the lake, radiant blue
and still deathly cold.
I press my hot forehead
to the window,
smudging it. Blow
and the glass steams.
As if looking at a photo
through parchment,
I’m detached,
the way I saw his body
in the CAT scan
from... | Margaret Hasse | Living,Health & Illness,Love,Heartache & Loss | null |
Be More Like Sputnik Monroe
|
It's hard to be humble when you're 235 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal with a body women love and men fear. —Sputnik Monroe
When my father died, he left me a trove
of video tapes, a warped memorial
for those men he watched with my mother
before she left for part... | W. Todd Kaneko | Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Men & Women | null |
Selected Legends of Andre the Giant
|
13.
After the dinosaurs fell
asleep, after those terrible lizards
began their slow decay into mythology,
Andre the Giant was there to cradle
their bodies in his soft hands and weep.
24.
Andre the Giant wrestled the Earth
into a globe, carved his name into the ocean
floor ... | W. Todd Kaneko | Mythology & Folklore,Fairy-tales & Legends | null |
You Cannot Stand Against Giant Baba
|
1.
A man can stand with both feet touching
the ground until his legs no longer reach
that far, until the ground disappears.
2.
Giant Baba stands six feet ten inches tall, taller
in Japan. It doesn’t matter how tall you are.
3.
A man can hold a woman, can’t stan... | W. Todd Kaneko | Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Men & Women,Mythology & Folklore,Fairy-tales & Legends | null |
Returning
|
When I open the door
and reach to the light switch
the world opens as it did each time.
The garlic jar on the ledge,
the ceramic cup holding
cheese cutters and paring knives.
Outside a branch
from the ash tree
worries the window.
It was a place where I knew
the drawer pulls, the feel ... | Tami Haaland | null | null |
Laundress
|
Given over to love,
she un-balls the socks,
lets fall debris of days,
leaf litter, sand grain,
slub of some sticky substance,
picks it all for the sake
of the stainless tub
of the gleaming new front loader.
Given over to love long ago, when her own
exasperated moan bounced off
... | Heid E. Erdrich | null | null |
Naming the Heartbeats
|
I've become the person who says Darling, who says Sugarpie, Honeybunch, Snugglebear—and that’s just for my children. What I call my husband is unprintable. You’re welcome. I am his sweetheart, and finally, finally—I answer to his call and his alone. Animals are named for people, places, or perhaps... | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | null | null |
When Lucille Bogan Sings "Shave 'Em Dry"
|
I blush quicker than a school of blue jack mackerel
arranging itself into an orb of dazzle to avoid
nips and gulps from the dolphins who’ve been silently trailing them, waiting for them to relax. When I hear
her growl—her scratch-thirst and giggle when she drops swear words pressed to wa... | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Love,Romantic Love,Arts & Sciences,Music | null |
On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance
|
Breathe deep even if it means you wrinkle your nose from the fake-lemon antiseptic
of the mopped floors and wiped-down doorknobs. The freshly soaped necks
and armpits. Your teacher means well, even if he butchers your name like
he has a bloody sausage casing stuck between h... | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Activities,School & Learning | null |
Cardinal Sin
|
I don't love my son
the way I thought
my mother should love me
so I handed him a shoe box
to put the dead bird in
and shut the door.
It was a mistake,
not to be sure he buried it,
not to grab the children
gathered at my back door
by their shoulders
to push them into a half-circle
and a pra... | Jonterri Gadson | Living,Death,Parenthood,Nature,Animals | null |
Glossary of Selected Terms
|
What is skin,
if not a taut swaddle
loosening, body
if not a warm swaddle
cooling, blood
if not thread
in a swaddle
made of body, horizons
if not lines
where sky swaddles
Earth. See father.Stars, if not swaddled
matter emitting light. See spirit.Wind, if it does not trace
paths around bodies.... | Jonterri Gadson | Living,The Body,Religion,The Spiritual | null |
Girl, 11
|
A mouth is a sideways woman,
her curves and dips, the way she opens,
how her hollow center can sing.
Mother, your mouth
is a fallen cello,
your husband's hands—
a casket. Full of me.
| Jonterri Gadson | Living,Coming of Age,Relationships,Family & Ancestors | null |
Patricide Epistle
|
II.
The first time I had you killed
I made you a hero of the Vietnam War.
The third grade social studies textbook said
young foreign boys hid grenades
during corner games, seamstresses doubled
as spies. Why wouldn't you have died
on those streets, clutching my mother's
photo with your thumb presse... | Jonterri Gadson | Living,Sorrow & Grieving,Relationships,Family & Ancestors | null |
The Bomb Shelter
|
When bombs are exploding outside,
it means that there are implosions.
Vibrations travel through air and liquid.
My amniotic fluid is imprinted with airplanes
dropping bombs and screams and fire.
In the bomb shelter in Saigon,
my father teaches my two-year-old
brother French. "Je m'appelle Chuc Nai ... | Teresa Mei Chuc | Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Social Commentaries,War & Conflict | null |
Not Worth a Bullet
|
A bullet is made of
copper or lead.
Gunpowder is
poured into the case.
The firing pin hits the
primer at the back of
the bullet which starts
the explosion. Altogether,
the bullet and the case are
typically about two inches in length
and weigh a few ounces.
My father said that
the Vietcong... | Teresa Mei Chuc | Social Commentaries,Money & Economics,War & Conflict | null |
Chinese Female Kung-Fu Superheroes
|
are real. They jump from roof-top
to roof-top, do a backward flip
down to the concrete floor and land
perfectly on two feet.
The metal of swords clang,
the body moves with the precision
of a praying mantis striking
its prey.
Their dresses are colorful, long
and lacy, billow and flair
with each ... | Teresa Mei Chuc | Mythology & Folklore,Heroes & Patriotism | null |
My Doggy Ate My Essay
|
My doggy ate my essay.
He picked up all my mail.
He cleaned my dirty closet
and dusted with his tail.
He straightened out my posters
and swept my wooden floor.
My parents almost fainted
when he fixed my bedroom door.
I did not try to stop him.
He made my windows shine.
My room looked like... | Darren Sardelli | Living,Youth,Activities,School & Learning,Relationships,Pets | null |
The Letter A
|
The letter A is awesome!
It simply is the best.
Without an A, you could not get
an A+ on a test.
You’d never see an acrobat
or eat an apple pie.
You couldn’t be an astronaut
or kiss your aunt goodbye.
An antelope would not exist.
An ape would be unknown.
You’d never hear a person
say “Afraid” o... | Darren Sardelli | null | null |
Recess! Oh, Recess!
|
Recess! Oh, Recess!
We love you! You rule!
You keep us away
from the teachers in school.
Your swings are refreshing.
Your slides are the best.
You give us a break
from a really hard test.
Recess! Oh, Recess!
We want you to know,
you’re sweeter than syrup,
you’re special like snow.
You don... | Darren Sardelli | Living,Youth,Activities,School & Learning | null |
Our Grandma Kissed a Pumpkin
|
Our grandma kissed a pumpkin
on a Friday afternoon.
She also kissed a crayon
and a giant red balloon.
I saw her kiss a chipmunk
eating cookies with a queen.
She kissed us in these costumes
at our house on Halloween!
| Darren Sardelli | Halloween | null |
The Silliest Teacher in School
|
Our teacher gave detention
to the fountains in the hall.
She handed extra homework
to the artwork on the wall.
We saw her point a finger
at a banner and a sign.
She said their bad behavior
was completely out of line.
The principal approached her
and said, “What is all this fuss?
I heard y... | Darren Sardelli | Living,Youth,Activities,School & Learning | null |
Saving Nails
|
I strip the porch roof, pick out the used
nails, and toss the shingles down onto
a drop cloth, remembering when I shingled
my grandmother's roof fifty years ago:
the tar smell, the brackets, planks, and
ladders all the same, but level now
with hemlock limbs instead of locust.
I lug four shi... | Thomas R. Moore | null | null |
Bird
|
For days now a red-breasted bird
has been trying to break in.
She tests a low branch, violet blossoms
swaying beside her, leaps into the air and flies
straight at my window, beak and breast
held back, claws raking the pane.
Maybe she longs for the tree she sees
reflected in the glass, but I'm only gues... | Dorianne Laux | null | null |
Fund Drive
|
She could be a Norman Rockwell painting,
the small girl on my front porch with her eager
face, her wind-burned cheeks red as cherries.
Her father waits by the curb, ready to rescue
his child should danger threaten, his shadow
reaching halfway across the yard. I take the
booklet from the girl's outstretch... | Terri Kirby Erickson | null | null |
from Rider: ["The boy's name was Warren. He was an orphan."]
|
4But you had the sense that he was always competing with your father for your affection.
Not only my father. He didn’t understand my need to develop ties in these new worlds. He tried to legislate over my feelings. He was subject to extraordinarily inappropriate fits of jealousy.
How are you the judge of th... | Mark Rudman | Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships,Family & Ancestors | null |
from Rider: [8. Dropouts]
|
Dropouts
Mace had the kind of courage you could easily mistake
for brawn. I don’t know why I call it courage.
Sure, he stood up to greasers. And didn’t visibly fret
on the days when his report card made hard fact
of what was already apparent from his absences.
Yet Mace was gifted with an unin... | Mark Rudman | Living,Coming of Age,Activities,School & Learning,Relationships,Friends & Enemies | null |
On Reflection
|
because a box is a box: humans are cultivated
into said box without choice or clarification, specimens
only existing—as in: (you—i—us). flesh & frame—
restricted bone matter comprising a box reluctant
not to be a box. but nurtured inside the box, let’s say
form which is shaped by & indigenous, to, the box ... | Randall Horton | Living,Life Choices,The Mind,Social Commentaries,Race & Ethnicity | null |
Dear Margaret Cho [korea might be gay but I do not think you are.]
|
korea might be gay but I do not think you are.
korea is a peninsula. you and I are people meaning that
we have hair we comb and things to look at. our lips
pout and take on the fullness of an adopted meaning.
the fact of the matter is that relentlessness is a hand-
shake, a limp fish or glass of lukewarm ... | Sueyeun Juliette Lee | Relationships,Gay, Lesbian, Queer,Social Commentaries,Race & Ethnicity | null |
Daniel Dae Kim
|
a perfect symmetry
of both parts animal, feline and quizzical, and man,
made
(undone) sworn in stormed again
electric, transmitted from the foreground into
appropriate weather
the skin being elastic cause for several considerations
contrite ((argued over)
aren't we of bea... | Sueyeun Juliette Lee | Social Commentaries,Race & Ethnicity | null |
Dear Margaret Cho [we aren't differentiable with bangs and hooded lids.]
|
we aren't differentiable with bangs and hooded lids.
I know the likeness doesn't stop right there.
what's so great about being horny? the joke is insatiable.
it rips and roars between and through.
we both have found our mother's jewels.
buried in closets, rolled in silk thread and bunting.
done in scar... | Sueyeun Juliette Lee | Love,Desire | null |
from Rider [II]
|
And yesterday something shattering happened.
Not yesterday, but several (that’s becoming
a favorite word) weeks ago I came across
Kitaj’s The Jewish Rider and wept:
there he was in the very image of my stepfather;
the pate where a few strands of hair still frolic,
the same skinny legs, the same misguided... | Mark Rudman | Living,Life Choices,Love,Desire,Realistic & Complicated,Activities,Sports & Outdoor Activities,Religion,Judaism | null |
poem for bruce
|
Under the roof is the empty room
papered in requiem blue.
Partiers crowd the burned kitchen,
gold fixtures hook to cheap lath.
What is it they can tell you about absence
how it abates, takes names
Becomes a wall with windows
faced on a formal garden, content
To accept the thin rain. T... | Rodney Koeneke | Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics,Reading & Books | null |
Carpet Bomb
|
I can’t get rid of useful things
and nobody wants to pick them up,
I keep forgetting where I lay my umbrella.
I don’t leave footprints in the snow anymore,
we haven’t had a war on domestic soil in so long
I wonder if I still got it. Because once I had it.
I heard about a boy who once tied a strin... | Kenyatta Rogers | Social Commentaries,History & Politics,War & Conflict | null |
Antarctica
|
Like nights we knelt on the dirt floor
of a dugout, leaned our heads back,
eyes twitching gone, and popped nitrous
canisters into the communion shapes
of our mouths, slipped inside where
everything seemed to be falling snow,
ice, the time split between chasing flies
through a darkened park and sprawlin... | James Hoch | Living,Coming of Age,Life Choices,Religion,God & the Divine | null |
Teenage Riot
|
All of us were boys only some were taller or already in high school, and almost
nothing else
mattered but to learn some new trick,
to pull off something we saw in a skate video, wind cutting
around our bodies when we flew
off the lip of a ramp, grabbed the board and twisted
into a 180, kicking
... | Matthew Dickman | Living,Coming of Age,Youth,Relationships,Friends & Enemies | null |
Minimum Wage
|
My mother and I are on the front porch lighting each other's cigarettes
as if we were on a ten-minute break from our jobs
at being a mother and son, just ten minutes
to steal a moment of freedom before clocking back in, before
putting the aprons back on, the paper hats,
washing our hands twice and then sta... | Matthew Dickman | Love,Realistic & Complicated,Activities,Jobs & Working,Relationships,Family & Ancestors | null |
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