after the painting by Egon Schiele William Virgil Davis Only the child,between his mother’s massive legs,is clothed.They both look offto the rightat something out of sight.The father, aboveand behind, his huge limbsframing them,stares—wide-eyedand proud—directlyat you. Nothing in the background matters. "The Family (Self Portrait)" (1918) by Egon Schiele is shown in this handout photo taken …
CL O’Dell – Peony
CL O’Dell I am ready for the nextthing: rows and rows of wingslifting off the earthand telling me to stay.The sky wriggles with lifeand still, the air is graylike any rockabove a grave.So let me have this nowbefore the blossomstake my absencefrom the yardand I am again only one-sided,a living thing responsibleto live, finding myself …
Marge Piercy – The New Year of the Trees
Marge Piercy (March 31, 1936 -) It is the New Year of the Trees, but herethe ground is frozen under the crust of snow.The trees snooze, their buds tight as nuts.Rhododendron leaves roll up their stiff scrolls.In the white and green north of the diasporaI am stirred by a season that will not arrivefor six …
Lisel Mueller – Hope
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) It hovers in dark cornersbefore the lights are turned on,it shakes sleep from its eyesand drops from mushroom gills,it explodes in the starry headsof dandelions turned sages,it sticks to the wings of green angelsthat sail from the tops of maples. It sprouts in each occluded eyeof …
Patricia Carroll Mathes – Another Lovely Day
Patricia Carroll Mathes (January 20, 1943 -) Thank you for another lovely day,”you said, as we drove to yet anothertemporary lodging.These days are hard,but you make them easier.The smoke that permeates our clothes,the darkened rooms smelling of disaster.The charred remains of two livesloving books, music, and art.Two sisters, the sweet and the serious,resident ladies of …
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Billy Collins – Forgetfulness
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) The name of the author is the first to gofollowed obediently by the title, the plot,the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novelwhich suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbordecided to retire to the southern hemisphere of …
Jenny Joseph – Warning
Jenny Joseph (May 07, 1932 -) When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement …
WH Auden – As I Walked Out One Evening
WH Auden As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street,The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat.And down by the brimming river I heard a lover singUnder an arch of the railway: 'Love has no ending.'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet,And the river jumps over …
Pablo Neruda – I Like It When You’re Silent
Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) I like it when you’re silent, for you seem as if you’re gone,and you hear me from afar, and my voice doesn’t touch you.It seems as if your eyes had flown away from you—it seems as if a kiss were sealing shut your mouth.Since each and every thing …
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Tao Writer – Always Another Mountain
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) Life is amazing from the time we breathour first breath until the time we exhale our last.But life is not easy. It was never meant to be.Life is meant to be appreciated and enjoyed. Watching hummingbirds hover around the feederWalking barefoot in the desert sand or on an empty …
Cat Richardson – Northeast Corridor
Cat Richardson I’m on the horizon of a seven hour trip and it’s quiet.A man walks across the early highway, the sun is almost up.You’re far away and swimming. How many bodies of waterwill I cross before I solve myself. I’m going to a wedding. Being single is expensive,especially at weddings. I try not to …
Rachel Galvin – The Real Thing
Rachel Galvin It was interesting to be thinking of something.It was interesting to be thinking. To be thinking. To. It was interesting.It was then she heard the voice the one inside the voice the one she heard.It was then. Was it a poor imitation or was it the real McCoy. Was it.Did she know. Was …
Jane Hirshfield – Advice To Myself
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) The computer fileof whichI have no recollectionis labeled "advice to myself''I click it openlookscroll further downthe screenstays backlit and emptythus I meet myself againhopeful and uselessa mysteryprecisely as I musthave doneon August 19, 2010, 11:08 a.m.
Barbara Ras – You Can’t Have It All
Barbara Ras (1949 -) But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown handsgloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old fingeron your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful lookOf the …
Ellen Bass – Because
Ellen Bass Because the night I gave birth my husband went blind.Hysterical, I guess you’d call it.Because there’d been too many peopleand then there was no one. Onlythis small creature—her tiny cryno bigger than a sequin.Because I’d been pushing too many hours.Even with her soft skull plates shifting,the collar of my bones too slender.When I …
Matthew Dickman – King
Matthew Dickman I’m always the king of something. Ruined or celebrated,newly crowned, or just beheaded. King of the shady grassand king of the dirty sheets. I sit in the middleof the room in Decemberwith the windows open, five pills, and a razor. My life longsecret. My killing power and my stayingpower. When the erection fails, …
Cindy King – When Your Mother Asks If You’re Seeing Anyone
Cindy King It’s tough to find a cardiologist who datespatients from the Ward of Cracked Hearts, butthere’s always the bariatric surgeonwho thinks you could drop a few pounds. If it’s too latefor the death row inmate, try the child predator, you toocould date the would-be senator, or even the President of the United States.If you …
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Sharon Olds – Diagnosis
Sharon Olds (November 19, 1942 -) By the time I was six months old, she knew somethingwas wrong with me. I got looks on my faceshe had not seen on any childin the family, or the extended family,or the neighborhood. My mother took me into the pediatrician with the kind hands,a doctor with a name …
Michele Graaff Channel 37
Michele Graaff Cable TV dreams cast outfrom a clickety slide bar channelchanger. One of us, sister or I,standing on thick beige carpetin our tapered teen jeans, scrunchiedhair and socks, to slide fastthe changer, a zipper whipof color flashes on the screen, fastfaces with perfect bangs, moviesmade of satin romance,commercials zing a jingle, sugar cerealwe can’t …
Danusha Laméris – Twin Strangers
Danusha Laméris For $3.99, the website promises me the opportunityto find my duplicate, my doppelgӓnger,my double. Someone half-way around the world,or right next door, who wears the same pointed eyebrows,aquiline (according to the diagram) noseon a brown and almost-oval face. “Everyone,” they say“has seven look-alikes.” Each night in bedI sip my cup of tea and …
Bob Hicok – A Night Out
Bob Hicok I told the waiter there was schmutzon my machete. He informed meI wasn’t sitting in the Yiddish section.Being bilingual, I told the waiterthere was gunk on my machete. Oh, he apologizedthen and brought me straight awaya new machete, with which I slicedthe brisket as if clearing a paththrough a forest to a temple …
Julia de Burgos – Julia de Burgos
Julia de Burgos (February 17, 1914 – July 6, 1953) Already the people murmur that I am your enemybecause they say that in verse I give the world your me. They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos.Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voicebecause you are the …
Langston Hughes – The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes (February 01, 1902 – May 22, 1967) Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,I heard a Negro play.Down on Lenox Avenue the other nightBy the pale dull pallor of an old gas lightHe did a lazy sway . . .He did a lazy sway . . .To the …
Clive James – Season To Season
Clive James (October 07, 1939 – November 24, 2019) I have been fooled before, and just becauseThis summer seems so long, it might not beMy last. Winter could come again, and pauseThe sky like a taped tactical descentOf pocket paratroopers. Things to seeCould happen yet, and life prove not quite spentBut still abundant, still the …
Charles Simic – The Week
Charles Simic (May 09, 1938 -) Monday comes around with a new tattooIt won't show us and here's TuesdayWalking its latest nightmare on a leashAnd Wednesday blind as the rain tappingOn a windowpane and Thursday sippingBad coffee served by a pretty waitressAnd Friday lost in a confusion of sadAnd happy faces and Saturday flashingLike a …
Ama Codjoe – Of Being Sick and Tired
Ama Codjoe ⏤ After Pablo Neruda and Fannie Lou Hamer I’m tired of being a woman. I walk into grocery stores and laundromats wet with the cracked face of a maidenhead lurching across the Atlantic. I want to sleep like a seed in stony ground. I want the phone to stop biting my ear. I …
Meghan O’Rourke – Apartment Living
Meghan O’Rourke So those despotic loves have become known to you, rubbing cold hands up your thighs, leaving oily trails, whispering, *Just how you like it, right*? Upstairs the sorority girls are playing charades again, smoking cigarettes, wearing shifts, burning pain into their synapses. Life is a needle. And now it pricks you: the silver …
Mary Dow Brine – Somebody’s Mother
Mary Dow Brine (1816 - 1913) The woman was old and ragged and gray And bent with the chill of the Winter's day. The street was wet with a recent snow And the woman's feet were aged and slow. She stood at the crossing and waited long, Alone, uncared for, amid the throng Of human …
Robert Bly – I Have Daughters, I Have Sons
Robert Bly (December 23, 1926 -) 1. Who is out there at 6 a.m.? The man Throwing newspapers onto the porch, And the roaming souls suddenly Drawn down into their sleeping bodies. 2. Wild words of Jacob Boehme Go on praising the human body, But heavy words of the ascetics Sway in the fall gales. …
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William Blake – The Fly
William Blake (November 28, 1757–August 12, 1827) Little fly, Thy summer’s play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength and …
