Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) Voicefrom the grainof the forest boughtand condemnedsketched bondin the rockmassthe earthquake soughtand threw *Sending love: Molly sends itIvan sends it, Kaorisends it to Brian, Irina sends iton pale green aerograms Abena sends itto Charlie and to JoséphineAnuro sends it, Naomi sends itLourdes sends it to NaoualWalter sends …
David Wagoner – Lost
David Wagoner (June 05, 1926 -) Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside youAre not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,Must ask permission to know it and be known.The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,I have made this place around you.If you leave it, you may …
Melissa Andres – Arrival
Melissa Andres The corners of the Terracotta tilescut my mother’s feet when she walkedto the kitchen to eat the most exotic fruitshe had ever imagined—tree-ripe peaches packedwith juices in a can—and not the guavashe always melted for the pastries.My mother then placed the empty canon the stove, added water and beganto cook the rice we …
WS Merwin – Thanks
WS Merwin (September 30, 1927 -) Listenwith the night falling we are saying thank youwe are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railingswe are running out of the glass roomswith our mouths full of food to look at the skyand say thank youwe are standing by the water thanking itstanding by the windows …
Rebecca Elson – Antidotes To The Fear Of Death
Rebecca Anne Wood Elson (January 02, 1960 – May 19, 1999) Sometimes as an antidoteTo fear of death,I eat the starsThose nights, lying on my back,I suck them from the quenching darkTil they are all, all inside me,Pepper hot and sharp.Sometimes, instead, I stir myselfInto a universe still young,Still warm as blood:No outer space, just …
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Ted Kooser – A Pretty Pass
Ted Kooser (April 25, 1939 -) Things have come to a pretty pass, Mother,as you’d be saying today, when the mailman’safraid of the mail, up at our box by the road,extending a latex-gloved hand from his Jeepto put in my earlier letter to you, stamped:RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESS UNKNOWN,but I’m trying again. I’ve been wanting …
Derek Walcott – The Light Of The World
Derek Alton Walcott (January 23, 1930 – March 17, 2017) “Zion-ah, I’ve got to have Zion-ah, I’ve got to have Zion-ahFor the rain is falling” —Bob Marley Marley was rocking on the transport’s stereoand the beauty was humming the choruses quietly.I could see where the lights on the planes of her cheekstreaked and defined them, if this …
Dorianne Laux – Antilamentation
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1952 -) Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you readto the end just to find out who killed the cook, notthe insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, notthe lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,the one you beat to the …
Susan Browne – Bonanza
Susan Browne Amanda shows me my bones,A picture of my spine, ghost-like,Snake-like, like it could rattle.I say, Amanda, it looks crooked, whyIs that? She shrugs, You’re not the only one.Your bone density’s fine. You can go now.My plebeian spine walks me towardThe mammogram room where I flop my boobOnto the plastic tray. Flop is not …
Emily Dickinson – I Heard A Fly Buzz…
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—The Stillness in the RoomWas like the Stillness in the Air—Between the Heaves of Storm—The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—And Breaths were gathering firmFor that last Onset—when the KingBe witnessed—in the Room—I willed my Keepsakes—signed awayWhat portions of me …
Linda Pastan – The Bookstall
Linda Pastan (May 27, 1932 -) Just looking at themI grow greedy, as if they werefreshly baked loaveswaiting on their shelvesto be broken open—that oneand that—and I make my choicein a mood of exalted luck,browsing among themlike a cow in sweetest pasture.For life is continuousas long as they waitto be read—these inked pathsopening into the …
David Kirby – More Than This
David Kirby When you tell me that a woman is visiting the graveof her college friend and she’s trying not to get irritatedat the man in the red truck who keeps walking back and forthand dropping tools as he listens to a pro footballgame on the truck radio, which is much too loud, I startto …
Pablo Neruda – XVII I Do Not Love You
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (1July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) Pablo Neruda I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz, or the arrows of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadows and the soul.I love you …
Tao Writer – Presence
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) You were here this morning when I wokelying somewhere between the rays ofthe sun and the dew in the air.Sometimes I feel you at night when my roomis dark and my eyes are unable to focus –A soft weight upon the foot of my bedas if you were lightly …
Danusha Laméris – Dust
Danusha Laméris It covers everything, fine powder,the earth’s gold breath falling softlyon the dark wood dresser, blue ceramic bowls,picture frames on the wall. It wafts upfrom canyons, carried on the wind,on the wings of birds, in the rough fur of animalsas they rise from the ground. Sometimes it’s copper,sometimes dark as ink. In great storms,it …
Yi Lei – Flame In The Cloud At Midnight
Yi Lei (1951-2018) Flame in the cloud at midnightBlankets my bed with light.The scent of winter jasmineRises from a tomb to meet my eyes.I watch you as if from my girlhood.I watch as if from death, anonymousBeneath a dim sky, holding aloftThe burden of my body. Death,Bloodless and unfeeling, is familiar.But what if we could …
Reginald Dwayne Betts – Essay On Reentry
Reginald Dwayne Betts (November 05, 1980 -) At two a.m., without enough spiritsspilling into my liver to knowto keep my mouth shut, my youngestlearned of years I spent inside a box: a spell,a kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,but History: I robbed a man. This, monthsbefore he would drop bucket after bucketon opposing …
William Stafford – Time for Serenity, Anyone?
William Edgar Stafford (January 17, 1914 – August 28, 1993) I like to live in the sound of water,in the feel of mountain air. A sharpreminder hits me: this world still is alive;it stretches out there shivering toward its owncreation, and I'm part of it. Even my breathingenters into the elaborate give-and-take,this bowing to sun …
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Ron Padgett – A Small Glass of Orange Juice
Ron Padgett (June 17, 1942 -) on a white tableclothwith light blue legs belowin a hotel restaurantin a small town in Polandin 1936is being contemplatedby a manwhose homburgis tiltedat an angleparallel to thatof the pictureon the wallbehind him,a mountain scenewith forest belowin which a lone deerhas turned to look at us.
Julie Cadwallader Staub – Remember
Julie Cadwallader Staub There is no such thing as quantity in lovemy mother said, correcting me.No such thing as "much" love.You can't count it.No such thing as "all my love."You can't contain it.Love expands.There's an endless supply.I love you, she said.That's sufficient.
Jabari Asim – Some Call It God
Jabari Asim (August 11, 1962 -) I choose Rhythm,the beginning as motion,black Funk shaping itselfin the time before time,dark, glorious and nimble as a spermsparkling its way into the greatest of grooves,conjuring worlds from dust and storm and primordial soup. I accept the Funk as my holy savior,Funk so high you can’t get over it,so …
Alejandro Escudé – Bed Sheets (Moving Out After Separation)
Alejandro Escudé I wanted my soul out of the house, too.So, I took all my diaries—twenty or so,from the past twenty years. And I slipped theminto the recycling bin. I took all my photos,baby, childhood, adolescence, college years,and trashed those, too. I took my blood pressure reader,and I took the white carnival mask I bought …
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Adam Clay – A Joke About How Old We’ve Become
Adam Clay I take a break from the morning’s workto pay a credit card bill,to take the dog out, to waterthe plants in the hanging baskets,but why not instead take a walkthrough the early August morningbefore the heat wave hits? The body’sstill stretching itself out. The music goesfrom minor to major when you flipthe album, …
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Stephen Dunn – Tenderness
Stephen Dunn (June 24, 1939 -) Back then when so much was clearand I hadn't learnedyoung men learn from women what it feels like to feel just right,I was twenty-three,she thirty-four, two children, a husband in prison for breaking someone's head.Yelled at, slappedaround, all she knew of tenderness was how much she wanted it, and …
Sean Kelbley – Cheer
Sean Kelbley The kid outside the liquor store is one of mine:5th period, sits halfway back. Laughs at my puns,but I should cross the street and scare him off.How much of 17 is trying to stand convincinglyin places you’re not old enough to be? He shiftshis weight, configures spine and mouth and browinexpertly. Experiments with …
Denise Levertov — The Secret
Priscilla Denise Levertov (October 24, 1923 – December 20, 1997) Two girls discoverthe secret of lifein a sudden line ofpoetry.I who don’t know thesecret wrotethe line. Theytold me(through a third person)they had found itbut not what it wasnot evenwhat line it was. No doubtby now, more than a weeklater, they have forgottenthe secret,the line, the …
Laura Foley – What the Dead Miss
Laura Foley This morning I think I see, in the lightdimpling the river's emerald greenbeneath me, the faces of my dead husband,parents and younger sister,feel their fingers in the fresh breezeon my cheeks, as I breathe the diesel smellof passing trucks, reminding meof my need to refuel. As I hold the nozzlein place, I watch …
Jane Hirshfield – I Wanted To Be Surprised
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) To such a request, the world is obliging.Just in the past week, a rotund porcupine,who seemed equally startled by me.The man who swallowed a tiny microphoneto record the sounds of his body,not considering beforehand how he might remove it.A cabbage and mustard sandwich on marbled bread.How easily the large …
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Ajay Kumar – An Index Of Visitors
Ajay Kumar I’ve seen something like this somewhere, all the time.white, black & red the first colors. as we enter november,the weather turns december. as it was june, it was also may.remember, all the buildings blurring by to the next station.remember the index of visitors, the middle-finger ring-fingers,singers whose songs were just extended foreplays.an old …
Aimee Nezhukumatathil – One Vote
Aimee Nezhukumatathil “After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” My parents are from countrieswhere mangoes grow wild and boldand eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.America loved this bird too and made it clutch olives and arrows. Some …
