Eavan Frances Boland (September 24, 1944 – April 27, 2020) She loved silver, she loved gold,my mother. She spoke about the influenceof metals, the congruence of atoms,the art classes where she learnedthese things: think of itshe would say as she told meto gild any surface a master craftsmanhad to meld gold with mercury,had to heat …
Jane Hirshfield – Ants’ Nest
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) “On Being the Right Size,” Haldane’s short essay is titled.An ants’ nest can be found at the top of a redwood.No bird that weighs less than—No insect more than—The minimum mass for a whale, for a language, an ice cap.In a human-sized room,someone is setting a human-sized table with …
Audre Lorde – The Bees
Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) In the street outside a schoolwhat the children learnpossesses them.Little boys yell as they stone a flock of beestrying to swarmbetween the lunchroom window and an iron grate.The boys sling furious rockssmashing the windows.The bees, buzzing their anger,are slow to attack.Then one boy is stunginto quicker …
Anis Mojgani – Once, In November
Anis Mojgani (June 13, 1977 -) You get into the shower and askWill you keep me company?I sit on the toilet’s lidand while you wash yourself and waterat the same time the ferns the spider plantthe pathos vining over the tilemarveling out loud how you loveto water them while showeringI read to you from a …
Nikki Giovanni – My First Memory (Of Librarians)
Nikki Giovanni (June 07, 1943 -) This is my first memory:A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky wood floorA line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the centerHeavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply too short For me to sit in and readSo my first book was always big In …
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Oliver de la Paz – In Defense of Small Towns
Oliver de la Paz When I look at it, it’s simple, really. I hated life there. September,once filled with animal deaths and toughened hay. And the smellsof fall were boiled-down beets and potatoesor the farmhands’ breeches smeared with oil and dieselas they rode into town, dusty and pissed. The radio stationsplit time between metal and …
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Donald Hall – Gold
Donald Hall (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) Pale gold of the walls, goldof the centers of daisies, yellow rosespressing from a clear bowl. All daywe lay on the bed, my handstroking the deepgold of your thighs and your back.We slept and wokeentering the golden room together,lay down in it breathingquickly, thenslowly again,caressing and …
James Ragan – Taming The Sloth
James Ragan (1944 -) I don’t know how long I can play with a sloth,how long I can wait to time his glidealong a space no wider than his bulbous face,as if the air had softened long enough to sloweach arm’s motion to an easy slide,as if by committing each inch of legto a longer …
Lisel Mueller – Immortality
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924–February 21, 2020) In Sleeping Beauty’s castlethe clock strikes one hundred yearsand the girl in the tower returns to the world.So do the servants in the kitchen,who don’t even rub their eyes.The cook’s right hand, liftedan exact century ago,completes its downward arcto the kitchen boy’s left ear;the boy’s tensed vocal cordsfinally …
Louise Glück – Averno
Averno (Avernus) is a small crater lake ten miles west of Naples, Italy which was regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld. Louise Elisabeth Glück (April 22, 1943 -) You die when your spirit dies.Otherwise, you live.You may not do a good job of it, but you go on —something you …
Faith Shearin – Adam Naming the Animals
Faith Shearin After he could no longer speak with them,after the warm garden had a draft,and Adam found himself naked and mortal,after his wife was made from his owncage of love, and after she introducedhim to the snake that offered its famousadvice, after all these things, God askedAdam to name the animals. Eve wouldbring forth …
Pablo Neruda – Emerging
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973), better known by his nickname later, legal name Pablo Neruda A man says yes without knowinghow to decide even what the question is,and is caught up, and then is carried alongand never again escapes from his own cocoon;and that’s how we are, forever …
William Carlos Williams — The Widow’s Lament in Springtime
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) Sorrow is my own yardwhere the new grassflames as it has flamedoften before but notwith the cold firethat closes round me this year.Thirty-five yearsI lived with my husband.The plum tree is white todaywith masses of flowers.Masses of flowersload the cherry branchesand color some bushesyellow and …
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Aria Aber – Afghan Funeral In Paris
Aria Aber The aunts here clink Malbec glassesand parade their grief with musky, expensive scentsthat whisper in elevators and hallways.Each natural passing articulatesthe unnatural: every aunt has a sonwho fell, or a daughter who hid in rubblefor two years, until that knock of officersholding a bin bag filled with a dressand bones. But what do …
Michelle Boisseau – The Obstinate Comedy
Michelle Boisseau (October 26, 1955 - November 15, 2017) In the middle of my life I lost my way. I knew my turn was coming, coming around the bend. And there it was.The crows calling over the shoulders of trees stretched the space wider and wider like the circles a focaldragonfly …
Camille Rankine – Inheritance
Camille Rankine What have ITo say in my wrong tongueOf what is gone To know something isLost but what You have forgotten whatYou long forgot If I amWhat survives I am here but I am notMuch of anything at all To be what’s leftAnd all the rest scooped outAnd dropped into the sea My fleshForming …
Jane Hirshfield – Washing Doorknobs
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) The glass doorknobs turn no differently.But every DecemberI polish them with vinegar water and cotton.Another year ends.This one, I ate Kyoto picklesand touched, in Xi’an, a stone turtle’s face,cold as stone, as turtle.I could not read the fortune carved into its shellor hear what it had raised its headto …
Naomi Shihab Nye – World Of The Future, We Thirsted
Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) Stripped of a sense of well-being,we downed our water from small disposable bottles.Casting the plastic to streetside,we poured high-potency energy tonics or Cokedown our throats, because this time in historyhad sapped us so thoroughly andwe were desperate.Straws, plastic caps, crushed cans,in a three-block walk you could fill a …
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Chana Bloch – War And Peace
Chana Bloch (March 15, 1940 – May 19, 2017) I made a big wish on the evening star,Venus, or was it Mars,but it was a low-flying planeheaded east.I saw the little foxes on the hillsidewith their pointy red ears;up close, a fallen branch of autumn.When the guide clapped his hands,the brilliant apples on the tree …
Glyn Maxwell – The Ledge
Glyn Maxwell (1962 - ) Woken again by nothing, with this linealready in my wake, I thought of youat twenty, as you are—which passed somehowwhile I was staring—thought how yesterdayyou said you wanted to be young again,which left me with this nothing left to saythat’s woken me. You are, you are—what elsedoes father wail to …
Clint Margrave – When Death Travels
Clint Margrave No one makes himtake his shoes off at securityor asks to see his boarding pass.There are no bags to checkbecause baggage is strictly for the living.No windows on the planebecause there’s nothing to see.No seatbelts becausethere’s nothing to impact.The flight attendantsattend to nothing.And though there are delays,there are never any cancellations.No one greets …
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Cross of Snow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) In the long, sleepless watches of the night,A gentle face—the face of one long dead—Looks at me from the wall, where round its headThe night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.Here in this room she died; and soul more whiteNever through martyrdom of fire was …
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David St. John – Without Mercy, The Rains Continued
David St. John (July 24, 1949 -) There had beenA microphone hiddenBeneath the bedOf course I didn’t realize itAt the time & in factDidn’t know for yearsUntil one day a standardKhaki book mailerArrived & within itAn oldStained cassette tapeSimply labelled in black marker“Him / Me / September, 1975”& as I listened I knew somethingHad been …
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Robert Wrigley – I Like The Wind
Robert Wrigley (1951 -) We are at or near that approximate linewhere a stiff breeze becomesor lapses from a considerable wind,and I like it here, the chimney smokesright-angled from west to east but stillfor brief intact stretchesthe plush animal tails of their fires.I like how the stiffness rouses the birdsright up until what’s considerable sends …
Yona Harvey – Hurricane
Yona Harvey I thought she escapedThe floodwaters. No—but her Four tickets left, I let her go—Firstborn into a hurricane. Head is empty of the drownedFor now—though she took Her first breath below sea level.Ahhh awe & awMama, let me go—she speaks What every smart child knows—To get grown you unlatch Your hands from the grown& …
William Virgil Davis – The Family
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 …
