Ruby Archer (January 28, 1873 - January 23, 1961) Where is my halcyon blue? The grudging sky is overcast. Where is my dowering sun? A glory past. Nay, soul, thy daily sky Unfading spirit light must win, Dark days thy sunshine glow Ah bright within!
Jane Kenyon – At A Motel Near O’Hare Airport
Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947 – April 22, 1995) I sit by the window all morning watching the planes make final approaches. Each of them gathers and steadies itself like a horse clearing a jump. I look up to see them pass, so close I can see the rivets on their bellies, and under their …
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Raymond Carver – Loafing
Raymond Carver (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) I looked into the room a moment ago, and this is what I saw — my chair in its place by the window, the book turned facedown on the table. And on the sill, the cigarette left burning in its ashtray. Malingerer! my uncle yelled at …
Danez Smith – Poem Where I Be & You Just Might
Danez Smith I am sitting next to you & you are not there you're a frameless heat, mass of ruptured air. to be clear, you are the spit & liver it takes to be human & I want it & I think you want me to have it all, but I know what it's like …
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Allen Ginsberg – Five A.M.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) Elan that lifts me above the clouds into pure space, timeless, yea eternal Breath transmuted into words Transmuted back to breath in one hundred two hundred years nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries of cadenced breathing -- beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars, chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, …
Kurt Vonnegut – Joe Heller
Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made …
Jackleen Holton – A Hard Lump
Jackleen Holton sprung up on the right side of my neck so I went to the doctor, who patted around the mass, told me it was probably nothing, a cluster of pissed-off cells, a mini-revolt. I started to say the word I feared. No, he said, probably not that, but we’ll run some tests. Just …
