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 …
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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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 …
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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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 …
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 …
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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Kahlil Gibran — Defeat
Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs,And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory. Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance,Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of footAnd not to be …
Emma Lazarus – The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch, whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her nameMother of Exiles. From her beacon-handGlows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes commandThe …
Grace Paley – Here
Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) Here I am in the garden laughingan old woman with sagging breastsand a nicely mapped face how did this happenwell that’s who I wanted to be a last a womanin the old style sittingstout thighs apart undera big skirt …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
Tao Writer – I Want
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) I want to write more than words that say I love you. I want to write poetry that fills your heart with ecstasy, your mind with wonder, your body with burning desire. I want to write words which move your eyes to tears, fill your ears with the sweetness of …
Anna Belle Kaufman – Cold Solace
Anna Belle Kaufman When my mother died, one of her honey cakes remained in the freezer. I couldn’t bear to see it vanish, so it waited, pardoned, in its ice cave behind the metal trays for two more years. On my forty-first birthday I chipped it out, a rectangular resurrection, hefted the dead weight in …
Joyce Sutphen – The Poem of Your Life
Joyce Sutphen (August 10, 1949 -) Is waiting for you to come along— some spring (or maybe it's winter) in New York or Paris on your way to meet someone who will change everything if you take the right train, if you look up from the book you are reading, if you say hello. The …
Traci Brimhall – Love Poem Without A Drop Of Hyperbole In It
Traci Brimhall I love you like ladybugs love windowsills, love you like sperm whales love squid. There’s no depth I wouldn’t follow you through. I love you like the pawns in chess love aristocratic horses. I’ll throw myself in front of a bishop or a queen for you. Even a sentient castle. My love is …
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Mark Doty – Pescadero
Mark Doty (August 10, 1953 -) The little goats like my mouth and fingers, and one stands up against the wire fence, and taps on the fence board a hoof made blacker by the dirt of the field, pushes her mouth forward to my mouth, so that I can see the smallish squared seeds of …
Pablo Neruda – Poetry
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (July 12, 1904 – September 23 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda And it was at that age . . . poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don’t …
Anne Sexton – Welcome Morning
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) There is joy in all: in the hair I brush each morning, in the Cannon towel, newly washed, that I rub my body with each morning, in the chapel of eggs I cook each morning, in the outcry from the kettle that heats my coffee each …
Richard Blanco – My Father In English
Richard Blanco (February 15, 1968 -) First half of his life lived in Spanish: the long syntax of *las montañas* that lined his village, the rhyme of *sol* with his soul—a Cuban *alma*—that swayed with *las palmas*, the sharp rhythm of his *machete* cutting through *caña*, the syllables of his *canarios* that sung into *la …
Barbara Crooker – Poem With An Embedded Line By Susan Cohen
Barbara Crooker When the evening newscast leads to despair, when my Facebook feed raises my blood pressure, when I can't listen to NPR anymore, I turn to the sky, blooming like chicory, its dearth of clouds, its vast blue endlessness. The trees are turning copper, gold, bronze, fired by the October sun, and the bees …
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Naomi Shihab Nye – So Much Happiness
Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth. When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, something to hold in your hands, like …
Danusha Laméris – Small Kindnesses
Danusha Laméris I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, …
Gabrielle Calvocoressi – Jubilee
Gabrielle Calvocoressi Come down to the water. Bring your snare drum, your hubcaps, the trash can lid. Bring every joyful noise you’ve held at bay so long. The fish have risen to the surface this early morning: flounder, shrimp, and every blue crab this side of Mobile. Bottom feeders? Please. They shine like your Grandpa …
