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 …
Wendell Berry – A Purification
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) At start of spring I open a trenchin the ground. I put into itthe winter's accumulation of paper,pages I do not want to readagain, useless words, fragments,errors. And I put into itthe contents of the outhouse:light of the sun, growth of the ground,finished with one of their journeys.To the …
David Biespiel – Men Waiting For A Train
David Biespiel At first they stand, orphaned, like a line of birds,First on one foot, then the other, in unison,Like any other unnamed someones, as if poisedFor a firing line, until someone thinks he knowsA train is coming in the sparrow-morning light,And someone else taps a pack of cigarettesAgainst his gloved hand, not exotic,But it’s …
Alex Dimitrov – More
Alex Dimitrov (November 30, 1984 -) How again after months there is awe.The most personal moment of the dayappears unannounced. People wear leather.People refuse to die. There are strangerswho look like they could know your name.And the smell of a bar on a cold night,or the sound of traffic as it follows you home.Sirens. Parties. …
Marge Piercy – To Be Of Use
Marge Piercy (March 31, 1936 -) The people I love the bestjump into work head firstwithout dallying in the shallowsand swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.They seem to become natives of that element,the black sleek heads of sealsbouncing like half-submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy …
Saeed Jones – A Stranger
Saeed Jones (November 26, 1985 -) I wonder if my dead mother still thinks of me.I know I don’t know her new name. I don’t knowher, not now. I don’t know if “her” is the wordburning in a stranger’s mind when he sees my deadmother walking down the street in her bright blackdress. I wonder …
Virgil Suárez – Bad Sons Anonymous
Virgil Suárez At this year’s conventionwe gather to pay homageto our fathers, responsiblemen who worked hard: laborers, stone cutters, welders,carpenters — blue collar all,men who raged, stormedtheir anger through the house, our mothers couldn’t manage,swept with brooms the debrisof broken things, in silencethey took it out on us, belts in hand, we stood there, cried,long …
Margaret Atwood – Flatline
Margaret Atwood (November 18, 1939 -) Things wear out. Also fingers.Gnarling sets in.Your hands crouch in their mittens.Forget chopsticks, and buttons.Feet have their own agendas.They scorn your taste in shoesand ignore your trails, your maps.Ears are superfluous:What are they for,those alien pink flaps?Skull fungus.The body, once your accomplice,is now your trap.The sunrise makes you wince:too …
Matthew Dickman – Stroke
Matthew Dickman (August 20, 1975 -) The hotel sign blinkingin the brainof my bodystops blinking but notthe whole sign,you know, just a coupleof the letters,the H and T.Then the E and Lso all that is leftwhen the whole leftside of my bodycomes to an endis the O. I am sitting acrossfrom a beautifulwoman, drinking coffee,and …
Hart Crane – At Melville’s Tomb
Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledgeThe dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeathAn embassy. Their numbers as he watched,Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured. And wrecks passed without sound of bells,The calyx of death’s bounty giving backA scattered chapter, livid …
Kamilah Aisha Moon – Storm
Kamilah Aisha Moon Night squall raging,black branchesbatter every windowas the sky lashesthe city. Without devices,all I can do is shelter in place& wait the latest nightmareout, find other sourcesof power as I sit in the darksave for a candle burningfor my mother writhingin an ICU & for the worldto make it against all odds.In every …
Dorianne Laux – Lord Of The Flies
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1952 -) “Coronavirus Conference Gets Canceled Because of Coronavirus.”—Bloomberg News, March 10, 2020 I can already see the streetsfilling with corpses piledtenderly along the curbs.First the homeless, thenthe poor, then those whowere lost, depressed, lonely,alone. The rich will be last,top of the pile as they werein life. Dressed in their finery.Oh …
Erika L Sánchez – Instructions For Living
Erika L. Sánchez It was the way summer hunted me:a sequence of instructionsin the folds of a flower.How do I explain the hatred of the sun,the terrible wonder of being alive?Fuck the fucking birds. I lookedto the sky to join the storms. I couldn’thave imagined you, swift as the lightningI traced with my finger, a …
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Rafaella Del Bourgo – Tasmania
Rafaella Del Bourgo The frigid waters of the Huon Rivertrudge along sodden banks,muscling aside grasses, and scolding saplings.Twin swans, crayon black with crimson beaks,hiss and feint at a six-foot snaketricked out in beige and chartreuse.The birds take off, slice the sky;the river licks the scallop pattern on its surface. My house, too, is cold, a …
Margaret Atwood – Dearly
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (November 18, 1939 -) It’s an old word, fading now. Dearly did I wish. Dearly did I long for. I loved him dearly. I make my way along the sidewalk mindfully, because of my wrecked knees about which I give less of a shit than you may imagine since there are other …
Kim Addonizio – Sestina: Writing
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) I spent an entire day at my desk writingvapid effluvia like I’m so sick of writingpages of drivel, not feeling like a writerat all even though “A writer writesand doesn’t just talk about writing”was drilled into me by a writing instructor years ago. “Writingbegets writing”was another lesson I learned …
Adrienne Rich – What Kind Of Times Are These
Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929–March 27, 2012) There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphilland the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadowsnear a meeting-house abandoned by the persecutedwho disappeared into those shadows.I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooledthis isn’t a Russian poem, …
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Joyce Sutphen – The Art of Revision
Joyce Sutphen (August 10, 1949 -) In the morning I take outmost of what I put in last night.I cross out everything that seemsexcessive, every frill and fandango,anything fluffy—a word that shouldnever again appear in a poem,along with blossom and awesome.Once I have deleted everythingexcept the title—which now seemsto have been written by a poetwho …
Pablo Neruda – XCIV If I Die
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (1July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) Pablo Neruda If I die, survive me with such sheer forcethat you awaken the furies of the pallid and the cold,from south to south lift your indelible eyes,from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.I don't want your laughter or your steps …
Naomi Long Madgett – Without
Naomi Long Madgett (July 05, 1923 – November 04, 2020) If I were blind and could not watch the late sunmelting into a simmering seaor wish on the first starlight-starbright hope of evening,it would not be the lost sunsetthat would deprive mebut the oak-gold contour of your smile.And your hand never rising in a benediction …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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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Eavan Boland – The Fire Gilder
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 …
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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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 …
