David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) Sometimesif you move carefullythrough the forest,breathinglike the onesin the old stories,who could crossa shimmering bed of leaveswithout a sound,you come to a placewhose only taskis to trouble youwith tinybut frightening requests,conceived out of nowherebut in this placebeginning to lead everywhere.Requests to stop whatyou are doing right now,andto stop what …
Jasmin Roberts – Self-Selection For Preservation
Jasmin Roberts My grandmother will tell you thatshe does not like white people,does not look them in the eye. W.E.B. Du Bois coined the term double consciousness in 1903.It refers to the psychological experience of viewing oneselfthrough the lens of a racist white society. He meant that to grow up black in Americais to be …
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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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Galway Kinnell – When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone
Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) 1 When one has lived a long time alone,one refrains from swatting the flyand lets him go, and one hesitates to strikethe mosquito, though more than willing to slapthe flesh under her, and one lifts the toadfrom the pit too deep to hop out ofand …
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Amanda Gorman – The Hill We Climb
Amanda Gorman When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice. And yet, the …
Carl Phillips – Pale Colors in a Tall Field
Carl Phillips (1959 -) Remind me to show you where the horses finally got freedfor good—not for the freedom of it, or anything likebeauty, though their running was for sure a loveliness, I’mthinking more how there’s a kind of violence to re-enteringunexpectedly a space we never meant to leave but gottorn away from so long …
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Laura Foley – One Day
Laura Foley I didn't read the news.I raked a rainbowof pungent autumn leaves,played abroad with happy dogs,held my granddaughter in my arms,and sat beneath an amiable maple,attentive to current events.
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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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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Ama Codjoe – Of Being Sick and Tired
Ama Codjoe ⏤ After Pablo Neruda and Fannie Lou Hamer I’m tired of being a woman. I walk into grocery stores and laundromats wet with the cracked face of a maidenhead lurching across the Atlantic. I want to sleep like a seed in stony ground. I want the phone to stop biting my ear. I …
Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska – Possibilities
Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska (July 2, 1923–February 1, 2012) I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. I prefer the color green. I prefer …
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Wendell Berry – A Questionnaire
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) 1 How much poison are you willing 2 to eat for the success of the free 3 market and global trade? Please 4 name your preferred poisons. 5 For the sake of goodness, how much 6 evil are you willing to do? 7 Fill in the following blanks 8 …
Ella Wheeler Wilcox – Protest
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850–October 30, 1919) To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men. The human race Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised Against injustice, ignorance, and lust, The inquisition yet would serve the law, And guillotines decide our least disputes. The few who dare, …
Sadiqullah Khan – Dark Clouds
Sadiqullah Khan From freedom To security Checked searched Interviewed Many times Paranoia Who stopped me This time “White or red” Or just soldiers In drawn lines Colors And appearances Matter Language and religion Race and ethnicity Dark clouds hovering On my horizon
Lucille Clifton – Lorena
Lucille Clifton (June 27, 1936 – February 13, 2010) —News Report *Woman cuts off husband’s penis,* *later throws it from car window.* it lay in my palm soft and trembled as a new bird and i thought about authority and how it always insisted on itself, how it was master of the man, how it …
