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 …
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 …
Maya Angelou – The Pulse Of Morning
Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) A Rock, A River, A TreeHosts to species long since departed,Mark the mastodon.The dinosaur, who left dry tokensOf their sojourn hereOn our planet floor,Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doomIs lost in the gloom of dust and ages.But today, the Rock cries out to …
Walt Whitman – Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand
Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) Whoever you are holding me now in hand,Without one thing all will be useless,I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,I am not what you supposed, but far different. Who is he that would become my follower?Who would sign himself a candidate for my …
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T.S. Eliot – Burnt Norton
T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in a world of speculation.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one …
Sara Lupita Olivares – Towards
Sara Lupita Olivares obligatory orchidswave I crawl underthe leaves to understandthe garbage what is anyone’skarma besides amisunderstanding
William Ernest Henley – Invictus
William Ernest Henley (August 23, 1849 – July 11, 1903) Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this …
Jessica Cohn – Spring
Jessica Cohn It was the spring when dry goodsheld our fascination. We bottled goldhand-pumped mucous. Toilet paperbecame currency. The cut of ethylalcohol sharpened elbows. We tookour contact in fluid ounces, returnedto fire escapes, back steps, the oppositeside of the street. The public squareemptied, and the crosswalk followed.Masters of airports called the airplaneshome. The cars stopped …
Phillis Wheatley – Imagination
Phillis Wheatley Peters (c. 1753 – December 5, 1784) Thy various works, imperial queen, we see, How bright their forms! how deck'd with pomp by thee!Thy wond'rous acts in beauteous order stand,And all attest how potent is thine hand. From Helicon's refulgent heights attend,Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend:To tell her glories with …
Philip Bryant – Miles: Prince Of Darkness
Philip Bryant I remember my father's storiesabout him being cold, fitful,reproachful, surly, rude, cruel,unbearable, spiteful, arrogant, hateful.But then he'd playSome Day My Prince Will Comein a swirl of bright spring colorsthat come after a heavy rainmaking the world anew againand like the sometimes-tyrannical kingwho is truly repentant of his transgressionssteps out onto the balconyto greet …
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Claudia Serea – Parallel Heavens
Claudia Serea Doors closed,lawns freshly mowed,the heavens line up,a row of suburban houseson a quiet street.I imagine mine painted white,silent and sleepy,a provincial art museumwhere all the angels have been assignedto perpetual paperwork.One can't even thinkto jump from one heaveninto anotherwithout wings,or breaking a bone.And each heavenhas its own way to get to iton parallel …
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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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 …
Marge Piercy – The Low Road
Marge Piercy (March 31, 1936 -) What can they doto you? Whatever they want.They can set you up, they canbust you, they can breakyour fingers, they canburn your brain with electricity,blur you with drugs till youcan't walk, can't remember, they cantake your child, wall upyour lover. They can do anythingyou can't stop themfrom doing. How …
Letitia Elizabeth Landon – Home
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (August 14, 1802 – October 15, 1838) Aye, here, dear love, is just a home, Like what our home should be;A home of peace—a home of love— As made for thee and me. A cottage with its roof of thatch, Its porch of the red rose,Its white walls hidden by the wreath …
Henri Cole – Daffodils
Henri Cole (1956 -) Sometimes I arrive with my buds closed,and I am mistaken for scallions,but if you cut a half inch from my stemsand put me in water, I open up and releaseyellow dust from my petal cups,like talcum sprinkled on her shouldersafter she bathes and swallows herthird tranquillizer to erase herself,the sedative piercing …
Emily Brontë – Remembrance
Emily Jane Brontë (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hoverOver the mountains, on that northern shore,Resting …
Richard Jones – The Loft
Richard Jones I lay on her bedwhile she opened windowsso we could see the riverand the factories beyond.Afternoon light fallingbeautifully into the room,she burned candles,incense, talking quietlyas I listened—I, who conspiredto make this happen,weaving a web of words that heldthis moment at its center.What could I say now?That I am a manempty of desire?She stood …
Tadeusz Dąbrowski – Sentence
Tadeusz Dąbrowski It’s as if you’d woken in a locked cell and foundin your pocket a slip of paper, and on it a single sentencein a language you don’t know.And you’d be sure this sentence was the key to yourlife. Also to this cell.And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence,until finally you’d understand …
Emily Dickinson – A Light Exists In Spring
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) A Light exists in SpringNot present on the YearAt any other period-When March is scarcely hereA Color stands abroadOn Solitary FieldsThat Science cannot overtakeBut Human Nature feels.It waits upon the Lawn,It shows the furthest TreeUpon the furthest Slope you knowIt almost speaks to you.Then as …
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William Wordsworth – I Have Thoughts That Are Fed By The Sun
William Wordsworth (April 07, 1770 – April 23, 1850) I have thoughts that are fed by the sun:The things which I seeAre welcome to me,Welcome every one –I do not wish to lieDead, dead,Dead, without any company.Here alone on my bedWith thoughts that are fed by the sun,And hopes that are welcome every one,Happy am …
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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 …
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 …
