Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) Voicefrom the grainof the forest boughtand condemnedsketched bondin the rockmassthe earthquake soughtand threw *Sending love: Molly sends itIvan sends it, Kaorisends it to Brian, Irina sends iton pale green aerograms Abena sends itto Charlie and to JoséphineAnuro sends it, Naomi sends itLourdes sends it to NaoualWalter sends …
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 …
Pablo Neruda – XVII I Do Not Love You
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (1July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) Pablo Neruda I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz, or the arrows of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadows and the soul.I love you …
Julie Cadwallader Staub – Remember
Julie Cadwallader Staub There is no such thing as quantity in lovemy mother said, correcting me.No such thing as "much" love.You can't count it.No such thing as "all my love."You can't contain it.Love expands.There's an endless supply.I love you, she said.That's sufficient.
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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Stephen Dunn – Tenderness
Stephen Dunn (June 24, 1939 -) Back then when so much was clearand I hadn't learnedyoung men learn from women what it feels like to feel just right,I was twenty-three,she thirty-four, two children, a husband in prison for breaking someone's head.Yelled at, slappedaround, all she knew of tenderness was how much she wanted it, and …
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 …
Anis Mojgani – Once, In November
Anis Mojgani (June 13, 1977 -) You get into the shower and askWill you keep me company?I sit on the toilet’s lidand while you wash yourself and waterat the same time the ferns the spider plantthe pathos vining over the tilemarveling out loud how you loveto water them while showeringI read to you from a …
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 …
Glyn Maxwell – The Ledge
Glyn Maxwell (1962 - ) Woken again by nothing, with this linealready in my wake, I thought of youat twenty, as you are—which passed somehowwhile I was staring—thought how yesterdayyou said you wanted to be young again,which left me with this nothing left to saythat’s woken me. You are, you are—what elsedoes father wail to …
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Cross Of Snow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) In the long, sleepless watches of the night,A gentle face—the face of one long dead—Looks at me from the wall, where round its headThe night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.Here in this room she died; and soul more whiteNever through martyrdom of fire was …
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Yona Harvey – Hurricane
Yona Harvey I thought she escapedThe floodwaters. No—but her Four tickets left, I let her go—Firstborn into a hurricane. Head is empty of the drownedFor now—though she took Her first breath below sea level.Ahhh awe & awMama, let me go—she speaks What every smart child knows—To get grown you unlatch Your hands from the grown& …
WH Auden – As I Walked Out One Evening
WH Auden As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street,The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat.And down by the brimming river I heard a lover singUnder an arch of the railway: 'Love has no ending.'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet,And the river jumps over …
Pablo Neruda – I Like It When You’re Silent
Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) I like it when you’re silent, for you seem as if you’re gone,and you hear me from afar, and my voice doesn’t touch you.It seems as if your eyes had flown away from you—it seems as if a kiss were sealing shut your mouth.Since each and every thing …
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Ellen Bass – Because
Ellen Bass Because the night I gave birth my husband went blind.Hysterical, I guess you’d call it.Because there’d been too many peopleand then there was no one. Onlythis small creature—her tiny cryno bigger than a sequin.Because I’d been pushing too many hours.Even with her soft skull plates shifting,the collar of my bones too slender.When I …
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 …
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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Edward Estin Cummings – I Like My Body When It is With Your
Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962) (aka ee cummings) i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows. i like to feel the spine of …
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Albert Haley – Barcelona
Albert Haley She was not the one who let you kiss her behind the fake palms at the wedding reception. She was not the one who went with you to Star Trek number whatever and your knees bumped together and struck intergalactic sparks in the back row. She was not even the one who did …
Wendell Berry – Over the Edge
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) To tell a girl you loved her—my God!— that was a leap off a cliff, requiring little sense, sweet as it was. And I have loved many girls, women too, who by various fancies of my mind have seemed loveable. But only with you have I actually tried it: …
Katie Ford – November Philosophers
Katie Ford Nothing is nothing, although he would call me that, *She was nothing*. Those were his words, but his hand was lifting cigarettes in chains and bridges of ash-light. He said he didn’t want his body to last. It wasn’t a year I could argue against that kind of talk, so I cut the …
Charles Simic – Clouds Gathering
Charles Simic (May 09, 1938 -) It seemed the kind of life we wanted. Wild strawberries and cream in the morning. Sunlight in every room. The two of us walking by the sea naked. Some evenings, however, we found ourselves Unsure of what comes next. Like tragic actors in a theater on fire, With birds …
Nikki Giovanni – Love
Nikki Giovanni (June 7, 1943 -) The night loves the stars as they play about the darkness … the day loves the light caressing the sun … We love … those who do … because we live in a world requiring light and darkness … partnership and solitude … sameness and difference … the familiar …
Billy Collins – Aimless Love
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) This morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table. In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in …
Derek Walcott – Love After Love
Derek Walcott (January 23, 1930 - March 17, 2017) The time will come when with elation, You will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, Sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your Self. Give wine. Give …
Tao Writer – The Crushing Weight Of GoodBye
She told him what had kept her away was Death. But he rejected that excuse—for Death, he said, can never come between lovers. Naguib Mahdouz (December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) I never thought the last time we said, “Good bye,” would be the last time. If I …
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Rod McKuen – Absolutes
Rod McKuen (April 29, 1933 – January 29, 2015) How true is truth how absolute? If I say love do I mean loving you to the intrusion of all else and of all others? And do I know if I mean that? There are wild roses that have bloomed far into December, seemingly without a …
Derek Walcott – Bleecker Street, Summer
Derek Walcott (January 23, 1930 – March 17, 2017) Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor, for the eternal idleness of the imagined return, for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin! When I press summer dusks together, it is a month …
Gillian Wegener – Letter to My Husband Far Away
Gillian Wegener The house is not empty without you. It thrums and bumps, the walls relax and sigh. The water heater dutifully comes on, rumbles with heat, waiting for your shower to start. How many times today have I heard your truck in the driveway, the floor creak with your step, felt your breath against …
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Gerald Stern – June First Blossoms Of Spring
Gerald Stern (February 22, 1925 -) Some blossoms are so white and luscious, when they hold their long thin hands up you strip them for love and scatter them on the ground as you walk; and some birds look at you as if there were no great line drawn between their lives and yours, as …
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James Crews – Telling My Father
James Crews I found him on the porch that morning, sipping cold coffee, watching a crow dip down from the power line, into the pile of black bags stuffed in the dumpster where he pecked and snagged a can tab, then carried it off, clamped in his beak like the key to a room only …
Annie Kim – Eros the Contagion
Annie Kim Soft as a Claude painting, the yellow sky tonight— trees in the parking lot still thick, though the air, yes, has an edge, the honey was solid in the jar when I opened it this morning, found a single ant frozen in the dunes, stunned by sweetness. Can you really die of sweetness? …
Edna St. Vincent Millay – I Shall Forget You Presently My Dear (Sonnet IV)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, …
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