Susan Browne I know him, that manwalking- toward me up the crowded streetof the city, I have lived with himseven years now, I know his fast stride,his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrustdeep in his jacket pockets, handsthat have known my body, touchedits softest part, caused its quick shuddersand slow releasings, I have seen his …
Kim Addonizio – Ex-Boyfriends
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) They hang around, hitting on your friendsor else you never hear from them again.They call when they're drunk, or finally get sober, they're passing through town and want dinner,they take your hand across the table, kiss youwhen you come back from the bathroom. They were your loves, your victims,your …
Hafizah Geter – Naming Ceremony
Hafizah Geter My father, who spends most of his days paintingpictures, says coming home to my motherstroking out was like walking in on an affair.Bending, he demonstrates howan aneurism hugged my motherto her knees. A man alwaysat his easel, my father tries to draw clarityfrom obfuscation. Every retelling:bluer, then redder. His memorya primary color saturatingthe …
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies X
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies IX
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day for the …
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Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VII
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VII"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VI
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VI"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies V
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies IV
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies IV"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies III
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies III"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies II
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies II"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies I
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Elizabeth Acevedo – Ode to the Head Nod
Elizabeth Acevedo the slight angling up of the foreheadneck extension quick jut of chin meeting the strangers’ eyesa gilded curtsy to the sunfill in another in yourself tithe of respectin an early version the copy editor deleted the word “head” from the titlethe copy editor say sit’s implied the copy editor means wellthe copy editor …
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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David Graham – Listening for Your Name
David Graham As a father steals into his child's half-lit bedroomslowly, quietly, standing long and longcounting the breaths before finally slippingback out, taking care not to wake her,and as that night-lit child is fully awake the wholetime, with closed eyes, measured breathing,savoring a delicious blessing she couldn'tname but will remember her whole life,how often we …
David Baker – We Are Gone
David Baker (December 27, 1954 -) Even the night cooling down is slick with heat.Even the sheet we share like a humming skin.From three stories up the sounds of the street,drinkers at the curb, a wet hiss of dry tires,is a rhythm through our box fan, like panting.When we sleep it is piecemeal until morning. …
Sue Ellen Thompson – Leaning In
Sue Ellen Thompson Sometimes, in the middle of a crowded store on a Saturdayafternoon, my husband will rest his handon my neck, or on the soft flesh belted at my waist,and pull me to him. I understandhis question: Why are we so fortunatewhen all around us, friends are falling preyto divorce and illness? It seems …
Nikki Giovanni – Resignation
Yolande Cornelia Nikki Giovanni Jr (June 7, 1943) I love you because the Earth turns round the sun because the North wind blows north sometimes because the Pope is Catholic and most Rabbis Jewish because the winters flow into springs and the air clears after a storm because only my love for …
Naomi Long Madgett – Anniversary Song
Naomi Long Madgett (July 5, 1923 – November 4, 2020) How good it is to let our memory wanderand travel back across the fruitful yearsto count how many miles we’ve walked together!On pinnacles of dreams, through vales of tears,along the level ground of every daywe’ve made our way.In sickness and in health, in joy and …
Elizabeth Alexander – Butter
Elizabeth Alexander (May 30, 1962 -) My mother loves butter more than I do,more than anyone. She pulls chunks offthe stick and eats it plain, explainingcream spun around into butter! Growing upwe ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemonand butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,butter melting in small pools in the heartsof Yorkshire puddings, butter …
William Butler Yeats Down By the Salley Gardens
William Butler Yeats (June 13, 1865 – January 28, 1939) Down by the salley gardensmy love and I did meet;She passed the salley gardenswith little snow-white feet.She bid me take love easy,as the leaves grow on the tree;But I, being young and foolish,with her would not agree.In a field by the rivermy love and I …
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Francesca Bell – Spring
for my husband, 21 years my senior Francesca Bell There are so many timesI could have killed you.After 28 years of marriage—the only contact sportI’ve ever stuck with—I found myselfcrying this morning,after a trip outside,singing Happy Birthdaythree times through,just to be sure,scrubbing despitethe sting of my split skinas I’ve loved youthrough even the rubof the …
JR Solonche – The Lover of Stone
JR Solonche The lover of stone must be old,for there is no such thing as a young stone. The lover of stone must be strong,for he must be able to climb up the mountainand the summit of the mountainto find the beginning of stone. And he must be able to climb downthe mountain again to …
Robert Frost – Meeting and Passing
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) As I went down the hill along the wallThere was a gate I had leaned at for the viewAnd had just turned from when I first saw youAs you came up the hill. We met. But allWe did that day was mingle great and smallFootprints …
Jane Hirshfield – For What Binds Us
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) There are names for what binds us:strong forces, weak forces.Look around, you can see them:the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,nails rusting into the places they join,joints dovetailed on their own weight.The way things stay so solidlywherever they've been set down—and gravity, scientists say, is weak.And see how …
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 …
Andrea Hollander – Premonition
Andrea Hollander (April 28, 1947 -) Dusk, and the trees barely visibleon either side of the two-lane,west through the Rockiesin our secondhand Ramblerthat growled through the landscapelike some hulking animal. Our first trip together,my husband’s attention more on methan on the darkening road,our newness a kingdomof only two. From the forest edge a deer flashedtoward …
Donald Hall – Bangers and Mash
Donald Hall (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) We flew the Atlantic all night, your headwith its first streak of gray leaningagainst my shoulder, and took a cabto our bed-and-breakfast. We napped,woke up at noon, and rode the tubefrom Russell Square to Piccadilly Circus,where we asked a stranger to takea photograph of us standing …
Marge Piercy – Limited But Fertile Possibilities
Marge Piercy (March 31, 1936 -) We cannot have monogrammed towelsor matches with our names on. We cannothave children. We cannot share jointtax returns. We don’t have a past.Our future is a striped unicorn, fragile,shy, the first of a newspecies born without kindto hostile kin. We can work togethersnarling and giggling and grunting.Every few years …
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Ted Kooser – Splitting An Order
Ted Kooser (April 25, 1939 -) I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steadyby placing his forearms firm on the edge of the tableand using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in …
Anne Sexton – Song For A Lady
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) On the day of breasts and small hipsthe window pocked with bad rainrain coming on like a minister,we coupled, so sane and insane.We lay like spoons while the sinisterrain dropped like flies on our lipsand our glad eyes and our small hips.“The room is so cold …
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 …
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sonnet 43
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 06, 1806 – June 29, 1861) How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of being an ideal Grace.I love thee to the level of everyday'sMost quiet need, by sun …
