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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Kenneth Patchen – As We Are So Wonderfully Done With Each Other
Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911 - January 8, 1972) As we are so wonderfully done with each other We can walk into our separate sleep On floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood lies O my lady, my fairest dear, my sweetest, loveliest one Your lips have splashed my dull house with the …
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Ben Johnson – A Celebration Of Charis
Ben Johnson (c. June 11, 1572 – August 06, 1637) Let it not your wonder move, Less your laughter, that I love. Though I now write fifty years, I have had, and have, my peers; Poets, though divine, are men, Some have lov'd as old again. And it is not always face, Clothes, or fortune, …
Rachel Eliza Griffiths – Heart Of Darkness
Rachel Eliza Griffiths (December 06, 1978 -) Years ago I went to Noho Star with some poets & Cecil Taylor. Noho Star is closed now & Cecil died yesterday. I walked to Union Square & watched black men playing chess. Rubbing their jaws while the afternoon light poured down the gentle rooks of their fingers …
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Patricia Carroll-Mathes – How Did I Know My Heart
Patricia Carroll-Mathes You said, I had an open heart, a pure heart. How did you see, what I did not know? How could you reflect all this back to me. How could I know the warmth I felt, In the hearts of others, Was a reflection of my own? How did you see So far …
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WH Auden – The More Loving One
Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973) Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a …
Billy Collins – I Love You
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) Early on, I noticed that you always say it to each of your children as you are getting off the phone with them just as you never fail to say it to me whenever we arrive at the end of a call. It’s all new to this only child. …
