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 …
Vijay Seshadri – Visiting San Francisco
Vijay Seshadri (February 13, 1954 -) I wanted to curl upin the comfortable cosmic melancholy of my past,in the sadness of my past being passed.I wanted to tour the museum of my antiquitiesand look at the sarcophagi there.I wanted to wallow like a water buffalo in the cool,sagacious mud of my past,so I wrote you …
Louis Jenkins – The Couple
Louis Burke Jenkins (October 28, 1942 – December 21, 2019) They no longer sleep quite as well as they didwhen they were younger. He lies awakethinking of things that happened years ago, turning uncomfortably from time to time, pulling on theblankets. She worries about money. First oneand then the other is awake during the night,in …
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 …
Charles Bukowski – The Way It Is Now
Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) I’ll tell youI’ve lived with some gorgeous womenand I was so bewitched by thosebeautiful creatures thatmy eyebrows twitched.but I’d rather drive to New Yorkbackwardsthan to live with any of them again.the next classic stupiditywill be the historyof those fellowswho inherit my femalelegacies.in their caseas in minethey …
Martin Steingesser – This Longing
Martin Steingesser … awoke to rainaround 2:30 this morningthinking of you, because I'd saidonly a few days before, thisis what I wanted, to lie with you in the darklistening how rain soundsin the tree beside my window,on the sill, against the glass, dampcool air on my face. I am lovingfresh smells, light flashes in theblack …
James Broughton – Wondrous The Merge
James Broughton (November 10, 1913 – May 17, 1999) Had my soul tottered off to sleeptaking my potency with it?Had they both retired before I couldleaving me a classroom somnambulist?Why else should I at sixty-onefeel myself shriveling into fadeout?Then on a cold seminar Mondayin walked an unannounced redeemerdisguised as a taciturn studentBrisk and resolute in …
Pablo Neruda – XCIV If I Die
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (1July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) Pablo Neruda If I die, survive me with such sheer forcethat you awaken the furies of the pallid and the cold,from south to south lift your indelible eyes,from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.I don't want your laughter or your steps …
Naomi Long Madgett – Without
Naomi Long Madgett (July 05, 1923 – November 04, 2020) If I were blind and could not watch the late sunmelting into a simmering seaor wish on the first starlight-starbright hope of evening,it would not be the lost sunsetthat would deprive mebut the oak-gold contour of your smile.And your hand never rising in a benediction …
Adrienne Rich – Sending Love
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 …
