Ellen Bryant Voigt after a week of daily heavy snow I want to praise my roof firstthe acute angle at which it descends from the ridgepoleand second that it is black the color absorbingall the other colors so that even now as arctic airblows in from the plains my roof burns off from underneaththe dazzling …
Alan Harawitz – Finding Religion
Alan Harawitz The lox man is waitingbehind the counterin the back of the store,an anachronism under an ancientblue Dodger baseball cap,gray hair and goatee surroundinghis pudgy pink cheeks and flabby chin. It doesn’t hurt that his name is Nathanand that he speaks with the slightestJewish inflection when he says,“Hi, what can I get you?”It’s one …
Melissa Andres – Arrival
Melissa Andres The corners of the Terracotta tilescut my mother’s feet when she walkedto the kitchen to eat the most exotic fruitshe had ever imagined—tree-ripe peaches packedwith juices in a can—and not the guavashe always melted for the pastries.My mother then placed the empty canon the stove, added water and beganto cook the rice we …
WS Merwin – Thanks
WS Merwin (September 30, 1927 -) Listenwith the night falling we are saying thank youwe are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railingswe are running out of the glass roomswith our mouths full of food to look at the skyand say thank youwe are standing by the water thanking itstanding by the windows …
Rebecca Elson – Antidotes To The Fear Of Death
Rebecca Anne Wood Elson (January 02, 1960 – May 19, 1999) Sometimes as an antidoteTo fear of death,I eat the starsThose nights, lying on my back,I suck them from the quenching darkTil they are all, all inside me,Pepper hot and sharp.Sometimes, instead, I stir myselfInto a universe still young,Still warm as blood:No outer space, just …
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Ted Kooser – A Pretty Pass
Ted Kooser (April 25, 1939 -) Things have come to a pretty pass, Mother,as you’d be saying today, when the mailman’safraid of the mail, up at our box by the road,extending a latex-gloved hand from his Jeepto put in my earlier letter to you, stamped:RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESS UNKNOWN,but I’m trying again. I’ve been wanting …
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 …
Dorianne Laux – Antilamentation
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1952 -) Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you readto the end just to find out who killed the cook, notthe insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, notthe lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,the one you beat to the …
Susan Browne – Bonanza
Susan Browne Amanda shows me my bones,A picture of my spine, ghost-like,Snake-like, like it could rattle.I say, Amanda, it looks crooked, whyIs that? She shrugs, You’re not the only one.Your bone density’s fine. You can go now.My plebeian spine walks me towardThe mammogram room where I flop my boobOnto the plastic tray. Flop is not …
Linda Pastan – The Bookstall
Linda Pastan (May 27, 1932 -) Just looking at themI grow greedy, as if they werefreshly baked loaveswaiting on their shelvesto be broken open—that oneand that—and I make my choicein a mood of exalted luck,browsing among themlike a cow in sweetest pasture.For life is continuousas long as they waitto be read—these inked pathsopening into the …
Reginald Dwayne Betts – Essay on Reentry
Reginald Dwayne Betts (November 05, 1980 -) At two a.m., without enough spiritsspilling into my liver to knowto keep my mouth shut, my youngestlearned of years I spent inside a box: a spell,a kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,but History: I robbed a man. This, monthsbefore he would drop bucket after bucketon opposing …
Ron Padgett – A Small Glass of Orange Juice
Ron Padgett (June 17, 1942 -) on a white tableclothwith light blue legs belowin a hotel restaurantin a small town in Polandin 1936is being contemplatedby a manwhose homburgis tiltedat an angleparallel to thatof the pictureon the wallbehind him,a mountain scenewith forest belowin which a lone deerhas turned to look at us.
Sean Kelbley – Cheer
Sean Kelbley The kid outside the liquor store is one of mine:5th period, sits halfway back. Laughs at my puns,but I should cross the street and scare him off.How much of 17 is trying to stand convincinglyin places you’re not old enough to be? He shiftshis weight, configures spine and mouth and browinexpertly. Experiments with …
Denise Levertov — The Secret
Priscilla Denise Levertov (October 24, 1923 – December 20, 1997) Two girls discoverthe secret of lifein a sudden line ofpoetry.I who don’t know thesecret wrotethe line. Theytold me(through a third person)they had found itbut not what it wasnot evenwhat line it was. No doubtby now, more than a weeklater, they have forgottenthe secret,the line, the …
Jane Hirshfield – I Wanted To Be Surprised
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) To such a request, the world is obliging.Just in the past week, a rotund porcupine,who seemed equally startled by me.The man who swallowed a tiny microphoneto record the sounds of his body,not considering beforehand how he might remove it.A cabbage and mustard sandwich on marbled bread.How easily the large …
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Ajay Kumar – An Index Of Visitors
Ajay Kumar I’ve seen something like this somewhere, all the time.white, black & red the first colors. as we enter november,the weather turns december. as it was june, it was also may.remember, all the buildings blurring by to the next station.remember the index of visitors, the middle-finger ring-fingers,singers whose songs were just extended foreplays.an old …
Aimee Nezhukumatathil – One Vote
Aimee Nezhukumatathil “After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” My parents are from countrieswhere mangoes grow wild and boldand eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.America loved this bird too and made it clutch olives and arrows. Some …
Jane Hirshfield – Ants’ Nest
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) “On Being the Right Size,” Haldane’s short essay is titled.An ants’ nest can be found at the top of a redwood.No bird that weighs less than—No insect more than—The minimum mass for a whale, for a language, an ice cap.In a human-sized room,someone is setting a human-sized table with …
Audre Lorde – The Bees
Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) In the street outside a schoolwhat the children learnpossesses them.Little boys yell as they stone a flock of beestrying to swarmbetween the lunchroom window and an iron grate.The boys sling furious rockssmashing the windows.The bees, buzzing their anger,are slow to attack.Then one boy is stunginto quicker …
Nikki Giovanni – My First Memory (Of Librarians)
Nikki Giovanni (June 07, 1943 -) This is my first memory:A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky wood floorA line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the centerHeavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply too short For me to sit in and readSo my first book was always big In …
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Oliver de la Paz – In Defense of Small Towns
Oliver de la Paz When I look at it, it’s simple, really. I hated life there. September,once filled with animal deaths and toughened hay. And the smellsof fall were boiled-down beets and potatoesor the farmhands’ breeches smeared with oil and dieselas they rode into town, dusty and pissed. The radio stationsplit time between metal and …
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Lisel Mueller – Immortality
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924–February 21, 2020) In Sleeping Beauty’s castlethe clock strikes one hundred yearsand the girl in the tower returns to the world.So do the servants in the kitchen,who don’t even rub their eyes.The cook’s right hand, liftedan exact century ago,completes its downward arcto the kitchen boy’s left ear;the boy’s tensed vocal cordsfinally …
Michelle Boisseau – The Obstinate Comedy
Michelle Boisseau (October 26, 1955 - November 15, 2017) In the middle of my life I lost my way. I knew my turn was coming, coming around the bend. And there it was.The crows calling over the shoulders of trees stretched the space wider and wider like the circles a focaldragonfly …
Jane Hirshfield – Washing Doorknobs
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) The glass doorknobs turn no differently.But every DecemberI polish them with vinegar water and cotton.Another year ends.This one, I ate Kyoto picklesand touched, in Xi’an, a stone turtle’s face,cold as stone, as turtle.I could not read the fortune carved into its shellor hear what it had raised its headto …
Naomi Shihab Nye – World Of The Future, We Thirsted
Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) Stripped of a sense of well-being,we downed our water from small disposable bottles.Casting the plastic to streetside,we poured high-potency energy tonics or Cokedown our throats, because this time in historyhad sapped us so thoroughly andwe were desperate.Straws, plastic caps, crushed cans,in a three-block walk you could fill a …
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Patricia Carroll Mathes – Another Lovely Day
Patricia Carroll Mathes (January 20, 1943 -) Thank you for another lovely day,”you said, as we drove to yet anothertemporary lodging.These days are hard,but you make them easier.The smoke that permeates our clothes,the darkened rooms smelling of disaster.The charred remains of two livesloving books, music, and art.Two sisters, the sweet and the serious,resident ladies of …
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Billy Collins – Forgetfulness
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) The name of the author is the first to gofollowed obediently by the title, the plot,the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novelwhich suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbordecided to retire to the southern hemisphere of …
Cat Richardson – Northeast Corridor
Cat Richardson I’m on the horizon of a seven hour trip and it’s quiet.A man walks across the early highway, the sun is almost up.You’re far away and swimming. How many bodies of waterwill I cross before I solve myself. I’m going to a wedding. Being single is expensive,especially at weddings. I try not to …
Rachel Galvin – The Real Thing
Rachel Galvin It was interesting to be thinking of something.It was interesting to be thinking. To be thinking. To. It was interesting.It was then she heard the voice the one inside the voice the one she heard.It was then. Was it a poor imitation or was it the real McCoy. Was it.Did she know. Was …
Jane Hirshfield – Advice To Myself
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) The computer fileof whichI have no recollectionis labeled "advice to myself''I click it openlookscroll further downthe screenstays backlit and emptythus I meet myself againhopeful and uselessa mysteryprecisely as I musthave doneon August 19, 2010, 11:08 a.m.
Barbara Ras – You Can’t Have It All
Barbara Ras (1949 -) But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown handsgloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old fingeron your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful lookOf the …
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 …
Cindy King – When Your Mother Asks If You’re Seeing Anyone
Cindy King It’s tough to find a cardiologist who datespatients from the Ward of Cracked Hearts, butthere’s always the bariatric surgeonwho thinks you could drop a few pounds. If it’s too latefor the death row inmate, try the child predator, you toocould date the would-be senator, or even the President of the United States.If you …
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