Toi Derricotte (April 12, 1941 -) In the movie, flamingos migrate over Rome and restovernight on the terrace of Jep Gambardella, so that,in the rose light of dawn, he walks out to find his saintlyold guest, Sister Maria, meditating among a flamboyance—a hundred stand on pink stilt-like legs with roseate plumesand beaks sturdy as lobster …
Sarah Browning – The Fifth Fact
Sarah Browning For Ben’s project he must research five factsabout his African-American hero and write themon poster board. He chooses Harriet Tubman,whose five facts are: Her father’s name was Ben.Her mother’s name was Old Rit. She was bornin 1820 and died in 1913. She was born in Marylandand died in New York.Ben asks for adviceabout …
Connie Wanek – Old Duluth
Connie Wanek (June 01, 1952 -) for Louis Jenkins We still walk down the hillsidewhere bedrock surfaceslike the back of a huge gray pikecome to glare at youbefore it breaks your line.A raven alights on top of a white pinethen flings himself off,while a cottontail springs awaythrough the clearing where teenagersleave their empty vodka bottles.Everything …
Elizabeth Bishop – One Art
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) The art of losing isn’t hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof lost door keys, the hour badly spent.The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice …
Nikki Giovanni – Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day
Nikki Giovanni (June 07, 1943 -) Don't look nowI'm fading awayInto the gray of my morningsOr the blues of every night Is it that my nailskeep breakingOr maybe the cornon my second little piggyThings keep popping outon my face or of my lifeIt seems no matter howI try I become more difficultto holdI am not …
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Alejandra Pizarnik – All Night I Hear The Noise Of Water Sobbing
Alejandra Pizarnik (April 29, 1936 – September 25, 1972) All night I hear the noise of water sobbing. All night I make night in me, I make the day that begins on my account, that sobs because day falls like water through night. All night I hear the voice of someone seeking me out. All …
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WS Merwin – Berryman
WS Merwin (September 30, 1927–March 15, 2019) I will tell you what he told mein the years just after the waras we then calledthe second world wardon’t lose your arrogance yet he saidyou can do that when you’re olderlose it too soon and you maymerely replace it with vanityjust one time he suggestedchanging the usual …
Susan Browne – Chance Meeting
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 …
David Biespiel – Men Waiting For A Train
David Biespiel At first they stand, orphaned, like a line of birds,First on one foot, then the other, in unison,Like any other unnamed someones, as if poisedFor a firing line, until someone thinks he knowsA train is coming in the sparrow-morning light,And someone else taps a pack of cigarettesAgainst his gloved hand, not exotic,But it’s …
Alex Dimitrov – More
Alex Dimitrov (November 30, 1984 -) How again after months there is awe.The most personal moment of the dayappears unannounced. People wear leather.People refuse to die. There are strangerswho look like they could know your name.And the smell of a bar on a cold night,or the sound of traffic as it follows you home.Sirens. Parties. …
Louise Glück – Song
Louise Glück (April 22, 1943 -) Leo Cruz makes the most beautiful white bowls;I think I must get some to youbut how is the questionin these timesHe is teaching methe names of the desert grasses;I have a booksince to see the grasses is impossibleLeo thinks the things man makesare more beautifulthan what exists in natureand …
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 …
Rita Dove – Pedestrian Crossing, Charlottesville
Rita Frances Dove (August 28, 1952 -) A gaggle of girls giggle over the bricksleading off Court Square. We brakedutifully, and wait; but there’s at leasttwenty of these knob-kneed creatures,blond and curly, still at an age that thinksimpudence is cute. Look how they dartand dither, changing flanks as they lurchalong—golden gobbets of infuriating foolishnessor pure …
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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 …
Tracy K Smith – Einstein’s Mother
Tracy K Smith (April 16, 1972 -) Was he mute a while,or all tears. Did he raisehis hands to his ears sohe could scream screamscream. Did he eat onlywith his fists. Did he eatas if something inside of himwould never be fed. Did hearch his back and hammerhis heels into the floorthe minute there wassomething …
Dorianne Laux – Juneau
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1952 -) In Alaska I slept in a bed on stilts, one armpressed against the ice-feathered window,the heat on high, sweat darkening the collarof my cotton thermals. I worked hard to buy that bed,hiked toward it when the men in the boothswere finished crushing hundred-dollar billsinto my hand, pitchers of beer …
Virgil Suárez – Bad Sons Anonymous
Virgil Suárez At this year’s conventionwe gather to pay homageto our fathers, responsiblemen who worked hard: laborers, stone cutters, welders,carpenters — blue collar all,men who raged, stormedtheir anger through the house, our mothers couldn’t manage,swept with brooms the debrisof broken things, in silencethey took it out on us, belts in hand, we stood there, cried,long …
Tanya Chernov – Someone Else’s Wet Styrofoam
Tanya Chernov I practiced flirting on an Italian trainleaving Switzerland, with a European boycamped out across from me.I liked him when he sat down,liked his messy hair, his loose sweater,his weathered pants that hung on himthe way pants ought to hang on a boy. I pretended not to notice him,tried to look my prettiest staring …
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Maxine Scates – Limbo
Maxine Scates I still wore the cut-offs I’d hurried into her roomwearing that morning, and, as we inchedtoward an off-ramp in the valleyafter going to the mortuary and the cemeteryto make arrangements for the mass, the musicand the lowering, something shimmered,hovered the way it had all day, the waya month or so ago when I’d …
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer – The Afternoon the World Health Organization Declared the Pandemic
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer That was the afternoonwe watched the avalanches—dozens and dozens of themflowing over the cliff bands.How beautiful they werefrom a distance—bright falls of billowing snow.They began as dark rumble,then burst into plume, into rush.Unstoppable they were.Powerful. Inevitable.Such a gift to feel humbled,to exult in forcesgreater than our own. Later that night, readingthe tumbling …
William Blake – The Schoolboy
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) I love to rise in a summer morn,When the birds sing on every tree;The distant huntsman winds his horn,And the skylark sings with me:Oh, what sweet company! But to go to school in a summer morn, —O it drives all joy away;Under a cruel eye outworn,The …
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) The tide rises, the tide falls,The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;Along the sea-sands damp and brownThe traveller hastens toward the town, And the tide rises, the tide falls.Darkness settles on roofs and walls,But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;The little waves, with …
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Marilyn Nelson – The Children’s Moon
Marilyn Nelson (April 26, 1946 -) In my navy shirtwaist dress and three-inch heels,my pearl clip-ons and newly red-rinsed curls,I smoothed on lipstick, lipstick-marked my girls,saluted and held thumbs-up to my darling Mel,and drove myself to school for the first day.Over the schoolyard a silver lozengedissolved into the morning’s blue cauldron.Enter twenty seven-year-old white children.Look, …
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 …
Robin Coste Lewis – Paramount
Robin Coste Lewis There were six of us, but we paidjust for four. Before we reached the front,Daddy would pull the car out of lineso Ritchie and Stevie could jumpinside the trunk. We’d smile and shushright past the guard. I was five,and still wore felt pajamas with the feet in. The hefty steel speaker 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 …
Jim Whiteside – Figs
Jim Whiteside I held the fruit the way I might have helda feather, turning it to view each side.I loved the story of the fig wasp, Agaonidae, how in each fig’s centerwas a wingless and silent creature, disintegrated,eaten. Led by food to become food. This was when I still felt whole ownershipof myself, before any …
Gabrielle Otero – Self-Portrait, Despite What They Say
Gabrielle Otero Being a Latina from the Bronx means:I am everybody and nobody at the same time. I know the soundwaves of the train tracks better than my father’s voice.I look like I should speak Spanish but nobody ever taught me.I look like you should want to bend me over but you try not tothink …
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Terrance Hayes – Pseudacris Crucifer
Terrance Hayes (November 18, 1971 -) The father begins to make the sound a tree frog makesWhen he comes with his son & daughter to a pailOf tree frogs for sale in a Deep South flea marketJust before the last blood of dusk.A tree frog is called a tree frog because it chirpsLike a bird …
Jasmin Roberts – Self-Selection For Preservation
Jasmin Roberts My grandmother will tell you thatshe does not like white people,does not look them in the eye. W.E.B. Du Bois coined the term double consciousness in 1903.It refers to the psychological experience of viewing oneselfthrough the lens of a racist white society. He meant that to grow up black in Americais to be …
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Hart Crane – At Melville’s Tomb
Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledgeThe dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeathAn embassy. Their numbers as he watched,Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured. And wrecks passed without sound of bells,The calyx of death’s bounty giving backA scattered chapter, livid …
Lisel Mueller – In Passing
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) How swiftly the strained honeyof afternoon lightflows into darknessand the closed bud shrugs offits special mysteryin order to break into blossom:as if what exists, existsso that it can be lostand become precious.
