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 …
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 …
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 …
Jenny Joseph – Warning
Jenny Joseph (May 07, 1932 -) When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement …
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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Meghan O’Rourke – Apartment Living
Meghan O’Rourke So those despotic loves have become known to you, rubbing cold hands up your thighs, leaving oily trails, whispering, *Just how you like it, right*? Upstairs the sorority girls are playing charades again, smoking cigarettes, wearing shifts, burning pain into their synapses. Life is a needle. And now it pricks you: the silver …
Brenda Shaughnessy – I Wish I Had More Sisters
Brenda Shaughnessy (1970 -) I wish I had more sisters, enough to fight with and still have plenty more to confess to, embellishing the fight so that I look like I’m right and then turn all my sisters, one by one, against my sister. One sister will be so bad the rest of us will …
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Nina Simone – Four Women
Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone My skin is black my arms are long My hair is woolly my back is strong Strong enough to take the pain inflicted again and again What do they call me? My name is Aunt Sarah My name is Aunt …
Arielle Moss – Damn, You’re Tiny
Arielle Moss Do you know all the things you could do to me with just one hand? Palm my whole stomach? Circle both my wrists at once? Does that turn you on? Did you know my Vans are a size 3? Do you think you’re the first to notice? Did you know my band size …
Philip Levine – Fear And Fame
Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 - February 14, 2015) Half an hour to dress, wide rubber hip boots, gauntlets to the elbow, a plastic helmet like a knight’s but with a little glass window that kept steaming over, and a respirator to save my smoke-stained lungs. I would descend step by slow step into the …
Léo Dangel – Memoriam
Léo Dangel In the early afternoon my mother was doing the dishes. I climbed onto the kitchen table, I suppose to play, and fell asleep there. I was drowsy and awake, though, as she lifted me up, carried me on her arms into the living room, and placed me on the davenport, but I pretended …
Fleur Adcock – Weathering
Fleur Adcock (February 10, 1934 -) Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well: that was a metropolitan vanity, wanting to look young for ever, to pass. I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy …
Louise Gluck – Walking At Night
Louise Gluck (April 22, 1943 -) Now that she is old, the young men don’t approach her so the nights are free, the streets at dusk that were so dangerous have become as safe as the meadow. By midnight, the town’s quiet. Moonlight reflects off the stone walls; on the pavement, you can hear the …
