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Lies I've Told My 3-year-old Recently by Raul Gutierrez Trees talk to each other at night. All fish are named either Lorna or Jack. Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose. Tiny bears live in drain pipes. If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky. The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago. Everyone knows at least one secret language. When nobody is looking, I can fly. We are all held together

Ghost by Cynthia Huntington At first you didn’t know me. I was a shape moving rapidly, nervous at the edge of your vision. A flat, high voice, dark slash of hair across my cheekbone. I made myself present, though never distinct. Things I said that he repeated, a tone you could hear, but never trace, in his voice. Silence—followed by talk of other things. When you would sit at your desk, I would creep near you like a question. A thought would scurry across the front

My Father Ties, I Do Not Tie, My Tie by Ray Bradbury My father ties, I do not tie, my tie. On some night long ago, in June I tried to try. My first tie snarled upon my vest, My hands all thumbs, And presto-chango, Something Awful This Way Comes. My father quietly came by And studied me and stood behind. “Be blind,” he said. “Stay off of mirrors. Let your fingers Learn to do.” His lesson lingers. What he said was true. Eyes shut, With him to help me over up, around and und

A Very Short Song by Dorothy Parker Once, when I was young and true, Someone left me sad— Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse. Dorothy Parker was born in 1893 and died in 1967. Her first book of poetry was published in 1926, 100 years ago. Yet her poems--snarky, funny, biting, revelatory, blunt, sad, telling--resonant today. As do her wisecracks; oh, ho

The Weak by Greg Kuzma So much that is weak has survived and lives out its long wondrous days with only the least of annoyance. The grim and holy, the loud and reckless, pass them, making their great surface disruptions. So much that is weak and slight has bloomed beneath the dark brow of the storm. Rage, rage, or whisper, everything fades. The tall trees of the yard, the small dry walnut shells. This poem was first published in Poetry in May, 1974. It was later published in

I Loved the World So I Married It by José Olivarez music, even on the day my grandma died there were mangos though i tasted nothing. but slowly i came back to the world & carne asada. better than i remembered, smoke off the meat. i could not contain my happiness even though it felt offensive to smile with my grandma buried & getting eaten by the flowers. & sometimes, i look at my love & think i would like to stay, to put a welcome mat on our doorstep with our names hyphenat

Allow Me by Chungmi Kim If I must worry about how I will live in my old age without wealth I would be without health now and how can I live to be old? If I must worry about how I will live in my old age without love I would be without dreams now and how can I go on living another day? Allow me to sit in the sun and listen to the sky. I will love you gently. Allow me to stay in my room and weave my rainbows. I will love you truly. Like a colt in the meadow with no boundary

Dusting by Julia Alvarez Each morning I wrote my name On the dusty cabinet, then crossed The dining table in script, scrawled In capitals on the backs of chairs, Practicing signatures like scales While mother followed, squirting Linseed from a burping can Into a crumpled-up flannel. She erased my fingerprints From the bookshelf and rocker, Polished mirrors on the desk Scribbled with my alphabets. My name was swallowed in the towel With which she jeweled the table tops. The g

Back Home by Louis Jenkins The place I lived as a child, the sharecropper’s farmhouse with its wind-bent mulberry trees and rusted farm machinery has completely vanished. Now there’s nothing but plowed fields for miles in any direction. When I asked around in town no one remembered the family. No way to verify my story. In fact, there’s no evidence that any of what I remember actually hap- pened, or that the people I knew ever existed. There was my uncle Axel, for instance,

Green Flame by Pamela Uschuk Slender as my ring finger, the female hummingbird crashed into plate glass separating her and me before we could ask each other’s name. Green flame, she launched from a dead eucalyptus limb. Almost on impact, she was gone, her needle beak opening twice to speak the abrupt language of her going, taking in the day’s rising heat as I took one more scalding breath, horrified by death’s velocity. Too weak from chemo not to cry for the passage of her

Proof by Cornelius Eady Written for the inauguration of Zohran Mamdani, Jan 1, 2026, NYC. You have to imagine it: Who said you were too dark/too Large? Too queer/too loud? Who said you were too poor/ Too strange? Too fat? You have to imagine it: Who said you must keep quiet? Who heard your story, then Rolled their eyes? Who tried to change your name To invisible? You’ve got to imagine: Who heard your name And refused to pronounce it? Who checked their watch And said “not n

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies by Joy Harjo And whom do I call my enemy? An enemy must be worthy of engagement. I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking. It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind. The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun. It sees and knows everything. It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing. The door to the mind should only open from the heart. An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend. This poe

Senryū is the term for short haiku that are humorous. I was lucky enough to attend a reading recently in which John Brehm read from his latest book, Just This: New and Selected Poems. The book was published this year by Wisdom Publications; you can buy it here. The following is a selection of some of the very funny senryū from John's book. As with traditional haiku, senryū are not titled. Enjoy the following, this bit of something different from the norm, and buy John's book!

The Strangers by Patrick Hicks After we picked you up at the Omaha airport, we clamped you into a new car seat and listened to you yowl beneath the streetlights of Nebraska. Our hotel suite was plump with toys, ready, we hoped, to soothe you into America. But for a solid hour you watched the door, shrieking, Umma, the Korean word for mother. Once or twice you glanced back at us and, in this netherworld where a door home had slammed shut forever, your terrified eyes paced bet

September 1918 by Amy Lowell This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. Under a tree in the park, Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, Were carefully gathering red berries To put in a pasteboard box. Some day there will be no war, Then I shall take out this afternoon And turn

Morning Song by Sylvia Plath Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I’m no more your mother Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the wind’s hand. All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink r

The Raft by Erica Reid I approach every poem I write as if I’m going to save a life. —Aaron Abeyta It was no small feat to locate a phone book—but I did, and Angela Winston from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, I have chosen your name at random and I have come to save your life. I recognize that it is a huge swing on my part to assume that you need saving—but then we are all drowning these days, are we not? Don’t you wake up feeling you’ve reached your limit, that the worst must be past,

Desert by Patricia Hooper Where there's a river, that tastes of direction. Where there's an orchard, that says survival. Where there's a desert, that changes everything, as if earth hadn't wanted to fill only her own need. This very compact poem was published in the October 1971 issue of Poetry. The photo above was taken by me in the vicinity of Goldfield, Nevada a few years ago. I love this poem, not just its compactness, but its directness. Rivers give directions. Orchards

The Mower by Philip Larkin The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found a hedgehog jammed up against the blades, killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world unmendably. Burial was no help: Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence is always the same; we should be careful of each other, we should be kind while there is still time. I know peo