The Word Plum by Helen Chasin The word plum is delicious pour and push, luxury of self-love, and savoring murmur full in the mouth and falling like fruit taut skin pierced, bitten, provoked into juice, and tart flesh question and reply, lip and tongue of pleasure. This poem appeared in the 1968 collection Coming Close and Other Poems, which was published as the winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets of that year. The series publishes a poet's first book and uses, of cou

I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the    red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks, the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its sword-tips aglow in the May air, they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,    they are kids,

Lighting Up in the Bomb Shelter by Celia Lawren We didn’t care that missiles in Cuba were aimed at our homes.  We were twelve-year-old girls running barefoot through wet summer grass in the dark, headed for a slumber party in the bomb shelter. Cinder block cavern carved into basement corner, walls lit up in buttercup yellow― a curious Cold War feng shui conceived for a home economics project by my sister, It was packed with Free World amenities:   central air and heat, r

American Sonnet for the New Year by Terrance Hayes Things got terribly ugly incredibly quickly  Things got ugly embarrassingly quickly  actually Things got ugly unbelievably quickly  honestly Things got ugly seemingly infrequently  initially Things got ugly ironically usually  awfully carefully Things got ugly unsuccessfully  occasionally Things got ugly mostly painstakingly  quietly seemingly Things got ugly beautifully  infrequently Things got ugly sadly especially  freque

Snow, Fall by Judith Arcana That one time you hit the baby, that one time out on the street when the bus was so late and then didn't come and the snow started falling; that time you lifted all your food in bags, paper handles dampening and she kept holding onto your leg, pulling your coat and you couldn't carry her too while the flakes came thick and wet and faster. That’s the time you remember, not all the times you didn't, all those times when you didn't hit the baby, times

Christmas 1963 by Joseph Enzweiler Because we wanted much that year and had little. Because the winter phone for days stayed silent that would call our father back to work, and he kept silent too with our mother, fearfully proud before us. Because I was young that morning in gray light untouched on the rug and our gifts were so few, propped along the furniture, for a second my heart fell, then saw how large they made the spaces between them to take the place of less. Because

Trains in Winter by Jay Meek Over first coffee, I ride the diner and look out at snow fallen deep in gorges.  At winter stations, a locomotive can freeze to the rails, and a mountain night turn so cold it makes the rails snap.  Some trains in heavy snow overtake a moose herd along a roadbed, then sweep a few cows into a ravine, or maybe a bull crossing a trestle will go on through, catching his legs between the ties.  I've seen icebergs melting in a Newfoundland cove, their

The morning is clouded and the birds are hunched, More cold than hungry, more numb than loud, This crisp, Arizona shore, where desert meets The coming edge of the winter world. It is a cold news in stark announcement, The myriad stars making bright the black, As if the sky itself had been snowed upon. But the stars—all those stars, Where does the sure noise of their hard work go? These plugs sparking the motor of an otherwise quiet sky, Their flickering work everywhere in a w

My Love Is Black by DéLana R. A. Dameron You might say fear is a predictable emotion & I might agree. Whenever my husband leaves for his graveyard shift, when he prepares to walk out into the abyss of black sky, I am afraid tonight will be the night I become a widow. I don’t want to love like this. But here we are: walking hand in hand in our parkas down the avenues & he pulls away from me. I might be in some dreamy place, thinking of the roast chicken we just had, the cocon

Be Safe by Laura Cherry . . . for Molly Fisk It’s a renegade blessing, a luckless charm, an impossible command, a petition with one signature, a spangled net of wishes thrown over the precious other, an unwitting revelation: your well-being is needed for my own. The creek rises and the brown water bubbles. The wildfire leaps the road to approach the houses. Someone is shooting in the mall or dragging women from the jogging path. The crowd is drunk and growing angry. Fr

No More Birthdays by Hal Sirowitz Don’t swing the umbrella in the store, Mother said. There are all these glass jars of spaghetti sauce above your head that can fall on you, & you can die. Then you won’t be able to go to tonight’s party, or go to the bowling alley tomorrow. And instead of celebrating your birthday with soda & cake, we’ll have anniversaries of your death with tea & crackers. And your father and i won’t be able to eat spaghetti anymore, because the marinara sa

Let Us Now Praise Prime Numbers by Helen Spalding Let us now praise prime numbers With our fathers who begat us: The power, the peculiar glory of prime numbers Is that nothing begat them, No ancestors, no factors, Adams among the multiplied generations. None can foretell their coming. Among the ordinal numbers They do not reserve their seats, arrive unexpected. Along the lines of cardinals They rise like surprising pontiffs, Each absolute, inscrutable, self-elected. In the b

Bars Fight by Lucy Terry Prince August, twas the twenty-fifth, Seventeen houndred forty-six, The Indians did in ambush lay, Some very valiant men to slay Twas nigh unto Sam Dickinson's mill, The Indians there five men did kill. The names of whom I'll not leave out, Samuel Allen like a hero foute, And though he was so brave and bold, His face no more shall we behold. Eleazer Hawks was killed outright, Before he had time to fight, Before he did the Indians see, Was shot and ki

Duplex by Jericho Brown A poem is a gesture toward home. 
It makes dark demands I call my own.                Memory makes demands darker than my own:
               My last love drove a burgundy car. My first love drove a burgundy car.
 He was fast and awful, tall as my father.                Steadfast and awful, my tall father
              Hit hard as a hailstorm. He’d leave marks. Light rain hits easy but leaves its own mark 
Like the sound of a mother weeping ag

The Carousel by G.C. Oden I turned from side to side, from image to image to put you down.—Louise Bogan An empty carousel in a deserted park rides me round and round, ’forth and back, from end to beginning, like the tail that drives the dog. I cannot see: sight focusses shadow where once pleased scenery, and in this whirl of space only the indefinite is constant. This is the way of grief: spinning in the rhythm of memories that will not let you up or down, but keeps you grin

In the Dream by Natalie Korman Everything seems whole and completely formed. Like a Hollywood movie, you don’t know what they leave out. It looks like it’s all there on the screen. Charismatic performers, fire, time travel, celebrity, humiliation, glory. Some of them are classics: I have to take a test I have not studied for.  Or the house I grew up in has been bulldozed. The dead visit me with notable frequency. Sometimes I am in control and mostly I am not. I am naked and

Etymological Dirge  by Heather McHugh           'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear.   Calm comes from burning. Tall comes from fast. Comely doesn't come from come. Person comes from mask.   The kin of charity is whore, the root of charity is dear. Incentive has its source in song and winning in the sufferer.   Afford yourself what you can carry out. A coward and a coda share a word. We get our ugliness from fear. We get our danger from the lord. I cannot believe that

November by Jun Fujita On a pale sandhill A bare tree stands; The death-wind Has snatched the last few leaves. A Leaf by Jun Fujita The November sky without a star Droops low over the midnight street; On the pale pavement, cautiously A leaf moves. These poems appeared in the June 1921 issue of Poetry . From the Academy of American Poets: " The tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of  waka , Japanese song or verse, tank

Lessons by Pat Schneider I have learned that life goes on, or doesn't. That days are measured out in tiny increments as a woman in a kitchen measures teaspoons of cinnamon, vanilla, or half a cup of sugar into a bowl. I have learned
 that moments are as precious as nutmeg,
 and it has occurred to me 
that busy interruptions 
are like tiny grain moths, 
or mice.
 They nibble, pee, and poop,
 or make their little worms and webs 
until you have to throw out the good stuff 
with

Harlan County, USA (2019) by Pauletta Hansel Maybe it is a revelation to you, but miners know how to stop a train. Maybe you think that love of coal means love of the company. Let me tell you what we love about coal. It’s the paycheck. The one we don’t have. It’s the food that’s not on the table, the new backpack that won’t be on his back, my boy’s first day of school. The doctor his granny won’t be seeing for her heart. Remember, we’re used to the dark. We can see inside yo