Poems

After the Explosion by Laurel Blossom All the water mains burst Forth, singing The rats ran Everywhere, squealing in Rhyme, and the cockroaches Tweeted to their neighbors while Heaven turned itself into Hell on Earth. From where the sky had been Each star bored into the ground like an X-ray so that the Ploughed fields were pockmarked with Lozenges of lead, none could smell the Ozone that sparked from electrical Systems gone haywire, while In the meantime, the purple pot stoo

That the Science of Cartography Is Limited by Eavan Boland --and not simply by the fact that this shading of forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam, the gloom of cypresses, is what I wish to prove. When you and I were first in love we drove to the borders of Connacht and entered a wood there. Look down you said: this was once a famine road. I looked down at ivy and the scutch grass rough-cast stone had disappeared into as you told me in the second winter of their ordeal,

God of Neighbors, and Sex by Esther Cohen DEAR GOD Of neighbors Who fall in love with one another There’s something sexy In a high school way About neighbors. Maybe That’s why I’ve heard This story l,000 times. Martha told it today. When we were all In the post office. Famous artist man With a wife and five sons Every single son A drummer Not even one Bass guitarist He fell in love With his directly across the street Neighbor Married choreographer Two children of her own The

Another Old Bird Flies Across the River by K.R. Segriff Doris of the frozen roast hurled at the son-of-a-bitch in the produce aisle who talked shit about Gramps. Doris of the palm-tree nails creeping across her buried spine, as she recalls the sensation of touching bone. Doris of the chartreuse bedroom painted a shade Gramps despised while he was off in Verdum with god-knows-who. Doris of the late August veranda, sizzling her skin so dark all the old hens whispered into thei

We're Not Farmers by Diana Park We've been starving for so long. Our voices echo in our bellies, our throats vibrate. We've milked the cow, then sold it. One by one you behead the chickens. I put them in soup so the food will last. What's left are a few hens and one cock. You take the eggs away. To forget, we sleep. Putting o

Waiting on Elvis, 1956 by Joyce Carol Oates This place up in Charlotte called Chuck's where I used to waitress and who came in one night but Elvis and some of his friends before his concert at the Arena, I was twenty-six married but still waiting tables and we got to joking around like you do, and he was fingering the lace edge of my slip where it showed below my hemline and I hadn't even seen it and I slapped at him a little saying, You sure are one aren't you feeling my fa

1999 by A. Van Jordan Prince tour, Public Hall, November 21, 1982 By the time I got here, the album was already history. 1999 dropped in 1982, when I worried about what I’d do with my life after high school, and as I fretted over 
 how my hair looked on mornings 
before I left for school; though, sadly, my worries were not in that order. 
 But when I faced the end of the century, 
 I realized I knew little more then than I did when

Walking with Jesus by Barbara Crooker in the Blue Ridge Mountains, eating corn fritters and okra, passing the black-eyed peas. He loves redbirds and kudzu, all that green tenaciousness. He’s not so much of a fan of men in white sheets, gun racks, the Stars and Bars, but he’s Jesus, so he loves them anyway. The gospel of football eludes him, but he sure likes to tailgate. He tells me that all the commandments are really about sitting with your neighbors on a wide front porch,

I Am Learning to Abandon the World by Linda Pastan I am learning to abandon the world before it can abandon me. Already I have given up the moon and snow, closing my shades against the claims of white. And the world has taken my father, my friends. I have given up melodic lines of hills, moving to a flat, tuneless landscape. And every night I give my body up limb by limb, working upwards across bone, towards the heart. But morning comes with small reprieves of coffee and bir

Ode to a Drone by Amit Majmudar Hell-raiser, razor-feathered risers, windhover over Peshawar, power's joystick-blithe thousand-mile scythe, proxy executioner's proxy ax pinged by a proxy server, winged victory, pilot cipher unburdened by aught but fuel and bombs, fool of God, savage idiot savant sucking your benumbed trigger-finger gamer's thumb Today's blog poem was first published in the book, Dothead , published in 2016 by Knopf Doubleday. You can also read it again here

Things on Fire by Fatima Van Hattum A flat, so small, the stove was also the counter, the rice cooking on the back burner and the cutting board, balanced on the front, red peppers sliced thin one time, I turned my back for a minute to finish the climax to a story, you yelled the cutting board was on fire the door to the shower hit against the toilet and
 you had to turn sideways to get in 
the bathroom was through our bedroom 
I hid under the covers in the morning so your br

ABC by Robert Pinsky Any body can die, evidently. Few Go happily, irradiating joy, Knowledge, love. Many Need oblivion, painkillers, Quickest respite. Sweet time unafflicted, Various world: X=your zenith. This poem was first published in 1999, in The New York Review of Books . Click here to read it there and definitely look around--they publish lots of great poetry and review more books than any of us could possibly ever read. I love reading well-written reviews, and this s

To Live in the Zombie Apocalypse by Burlee Vang The moon will shine for God knows how long. As if it still matters. As if someone is trying to recall a dream. Believe the brain is a cage of light & rage. When it shuts off, something else switches on. There’s no better reason than now to lock the doors, the windows. Turn off the sprinklers & porch light. Save the books for fire. In darkness, we learn to read what moves along the horizon, across the periphery of a gun scope—

Song: Let Us Go Back by Vita Sackville-West Let us go back together to the hills. Weary am I of palaces and courts, Weary of words disloyal to my thoughts,— Come, my belovèd, let us to the hills. Let us go back together to the land, And wander hand in hand upon the heights; Kings have we seen, and manifold delights,— Oh, my beloved, let us to the land! Lone and unshackled, let us to the road Which holds enchantment round each hidden bend, Our course uncompassed and our

Cherry Blossoms by Toi Derricotte I went down to mingle my breath with the breath of the cherry blossoms. There were photographers: Mothers arranging their children against gnarled old trees; a couple, hugging, asks a passerby to snap them like that, so that their love will always be caught between two friendships: ours & the friendship of the cherry trees. Oh Cherry, why can’t my poems be as beautiful? A young woman in a fur-trimmed coat sets a card table with linens, candl

Leave It All Up to Me by Major Jackson All we want is to succumb to a single kiss that will contain us like a marathon with no finish line, and if so, that we land like newspapers before sunrise, halcyon mornings like blue martinis. I am learning the steps to a foreign song: her mind was torpedo, and her body was storm, a kind of Wow . All we want is a metropolis of Sundays, an empire of hand-holding and park benches. She says, "Leave it all up to me." This poem appeared in

I Stop Writing the Poem by Tess Gallagher to fold the clothes. No matter who lives or who dies, I’m still a woman. I’ll always have plenty to do. I bring the arms of his shirt together. Nothing can stop our tenderness. I’ll get back to the poem. I’ll get back to being a woman. But for now there’s a shirt, a giant shirt in my hands, and somewhere a small girl standing next to her mother watching to see how it’s done. This poem originally appeared in Poetry East , Issue

Fire and Ice By Robert Frost Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. This is one of Frost’s most famous poems and a favorite for people who need (or want) to memorize a poem. I do not have much to say about this one, except that the weird rhyme scheme works: ABAABCB

Little Song for Kimberly by Alison Pelegrin Child, don’t bother tracking down your kin. Keep Out. Police line—can’t come in. Though I guess You’ll wonder why you’re mean like a Marine, Where you got them smarts. Blame it on us— Olympic liars, a.k.a. your mama’s side. We never knew there was a you, I swear. And once we did, Amanda said you died, Sent us hunting for your cremains everywhere. The ones who have you now can’t be so bad. I bet you never toddle in the dirt With a f

Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives. I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats, And in the ruined trenches, lashed