Poems

Numbers by Mary Cornish I like the generosity of numbers. The way, for example, they are willing to count anything or anyone: two pickles, one door to the room, eight dancers dressed as swans. I like the domesticity of addition— add two cups of milk and stir— the sense of plenty: six plums on the ground, three more falling from the tree. And multiplication’s school of fish times fish, whose silver bodies breed beneath the shadow of a boat. Even subtraction is never loss, jus

Imagine This by Freya Manfred When you’re young, and in good health, you can imagine living in New York City, or Nepal, or in a tree beyond the moon, and who knows who you’ll marry: a millionaire, a monkey, a sea captain, a clown. But the best imaginers are the old and wounded, who swim through ever narrowing choices, dedicating their hearts to peace, a stray cat, a bowl of homemade vegetable soup, or red Mountain Ash berries in the snow. Imagine this: only one leg and lucky

Although the Wind by Izumi Shikibu, translated by Jane Hirshfield Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house. This poem is, of course, untitled in its original form; traditional Japanese poetry is not titled. And this poet is the epitome of traditional--she was born about 974 and died (we believe) in 1034, and she is considered to be one of the greatest poets of her era. This poem is somewhat unusual for Shiki

The Arid Land by Rollie Lynn Riggs There will be willows plunging Their bloodless roots in air And the hard crooked flying Of buzzards circled there. About the treeless wastes No sand may ever heap With water, nothing will run And nothing creep. Arid, desolate, defiant Under its iron band Of sky, we yet may love This so sunny land. I took the photo above in November, 2022, outside of Nashville, Tennessee, on one of my many cross-country drives. This is a black vulture (we us

So Much Happiness by Naomi Shihab Nye It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against,
 a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
 When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
 something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change. But happiness floats.
 It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
 It doesn’t need anything.
 Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
 and disappears when i

Prayer for those who run by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha I wish you swift wind. I wish you a changed phone number that stays changed. I wish you throwing away the cell the parents bought to track you with. I wish you the Greyhound, PATH train, whatever transit you're waiting for coming on time and taking you away express with no stops. I wish you a city with affordable housing. An apartment where you smear blood above the door so their angel of death will pass you by. I

Visitation by Mark Doty When I heard he had entered the harbor, and circled the wharf for days, I expected the worst: shallow water, confusion, some accident to bring the young humpback to grief. Don't they depend on a compass lodged in the salt-flooded folds of the brain, some delicate musical mechanism to navigate their true course? How many ways, in our century's late iron hours, might we have led him to disaster? That, in those days, was how I'd come to see the world: da

Tuesday by Gwen Benaway the hard point, estrogen high tide- when the patch releases the most of what makes me a girl. breasts ache, swell with change as my emotions descend in currents to a dark heart at the lake bottom. float on driftwood, grip this life like an anchor as I drift further from the shore I call myself. there is no hope in the deep water, no dream lifts under me, just bracken, plastic litter. I survive because I know how to swim, I survive because I kn

Advice from a Raindrop by Kim Stafford You think you’re too small to make a difference? Tell me about it. You think you’re helpless, at the mercy of forces beyond your control? Been there. Think you’re doomed to disappear, just one small voice among millions? That’s no weakness, trust me. That’s your wild card, your trick, your implement. They won’t see you coming until you’re there, in their faces, shining, festive, expendable, eternal. Sure you’re small, just one small par

Epitaph on a Tyrant by W.H. Auden Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. Lots of folks are turning to, and sharing, Shelley's "Ozymandias" these days--the famous poem of a king who has had built a colossal s

The Portrait by Stanley Kunitz My mother never forgave my father for killing himself, especially at such an awkward time and in a public park, that spring when I was waiting to be born. She locked his name in her deepest cabinet and would not let him out, though I could hear him thumping. When I came down from the attic with the pastel portrait in my hand of a long-lipped stranger with a brave moustache and deep brown level eyes, she ripped it into shreds without a single wo

Nothing Wants to Suffer by Danusha Laméris after Linda Hogan Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it. The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust. The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey. These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth to tak

Disturbing the Seasons by Ann Shaffer My mother isn't dead yet, and sometimes I think of her that way-- my mother, who has yet to die. She calls from where she lives, says she's fine, and I believe her. My voice travels a long way back to her, out of this city, west through a dozen counties, across the river. I think of how ordinary her death will be. My grief, as common as dirt. When we say good-bye, I go back to the garden and get down on my knees. I should gather amulets

Mother, Washing Dishes by Susan Meyers She rarely made us do it— we’d clear the table instead—so my sister and I teased that some day we’d train our children right and not end up like her, after every meal stuck with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring. The one chore she spared us: gummy plates in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas, globs of egg and gravy. Or did she guard her place at the window? Not wanting to give up

The Problem with Early Warnings by Charles Rafferty People don’t like to leave a party unless the house is actually on fire. Even then, if the flames are far enough away to be pretty, they’ll finish their drink, take one more pass at the hors d’oeuvres. How things happen has always been unclear. Hurricanes begin in a place where no one lives. Agents of the government start to wear masks. Fascism is a word my neighbors won’t use yet. They are following the law, they say, and

After the Removal of 30 Types of Plants and Animals from the Junior Dictionary by Rose Mclarney Acorn no more. Blackberry blanked out. Cheetah cast off. But if no acorn, because the young will use language for nature less, by that logic, no arousal, brief surge of blood that cannot continue but lets lives be conceived. If no bluebell because flowers are fleeting, no beauty to begin with for these bodies which wither. If no cygnet, the downy being preceding permanent feathers

In the Library by Charles Simic There’s a book called A Dictionary of Angels. No one had opened it in fifty years, I know, because when I did, The covers creaked, the pages Crumbled. There I discovered The angels were once as plentiful As species of flies. The sky at dusk Used to be thick with them. You had to wave both arms Just to keep them away. Now the sun is shining Through the tall windows. The library is a quiet place. Angels and gods huddled In dark unopened books. T

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