Poems

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

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