Poems

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

Dancing with Poets by Ellen Bryant Voight "The accident" is what he calls the time he threw himself from a window four floors up, breaking his back and both ankles, so that walking became the direst labor for this man who takes my hand, invites me to the empty strip of floor that fronts the instruments, a length of polished wood the shape of a grave. Unsuited for this world-- his body bears the marks of it, his hand is tense with effort and with shame, and I shy away from an

Autumn Leaves by Marilyn Chin The dead piled up, thick, fragrant, on the fire escape. My mother ordered me again, and again, to sweep it clean. All that blooms must fall. I learned this not from the Tao,     but from high school biology. Oh, the contradictions of having a broom and not a dustpan! I swept the leaves down, down through the iron grille and let the dead rain over the Wong family’s patio. And it was Achilles Wong who completed the task.     We called her:...

Invocation by Helene Johnson Let me be buried in the rain In a deep, dripping wood, Under the warm wet breast of Earth Where once a gnarled tree stood. And paint a picture on my tomb With dirt and a piece of bough Of a girl and a boy beneath a round, ripe moon Eating of love with an eager spoon And vowing an eager vow. And do not keep my plot mowed smooth And clean as a spinster’s bed, But let the weed, the flower, the tree, Riotous, rampant, wild, and free, Grow high among

Boots by Rudyard Kipling We're foot—slog—slog—slog—sloggin' over Africa Foot—foot—foot—foot—sloggin' over Africa -- (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!) There's no discharge in the war! Seven—six—eleven—five—nine-an'-twenty mile to-day Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty-two the day before -- (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!) There's no discharge in the war! Don't—don't—don't—don't—look at what's in front of you. (Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up a

My Papa's Waltz by Theordore Roethke The whiskey on your breath    Could make a small boy dizzy;    But I hung on like death:    Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans    Slid from the kitchen shelf;    My mother’s countenance    Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist    Was battered on one knuckle;    At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head    With a palm caked hard by dirt,    Then waltzed me off to bed 

A Word on Statistics by Wislawa Szymborska, Translated by Joanna Trzeciak Out of every hundred people those who always know better: fifty-two. Unsure of every step: almost all the rest. Ready to help, if it doesn't take long: forty-nine. Always good, because they cannot be otherwise: four—well, maybe five. Able to admire without envy: eighteen. Led to error by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus. Those not to be messed with: forty and four. Living in constant fear of

Motor Lodge             by John Drury   “So this is it, experience,” I thought, lugging tin buckets from the ice machines to rooms of real adults with cigarettes, mixed drinks in plastic cups, and proffered coins.   I reached out for their blessings, but the tips were nothing next to rumpled, unmade beds at four in the afternoon, women in slips and men in t-shirts while the TV played.   Down in the laundry room, I counted sheets, stunned by the musk that vanished in the wash,