http://www.poems.com en-us Poetry Daily, the online web anthology and bookstore. A new poem every day, along with poetry news, archives, and more. en-us Marianne Boruch http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15850 All vision is / peripheral: sideways, under an eave / the young husband / on his cell to his wife, talking, smoking, / not talking, no longer waiting / to tell the strange part, / the funny part, not in that order. / Peripheral: loss of detail, / you kept telling me, and color, / except what shifts, what... Pimone Triplett http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15849 we are not asked to see, the ridged folds / of the black walnuts, fallen, come veined / as any mind split from its skull, leaching / what little parades as peace. Rot / and wet. My right instep, sneaker's / underneath, crushes a once greener skin / gone brackish at the cap. Looking up, / the... Brian Teare http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15848 I gather the rain /   / in both noun / & verb. The way /   / the river banks / its flood, floods / its banks, quiver's /   / grammar I carry /   / noiseless, easy / over my shoulder. /   / To aim is—I think / of his mouth. / Wet ripe apple's /   / scent : sugar, /   / leather. To aim / is a shaft tipped /   / with adamant. Angle,... Martha Ronk http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15847 How close it seems, dusty leaves patterning the siding with shadows, / open half-way for air on what must be a summer night, / an eternal return located in its technological reproducibility, / its time repeating, its grasses and the feeling of grass, never simply itself, / but moving forward as walking across it to get to the... Maurice Manning http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15846 If I went I'd go through Shepherdtown / and Burning Springs; I'd cross the stream / some people still call Hogskin Branch / and pass through Treadway just before / the Pinhook Chapel, where I heard / the preacher pulled a pistol and shot / the bell after the rope broke / then called a special collection... Kwame Dawes http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15845 Even here on the south side of this city / of wind and blood, news is good for negroes. / A fat-faced, true African man, one of / those black men you know never / had a doubt that he is a man and strong, / too; one of those magic men / who knows what... Jennifer Atkinson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15844 i>Stratus—stuff and nonsense; /                                            how things tear and frazzle; / A happenstance of riffle and spume; dust and diaspora; in short, the long view. /   / Cirrus—easy come; /      ... Randy Blasing http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15843 When, as you will, you leave me in the dust / someday, remember how I carved a heart / in the ice still whiting out half your rear / window, so when you looked back you'd recall / the heart I lost to you & you had left / behind, as you fought traffic down... Derek Sheffield http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15842 The animal of winter is dying, / its white body everywhere / in collapse and stabbed at / by straws of   light, a leaving / to believe in as the air / slowly fills with darkness / and water drains from the tub / where my daughter, watching it / lower around her, feeling it / go, says about the... William Logan http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15841 The ghost of the nineteenth century / still stalks the eaves / of the hurricane house, its clapboard sheaves / tightened against the fall of mercury. / Or Mercury, perhaps. What messenger / knocked upon the gate / like that furtive blow of '38 / that broke the Horseneck to tinder / and drove the dories up Main... Jonathan Travelstead http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15840 Because he believes we are helpless to fate, / a blindfolded six-year-old Calvin / pushes off the hilltop in his red wagon / as he asks his friend the old question: / Why are we powerless to rush toward oblivion? / Though Hobbes is a tiger / that believes in free will, he knows / also that... James Dickey http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15839 Here comes a noon dream through the eyelids / Bearing out of the sun a deep wood / Where tens, where thousands of small creatures / Are hanged by the neck to await / Their wings. From every hardwood limb, / Let down on invisible threads / As if in sacks, they struggle, contending with / Themselves,... Jane Griffiths http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15838 The night fog's come down. / The known edge of the world unselved, / the white-out against the window / and the radio histing the full / atmospheric scale between stations / comprehensively out of tune. / Someone's talking out there / but the night fog's come down: / a car comes and goes out of nowhere, / lighting... Matthew Thorburn http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15837 A golden scorpion skewered / like a scrawny prawn— / that's something else I said no / thanks to. In the all-night street / market—the streets still shiny / from the evening rain—a guy / flipped yellow-breasted buntings / on a charcoal grill. "Buttery," / an Australian told me, taking / two. "Melts in your mouth." / Also snakes skinned and... Hailey Leithauser http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15836 Some flim-flam grand slam, glitchy / as religion, this is, with its chronic / key-and-padlock, hit-and-missy cerebellum, / its sturm and drangish, bum- / rushed, all-thumbed cockalorum. How near, / to use the fizzle of yet another / wet-squibbed metaphor, the tepid fever spike / of a heart-junked hypochondriac / frothing for a blunted, lovestruck glint of moon,... Joseph Di Prisco http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15835 Rome: such a great city for walking unless / You are hit by a car, as I was tonight, though it was only / A tiny car. The cretino driver had my language progress / In mind as I practiced my idioms and gestures, / Like what they call "holding the umbrella" / (don't ask,... Sidney Wade http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15834 Today is just / like yesterday / except for / a swim / across / the lake / whose water / creeps / me out most / always has / since long ago / when I first / discerned / the rusty / devil's claws / in the shallows / under my / canoe / that seemed / to strain to leap / from the lake / bed up / to drag... Sophie Cabot Black http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15833 How many times I have provided / For your death; the apple turned one way / Then the other, an arrangement made, / The softer ground. To hold your head / As if this mattered, to say what I think / Essential into your ear, / To watch the eye look everywhere to find / What it... April Lindner http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15831 Now vision comes in layers, like a cake. / The iced top layer is for movie screens, / help I've needed since the second grade, / since the first pair, powder blue with rhinestones, / cupped my eyes like Siamese fighting fish, / lazy in their bowls. Those glasses changed / how the world saw me—at... Karen Holmberg http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15830 The male tweezes a bald millet stalk / off the sahara of graveled paper. / The pert watch movements of his head / ignite an ember on each cheek, buff bright / the beak's rose-hip hue. His elderberry eye / subjects this meter cubed of universe / to further scrutiny. The struggles of / a downy filament... Henrik Nordbrandt / translated from the Danish by Patrick Phillips http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15829 I dreamed of a house by the sea, so white / it was no dream. / The summer night was so divinely clear / summer had long since gone. / I saw my love stand in the doorway, / saw her I had forsaken. / I dreamed of a house by the sea, so white, / of... David Yezzi http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15828 Inside a book / I've been meaning to / read forever, I / come across you / decades later / and find again / words you wrote / to calm me when / we were together: / your photo pressed / like an aspen leaf / I guess I missed. / The scribble across / the back, your name— / if more was meant, / it never came. / There were... George Bilgere http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15825 The Duncan Imperial yoyo, /     available in the toy aisles of five & dimes and supermarkets / of the early sixties in perhaps four colors. /     Red. Yellow. Blue, I think. And green. / An elegant gold crown embossed on the face. /     A yoyo fit for a... Katy Didden http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15824 In the year my father died / Yoko Ono built a beam of light / on a grass-covered island / across a narrow field of ocean / from Reykjavik. You should see it— / click this link: see the shape / that started as thoughts of a line / in Yoko's mind. When Yoko told / John her idea... Mark Wagenaar http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15823 It's always our sight that blocks us /                                                    from moving forward through / the prayer labyrinth, always our own prints that keep us / from retreating. In... Elisabeth Murawski http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15822 She follows broken twigs, / matted grasses, outward signs / that point to an altar / dim with gold in a town / cut in two by a river. / She will leave in Burgos, / the last of the Carmels, / a veil, a letter, / an alpargata—her shoe / made of rope and canvas. / Like an aging... Jan Beatty http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15821 my sister is moving in me again / with her long        arms and legs / moving to tell me         she's still here / inside my body          along with fireballs / free-roaming breath        some days she's a tanker truck / magnetic    ... Dannie Abse http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15820 Not Adlestrop, no—besides, the name / hardly matters. Nor did I languish in June heat. / Simply, I stood, too early, on the empty platform, / and the wrong train came in slowly, surprised, stopped. / Directly facing me, from a window, / a very, very pretty girl leaned out. /        ... Anya Silver http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15819 For sixty years, she kept her scrapbook, / this record that bites and scalds my hands. / She took it with her, house to house. / All those delighted revelers, heiling. / And the prized clipping—a visit from Göring / to Ludwigshafen—the sky aswarm with flags. / Each new page a body dragged from hiding. / "Why?"... Will Schutt http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15818 Two doors down lived a descendant of de Sade. /            He rode a vintage Trek in a gingham shirt. / A blue Hamsa strung around his neck /            waved when he waved. The name meant / nearly nil to us, cluelessly humming... Ron Padgett http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15817 Today there's supposed to be a break / in the weather. I sound as if I care / when I sort of don't. / Like weather in diaries—it always sounds / more important than it was: "Low / clouds today. Cold and wet." Or / "No rain again. Six days in a row." / If these were... Sydney Lea http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15816 This riverbend must have always been lovely. / Take the one-lane iron bridge shortcut across / the town's west end and look downstream / to where the water backs up by the falls. / Boys once fished there with butterball bait / because the creamery churned by hydro / and the trout were so rich, says... James Pollock http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15815 When you set out to find your Northwest Passage / and cross to an empty region of the map / with a headlong desire to know what lies beyond, / sailing the thundering ice-fields on the ocean, / feeling her power move you from below; / when all summer the sun's hypnotic eye / won't blink,... Arthur Sze http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15814 Burglars enter an apartment and ransack drawers; / finding neither gold nor cash, they flee, / leaving the laundry and bathroom lights on— / they have fled themselves. I catch the dipping / pitch of a motorcycle, iceberg hues in clouds; / the gravel courtyard's a midnight garden, / as in Japan, raked to resemble ocean waves... Bob Hicok http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15813 Consider how smart / smart people say horses are. / I love waking / to a field of such intelligence, only pigs / more likely to go to MIT, only dew / harboring the thoughts of clouds / upon the grass and baptizing / the cuffs of my pants as I walk / among the odes. Long nose... Eavan Boland http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15812 As dawn breaks he enters / A room with the odor of acid. / He lays the copper plate on the table. / And reaches for the shaft of the burin. / Dublin wakes to horses and rain. / Street hawkers call. / All the news is famine and famine. / The flat graver, the round graver, / The angle tint tool wait for him. / He bends... A. E. Stallings http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15811 Woolgathering afternoon: / All I’ve accomplished, all, / Is to untangle a wine-dark skein / And coil it into a ball. / I did not knit a swatch / For gauge—or cast a stitch— / Or pick a plausible pattern out, / I just unworked one hitch / After another, and went / Brailling along the maze, / Over, under, twist and turn, / To where the ending frays. / It’s always best to... Emma Bolden http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15810 We were knee-deep in packing paper when the cherub's head fell off. The day before we'd driven nine hours. We'd only spoken through three. Now we were in the home we had to make. Thank God, he said. That hideous thing. I know it's hideous, I said, but I loved... Patricia Clark http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15809 Saying the words My father died / for the first time, I felt my face / crumple like a creek bed undermined / by rushing water, the giving way / almost causing a sob to escape / in front of strangers at the airport / ticket counter where gray carpet / matched January skies. I wanted / to... Daniel Hoffman http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15808 It must be easier if one believes / The soul's immortal, and survives someplace, / Say in Heaven, where it keeps its face / And to such singularity each cleaves, / Or, as in childhood, when I used to think / That souls were points of light in the Milky Way, / Casting their sight on... Charles Bernstein http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15807 The rich men, they know about suffering / That comes from natural things, the fate that / Rich men say they can't control, the swell of / The tides, the erosion of polar caps / And the eruption of a terrible / Greed among those who cease to be content / With what they lack when... Sarah White http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15806 opens with a prayer / in prose. I rise: "Hello, / I'm Sarah, and ... / I'm a poet." / Hello, Sarah. / "I had an anniversary— / six months without a line." / Applause. "But you know / how it goes— /                     I wrote a verse / about an adolescent / girl... Kelly Cherry http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15805 A shore of washed stones / A sky the color of stone / A stone cliff / Stony face, stony heart / There is nothing here, / Twisted roots, sea taking the land / Back. Sea wrack / And rain. /                      There is nothing / Here between us... Kevin Stein http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15804 That a cardinal's bright dart alights upon the branch / means Non cogito, ergo sum— / I don't think, therefore I am. / But that's not Mandarin! / Still the tree's petal-fall dusts us angelic, / our arms feathered wings. / A fool's errand, this search for meaning, / metaphor the bed we lie and awaken in.... Peter Balakian http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15803 I drove in snow to Clinton. / My car slid into a field of stubble. / Cows appeared and disappeared in drifts / the color of your Dacca gauzes, which were / next to nothing; for you—they were all summer, / where the sun came like hammered gold on a broken dome. / You wrapped a... Andrea Hollander http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15802 What we don't know we don't know, / so accept it. If your mother wandered / when your father was stationed in France / during the war before you were born, / before you were even conceived, so be it. / No matter what her sister told you / years later, after your mother died, / what... Melcion Mateu / translated from the Catalan by Rowan Ricardo Phillips http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15801 You and I, when we sleep, we're like whales / because fish swim out of my mouth / and you dishevel the seaweed. / We hear the scent of seashells, the oranges of Sóller: / drifting, taken; / without earth that belongs to us belonging to the Earth. / Two Moroccans inhale glue / and the vapor... A. Van Jordan http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15800 Buster Keaton's every move strikes / without the sting of pity, just the sweat / of arms swinging hammers and nailing / planks of wood; he builds a scene to astonish / all in awe. There's nothing more physical / than a man in love, but jealousy / renders me still: The story opens / with him... Nance Van Winckel http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15799 With a wing cocked towards a lit lamp, /             he can change the night's mood. /                          Change its course, too. Maestro, / do you never tire, as I do, /         ... Carl Phillips http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15797 After agony had left his body to find another, / or in search of no one, just agony on its / own for once, merely cruising, / something stayed, like /                                  a precipitate—grief, maybe, / that's what they... Averill Curdy http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15796 Never the bark and abalone mask / Cracked by storms of a mastering god, / Never the gods' favored glamour, never / The pelagic messenger bearing orchards / In its beak, never allegory, not wisdom / Or valor or cunning, much less hunger / Demanding vigilance, industry, invention, / Or the instinct to claim some small rise... Ryan Dennis http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15795 He limps into the barn / with intentions among suggestions. / He leans on his cane in the same angle / the earth tilts, / and it's a lesson in resignation. / He lets us know if someone has sold out, / and the price of milk next month. / We send our bull calves in on... Stephen Burt http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15794 A real one wouldn't need one, / but the one Nathan draws surely does: / four oblongs the size and color of popsicles, / green apple, toasted coconut and grape, / flanked, two per side, by billowing valentine hearts, / in a frame of Scotch tape. / Alive, it could stay off the floor / for a... Gary J. Whitehead http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15793 Sometime soon after the embers cooled, / after dust clouds settled, after the last strings / of smoke, hoisted by desert breezes, cleared the air, / they must have come, people of those three cities / remaining, to pick among the charred bones, / the rubble of what was once temple and house, / stable and... Rachel Jamison Webster http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15791 We’ve come back to the site of   her / conception. She calls it why / and cries all night, / sleepless, wild. / It seems the way is always / floating and the goal — / to live so the ghosts we were / don’t trail us and echo. / I think we are inside a flower, / under a pollen of stars vast as... Jacquelyn Pope http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15790 You've made your bed they said / now you must lie in it lean / down the length of it sink / through the half of it mind you find / rest in it now that you've settled it / stop finding fault with it thread / after thread / Now that you've / made it you'll mark... George Szirtes http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15788 He struggles into his borrowed human skin, / The one he wears for special occasions / With the sewn-in dinner jacket and polished patent feet. / He brushes off earth and other traces of night, / Smells the renmant darkness on his sleeve, / Bends back the fingers that constitute his living, / And picks up... Gary Fincke http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15787 After I failed calculus, my father, / A maintenance man, asked me if I knew / The story of how janitors were hired / In Alamogordo, New Mexico, / Whether the name of that town meant something / Or if I'd stopped thinking altogether / About anything but my present self. / "F," he hurled, "is your... Reginald Dwayne Betts http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15786 There are men awed / by blood, lost in the black / of all that is awful: / think crack and aluminum. Odd / what time steals, / or steals time: black robes, awful / nights when men offed in streets awed / us. Dead bodies sold news; real / hustlers bled. The Post a reel / for Rayful:... Laura Kasischke http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15785 We can talk to one another on telephones / in banks, in cars, in line. No more / sitting on the floor / attached to a cord / while everybody listens. / No more / standing outside the booth / in the cold, fingering / an adulterous dime. We / send each other mail without stamps. / Watch television without... Albert Goldbarth http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15784 Nefertiti means "The Beautiful One Has Come" / and this rendition of her was sculpted out of limestone / in the workshop of Thutmose / about 1340 BC / and having survived the subsequent era's / destruction of most of the other sculptural references to her / —essentially, the destruction of her sisters— / she was excavated... Jennifer Boyden http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15782 When the person with the loupe was assigned / to our town, we asked what we could expect / from whatever happens next, but the person / with the loupe wasn't ready to say, so we walked / the sidewalks home, swept the stairs of our entries, / and waited. /        ... Chris Dombrowski http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15781 Up the cutbank of a creek named after stone, / striking stone, I came walking, my fingers / stained with the pulp of raspberries picked / from branches arched over descending snowmelt / beneath two clouds and blue sky no one / built. Napped between that extravagant / quilt and sunwarmed sand until the taut line... Paul Muldoon http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15780 I want to be the transport ship / From which we both lift off / I want to be the cartridge clip / In your Kalashnikov / I want to play war games in which / We get to use live rounds / And though you've left me for dead in a ditch / At least you've... Nuala Ní Chonchúir http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15779 whose rolling eye is as loving as a mother's. / I go to her stall to breathe straw and dung, / to place cornmeal bread and potato scraps / between her lips, feel her spit drip onto my palms. / I place my cheek on her flank, warm with grass, / and hear her four... Daisy Fried http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15778      1 / Kissinger in black-tie shuffles to the town car / idling at the museum complex edge / between where the glum Pei pyramid rises / and the gardens begin. "Is that—" I say, / and "Yes," says Jim, baby in his arms, / me shoving the empty stroller to get home / by... Amy Beeder http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15777 They came for land. For hog-high wheat to Dixon, Weeping /          Water, Garland Falls; / came to Midland hamlets, made their farms from bogs & marshes, / fens & bottomland: immigrants from Krakow, Darkov, Lasko /   / who fled famine, coming wars or the Eastern factories, left / city rivers thick... L. Lamar Wilson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15776 In one field, husks, muscadine vines & a sugarcane graveyard furrow acres aching for the devil to beat his wife. In another, a skein of maggots & mayflies, musk thick & resolute, jockey for the cow's afterbirth. Down Old U.S. Road, weevils wheeze & chafed bales of hay settle for... R. T. Smith http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15775 At Memory Hill to spread lilies on daddy's grave, / we strolled in a stiff wind while Mama declaimed / about the politicians, Rebel boys, asylum inmates / and slaves interred hither and yon amid the cypress / glades. The shady slope makes a perfect sanctum / for a body to rest when its spirit... Brad Leithauser http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15774 Meandering Neandertals / keep bumping up against / the glacier's high, invasive walls, / whose blackened snout / comes down to eat / the ground underneath their feet. / Which is the way now? / What else but hunched despair's / narrowing valleys, this gathering / feeling of everything / constricting? /                ... Arthur Smith http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15773 He walks into a thin morning / Of mist over the low / Appalachians—and already / A wheat-feathered sparrow / In the wheelwell of his car, / After bug-nuggets, seeds, / Whatnots / In tread and mud, the little / They live on, and where / In the deadend of winter / They find it. Someone's friend / Is being slid... Mark Irwin http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15772 The hummingbird hovers over bougainvillea, darting in and out / of blossoms as the bride throws / her corset among laughter and waving hands. Seeing you, glass in hand, sunlight / piercing the punch bowl's crystal, I remember / the horse, an Appaloosa, the white and grey markings / like clouds, cumulus, one / later on his... Jessica Garratt http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15771 A new "department." A gray hive /          of furniture, public paper-clips, warm / copiers and elevator shafts, paths beaten /          into the linoleum by strangers / who forget they are strangers /          to some. I haven't even arrived / but I... Stephen Kuusisto http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15770 They will be gone by now, the blind lottery sellers of Athens, swept from the streets in time for the Olympics. Even the Greek businessmen sipping coffee in the streetside cafés find these old men selling paper tickets to be embarrassing, a reminder of the Middle Ages or worse: they... Robin Robertson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15769 These rooms of wood, of tongue-and-groove, open out / on a garden of white-washed walls and a maple tree, / a new Spring bright among the weathered stone and brick. / We find things that are old and used, well-made, well worn / and beautiful because of this. The balance / intimate between that glass... Camille Rankine http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15768 So the free may remain free /      say the nightmare is /      the dream / so we are preserved /      he who believes takes a life / so a life may be saved /      the girl becomes an object / so the greatest devastation occurs... Lauren Shapiro http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15767 At the age of ten you will be allowed / in the deep end. 52 inches will get you / on Thunder Mountain. You must be thirteen / with perfect vision to ride all-terrain vehicles. / Please, no unsupervised children. No idiots. / No mentally deranged wantons. We do allow / two siblings for the price... Jack Ridl http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15766 This week the letter from my mother / is a half-page long, the handwriting / shaking its way across the paper. / She was proud of her penmanship. / Each loop had been perfect, each / word aligned with the next, each T / crossed as if she used a level. / It was her elegance, a... Rae Armantrout http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15765 A woman writes to ask / how far along I am / with my apocalypse. / What will you give me / if I tell? / An origami fish / made from a dollar bill. / After the apocalypse, / we will all be in a band. / We will understand each other / perfectly. /        ... Sarah Arvio http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15764 *oh hell* / there are still the bad dreams I have to say / a dram in the thought of a bad bad night / a bad potion potent with impotence / & pain that dream in which you say I / am ruined with you I am no more & / the taxi leaves me standing... Lisa Russ Spaar http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15763 What is mysterious about loss, / flush of arm pulled from a wilted sleeve, / summer’s urine-tang in autumn leaves? / Let   John Keats light another fag. / Or Brontë refuse the doctor / on her black sateen settee. / For whatever part of   you / may be taken away, you said, / is the scar I will visit first / with my mouth, each time,... Charles Harper Webb http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15762 When, as our line of divers squeezed /             and twisted through the Catalina kelp, / I glanced back and my new wife was gone, /             I gasped as if a Great White / had sliced into me. On every side,... Philip Schultz http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15761 A measurement of time / in which dogs live / without regret / or desire to enhance / their reputation / and personal worth. / An idea designed / to shelter contentment / and regulate fretfulness. / A request for calm / and further reflection. / A pause or hesitation / used as a defense / against a horrid memory / or fear of... Lynn Melnick http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15760 It used to be that I was the prize / for stalking shadows, for keeping your trap shut. / I'd paint a corner to set myself in, / round that corner, smash a corner to see / what sprung up next. When I knew you loved me / you let me stay the night. / If... Ron Smith http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15759 div style="text-align:center"> / “Yuck,” you heave in front of that sick boy / with the gray face. “Bacchus, my ass,” you say. / “Caravaggio’s,” I say. And so you smile, / grimly. And, larger, floating / in blacker, emptier spaces, the head / of Goliath, his adolescent killer delicately disgusted / by what we know, what they knew / who paid for it, is the artist’s... Jacob Polley http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15758 What walls and gables, wonders still of workmanship. / Whoever's stronghold this was, havoc's jumbled it / beyond all mending, uprooting towers, rusting together tools. / What was built by strange smiths, skilled in stone, / is burst, underdug, eaten down by age: weird bricks / litter this wasteground. And what of the wrights / and... Lawrence Raab http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15757 span style="font-size:130%">1 / On the radio a choir was singing / "I want to be a crocus" / in a mournful British accent. / One of the three men who wasn't me / expressed disapproval. He seemed to know / the composer's work, may in fact have had / some personal connection, which couldn't / have been a happy... Natania Rosenfeld http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15756 I. / "Peace," says the soprano, / retired to the sea, "is this tide / licking the stilts of my house." / Her toe strokes the rug, / she flicks an ash, goes early / to bed with a glass of gin. / In her closet, a red cloak / keeps Aida's sweat from 1963. / Mornings, she strolls... Ghassan Zaqtan / translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15755 The glory that has been evenly split / among everyone / into medals for the leaders / praise for rank and file / and pictures for the dead / has finished its cycle / and is leaning now / on sandbags so you can roll / and smoke your whole / tobacco pack / before the next war comes David Livewell http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15754 On the front step my Grandpop strained to hear / Harry and Whitey call the Phillies game / from a crackling Philco hung on the wrought iron railing. / He'd grind his teeth and move a toothpick left and right / the way that on-deck players swung at air, / a rhythm to wait for... Sarah Kennedy http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15753 January saying summer, the news / in the USA saying more shopping / will cure our depression, and in withdrawal / on the web I'm reading Gildas the Wise, / the Welsh monk who hated what was coming / of his country. It's the fifth century, / of course, and church-centered, but consider / this: it's called both... Giovanni Pascoli / translated from the Italian by Taije Silverman and Marina Della Putta Johnston http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15752 Hide every distant thing, / you wan impalpable fog, / you smoke still tendrilling /            into dawn / from the crumbled landslides of air /            and night lightning. / Hide every distant thing / from me. Hide the dead. / That I might see only this... Anne Stevenson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15751 The tiny wren perched on your hand / could be a key. Then / somewhere should be the door / that with a bird-shaped key-hole / cut by wind into stiff sand / must fit that needle beak and pinhead eye, / that tail's armed signal to the clamped wings, / Fly! Spring the lock! Lift the... Mary Szybist http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15750 I spent a long time falling / toward your slender, tremulous face— / a long time slipping through stars / as they shattered, through sticky clouds / with no confetti in them. / I fell toward earth's stony colors / until they brightened, until I could see / the green and white stripes of party umbrellas / propped on... Carl Dennis http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15749 I'd cut the prologue, where God agrees / To let his opponent, Satan, / Torment our hero merely to prove / What omniscience must know already: / That Job's devotion isn't dependent / On his prosperity. And how foolish of God / If he supposes that Satan, once proven wrong, / Will agree to forego his spite... Oni Buchanan http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15748 It was clear she had carefully considered / which jagged rock / from the pile of rocks provided / for the purpose. Her pitching arm was / winding up. I glanced aside / and saw a school of silvery fish / bank left and right around some / monolithic coral growth, around / a sunken hull of ship.... Eric Pankey http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15747 On the lightning-struck pin oak, / On the swayed spine of the Blue Ridge, /                                                       a little gold leaf. / Once I drank with a vengeance.... Melanie McCabe http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15746 Strung with whistle bones, frail reeds fledged, a bird / can fly or fold in, tuck beneath the wing the skull's / little engine, that tiny grist, that whit of will. / This is the secret kept in the crook of the limbs: / what claims flight must first be hollowed, must / whittle to a... Robert Hershon http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15745 At Uncle Li's / Golden Lotus New / Peking Tea Cup / I order pork egg foo yung / my father's favorite / fake Chinese food / and I eat it with a fork / off a chipped / blue and white plate / Then I light a Chesterfield / and go off to / register Republican / Save me William Logan http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15743 Tentative, greedy, by night they came, / drawn to the insects drawn to the light. / Their shadow organs pulsed / beneath bellies distended as Falstaff's, / backs a tarnished armor studded / by the rosettes of some obscure disease. / What of their victims, the cannon fodder, / Welsh soldiery thrown each night / against the muzzle... Jill Osier http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15742 They stand scattered and not / facing each other. Like black-eyed / susans lining the highway, or sisters / angry in some small kitchen. / The goats traipse a diagonal / through knee-high meadow, / following head to tail. Then / one decides to feed. Suddenly / they are strangers. / But how elegant these animals / seem after your... Sinéad Morrissey http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15741 In woods and lakes, car boots, freezers, huts, / in ministers' apartments where their flailing last / went on too long, garrotted, poisoned, hanged / or sliced in half and lain like Solomon's child / on the bridge of a border between two countries— / the myriad murdered dead of Scandinavia / are seeping their slow corrosion... Dennis Hinrichsen http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15740 I keep a little Lear in my back / jeans pocket / a little sorrow / like a doll or jackknife / to slice away at storms / the tumbling skulls of hail / those bitter dice / or at those little winds that keep coming / out of the grass / with their seeds of silver / and... Nick Norwood http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15739 Lost in the woods with an air rifle, / a boy supposed to be after birds, / amazed by vines and wintering trees, / resigned, I fired my chambered pellet / into limbs to ricochet in air / and a red-tail lifted off its perch, / rose in dreamlike silence, muscled breast / angling up, flexing, as... Catharine Savage Brosman http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15738 Having seared the sky, the sun—a brazier— / smolders through the crumbling clouds / upriver; to the east, rich mounds of smoky / vapors, signifying rain tomorrow, drift on. / Five white birds rise suddenly, fanned out, / flushing from a maze of roofs and gardens / well below my windows, topping mushroom- / rounded oak trees and the... Karin Gottshall http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15737 I remember, before the snow started, / thinking I wish it would start. The sky darkened / shadow on shadow. The cats, as usual, / slept through the morning. Then snow so heavy that even / my father, who was a kind of Noah—all resolve and solitude, / cabinetry and salt—couldn't have steadied me. I remember—... Geoffrey Nutter http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15736 I awoke as from a dream. And I rose / near dawn, boiled and drank the blood-colored tea / sweetened with berries and wild honey, / and started to compose a lengthy list / of all of the day's necessary tasks: / a visit to the aluminum mills; / a meeting with one Solomon Mighty; / an... Adrian C. Louis http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15735 I was merely on / the cusp of growing / old when I shook / his hand, my enemy's / hand, twelve years / ago & secretly gloated / over its frailty, its liver / spots & now I own / two enemy hands / of my own. / Sometimes now, these / hands of mine stroke / a steel blue dream... Ai http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15734 They'll chew you up / and spit you out, said Mother, / Mother said, but she was dead / before she saw the first red marks, / where the teeth bit deepest. / Praise God she never knew / that it would become patriotic / for quixotic Americans / to turn against their comet of a man / until,... Joseph Campana http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15733 The boys are hungry / the boys are circling / the boys are singing / their anthem in the dark / where there is no shame: / there is not enough / there's never enough. / The road shines tonight / to blind all the stars / and the floor lights up / a storm of painted eyes: / the boys... Molly Minturn http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15732 Open your bedroom window in the heart of winter. / Wrap the wool blanket around you, the one / your brother once used to pin you beneath / for hours, held down by the chesterfield / and an ottoman. You resisted until / you were underwater, your eyes and lungs / filled with light, and you went to sleep / on the carpet. When... Andrew Hudgins http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15730 Two bourbons past the funeral, / we were reading from the thin / old books of the old poet, past old now, / and another old poet fumbled / to his favorite poem. Where was it? / Not this book, but that, and then / he was reading, his voice reverent / and sure, until he caught on a word / like a coat on a... Debora Greger http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15729 I / The clock in the heart of town / missed the courthouse torn down long ago. / The clock suffered itself to be wound, / then told some other time. What was the rush? / The train was late, as always, / the train that no longer ran from ocean to gulf. / Gone were the... Ada Limón http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15728 My own personal map of America on the back of the airplane seat / where the cartoon plane tells you where you’ve been and where / you’re going is, for some reason, in Spanish. So it reads Montes Apalaches. / And I like the way it sounds. But the shape of Nebraska is still the same / despite... Richie Hofmann http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15727 This is the time of day we hear them coming back, / when the first sunlight drops to the field / like an animal being born, slick and shivering / where it falls.  Their hooves grind against the earth, / wheat pounded in a mortar / with a pestle, freed from its husks and impurities. / What wickedness clings to me, it... Paul Lisicky http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15726 That silly retriever. He doesn't go to the two guys looking right at him, beaming him awake with concentrated joy. Not at all: he goes straight to the man with his head turned to the left, who could care less about doggy behavior and isn't the least bit stirred by... Dobby Gibson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15725 Just wait a while and the water will run clear, / like the ordinary morning renewing / its contract without reward, / like the strange shadows shuffling / behind the curtains of the nunnery, / it's no accident if it has a cause. / There are those priestly incantations that seem / to retrace your own steps... Zubair Ahmed http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15724 I found a picture of you / Standing on the roof, / Hands crossed behind your back, / Body facing / The black sky. / It was a hot night. / You talked about your mother's death / Softly, as if she'd hear you / Saying something wrong. / You told me you believed / You were becoming the strokes... Geri Doran http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15723 Here not waterfalls: scrubby plats of gorse and heather / —a few stray dabs of yellow torn / by stinging winds. We've come / cross rutted track and granite stiles, / along the apertures of fields, / "to stare at some inexplicable old stonework"— / nineteen huddled rocks, nineteen obelisks, / a ring of stones in ancient reformation. / Stark... Austin Segrest http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15722 I wake up in the dark with my head knocking / the back window. We're plowing through pasture, / grass whistling and scraping under the car, / so high it's all I see. Everyone's asleep. / Then wham—before I can say anything / we all hit the ceiling. The driver stands up / on the brake,... Angie Estes http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15721 i>a beautiful hours, very well / and richly illuminated. The yahrzeit candle / beats its yellow heart / all night, and the next morning / the ginkgo loses all of its leaves / at once. In 185 AD, / Chinese astronomers witnessed / what they called a guest star / that appeared in the sky and lingered / for... Dana Goodyear http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15720 A fingerprint on air / holding, paradoxically, a small / eight-fingered leather hand. / After a certain point, / I thought of it as a woman not a man, / a purse with a slew of bodies / and its own death inside. ... Penelope Shuttle http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15719 You loved your daily bout / of pranayama exercises, / your oum filled the house / with its peaceable thundery bass. / Nowadays I do my practice / in a roomful of friendly strangers, / we inhale through the nostril of the sun, / exhale via the nostril of the moon. / Seven years later, in our quiet... Jacob Shores-Arguello http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15718 The whole village walks the hard pack / of arid steppe to the cemetery, to the river / where the ground is soft. The children do not / wait for the key, they slip between iron leaves, / a fencework of Orthodox crosses. They've all / brought bright woven blankets, blinchiky / with sour cream, and... Rhian Gallagher http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15717 Spring and the come-back glow / shifts, blue-green and red-tinged blue, / light hits the undersea bed. / I could lose my footing / on this clay bank, taking my mind / from my step, going over and over / the last time we met. The sun /                ... Dan Gerber http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15716 When I lifted my hand to brush it away, / the speck of lint on my sleeve / suddenly remembered its lightly resting wings / and fluttered up to embrace / the tiny white moth / just landed on the bathroom mirror. ... Dara Wier http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15715 I had been continuing to do the same thing / while expecting different results. / On most days the children learned how / to do something. Time passed around us / as something approaching a figure eight / might move in order to let all else move / or be moved by our large numbers of... Susan Wicks http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15714 All day I have been thinking about the tide— / each time I tapped the wheel or slowed, / accelerated out of the next bend— / whether it's low or high, / whether the rocks are exposed, / the clumps of spreading weed / just under the surface, that abandoned slick / of hair at the centre of the... Rachel Hadas http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15713 The little boy who snuggles next to me / while I read him Millions of Cats / and we meow together / "No, I am the prettiest!" "I am!" "I am!" / is five. I'm sixty. The book is eighty-one. / I have read it before. / Durable, evocative, stale, weary; / renewable, exhaustible, and placid; / benign... Leslie Adrienne Miller http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15712 No blue beckons so much as chlorine blue, / bottom of the pool blue, faintly bearing the faces / of flushed mothers, astringent partner to rubber loungers / welded to the backs of the knees in seconds. / We of the inland summers crave only this blue, / this gorgeous replica doubled and rocking / beneath... Paula Bohince http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15711 Whether it speaks / only in anger, or laughs / with many tongues, / sober or lush, its girls / shall travel outward, far from heart, from root, / universal silks / shocked by the world's bruisings, / inflections of flame / dimmed, buds' circuitry / blinking. / Ants traverse / with their own burdens, / unexpressed traffic / of emotions. / On the... Kimberly Johnson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15710 A pentecost of bloom: all the furred tongues / awag in the iris patch, windrush through the fireflower. / To what wonders they may testify / I don't know, my earthy idiom hears as noise the hiss / of sweet alyssum and the bees' melisma. / Shouldn't that be enough?—but I fidget / around the garden... Alfred Corn http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15709 Yes, whales. The first time that I heard them breathing, / We had the watch from twelve to four, and coming / Upon deck, found the little brig quite still, / Surrounded by thick fog, and the sea smooth / As though anointed with fine oil. Yet now / And then a long, low swell... Shann Ray http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15708 Your hand on my jaw /            but gently / and that picture of you / punching through snow /            to bring two deer, a gopher, / and a magpie / to the old Highwalker woman / who spoke only Cheyenne /        ... Laurie Kutchins http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15707 Let's turn back into the blaze without shovels, let's ask the fox / and the rotunda gods to chase us through another summer— / untree me, shapeshift you, sweetflesh the flesh back into us— / roust the moon into some new patterns. Let's open the museum / inside every letter, every hidden name, and share... Todd Davis http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15706 I'm in the upper field again / where rock fell / and the sky opens. / No trees grow here. / Deerberry hangs its pitch / black fruit like lanterns / carrying bits of night / into daylight. / It's always the opposite / that illuminates: your being / dead, me alive; my presence / in this field, your absence; the... Sidney Wade http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15705 plump mother-lode of pleasure / tight buds all awash in ants / pink skirts ragged at the edges / old-fashioned bowl of fragrance / palace of ants and feathers / I watch the rain come / and the shining heads bow / under heavy jewels / petals fall in clumps / and scatter soft and slow / on the pockmarked... Derek Sheffield http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15704 i>Jerk that bitch, urges my guide, / and I give my shuddering pole / a jerk, hooking the throat / of the first steelhead of my life. / Reel 'em, he mutters and revs the motor. / I horse my pole and reel and horse. / The boat's mascot whines, her claws / clicking. Let it take... Dore Kiesselbach http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15703 The Christmas tree comes down / but isn't dead yet, doesn't / drain the quart a day it did / the week I sawed it / from its future in the earth, / but still sips, last cells / stubborn in a local life. / Losing needles all the way, / I haul it bottom first / through the... Tryfon Tolides http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15702 Cool air arrives, sounding in high parts of the huge silvery plane tree / in the churchyard. In the schoolyard, children add their steps and / voices, the ball travels through the last of the sunlit air. My neighbor's / yard with its canopy of grape leaves is in shade, save for a... Matt Reeck http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15701 the simple way the beach has /          of breaking the waves into /          sections     here / where the plovers / have their beach     & there / where the sails snap taut /          in the wind /  ... Ben Lerner http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15700 Tonight I can't remember why / everything is permitted or, / what amounts to the same thing, / forbidden. No art is total, even / theirs, even though it raises / towers or kills from the air, / there's too much piety in despair, / as if the silver leaves behind / the glass were politics / and the... Dean Young http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15699 Continued soggy in the personal today / although two strangers smiled at me, / one because I couldn’t open a plastic bag / either, the other because I stepped aside / as if I was holding the door for her / even though it was an automatic door. / The peaches, first of the season, were tiny / and powerful as baby rattlesnakes. / A branch... Jacquelyn Pope http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15698 Body be dream / becoming / Coil of salt / and consolation / body be strong / knuckled and new- / born, feint / of fists and thrusts / Body be breath / rattle and rasp / twined into song / Body be sound / leaned and swayed / Body be brave / first steps, first / falterings, heels / over head / Body be bright / sum of... Jay Baron Nicorvo http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15697 Take two flights of stairs. / Behind the kitchen's swinging door, / inside the walk-in, / find a skinned lamb, hanging. / With steel and oak fisted, / cleave limb from limb. / Hack as if at air. / Always cut to the quick. / Notice no blood spills. / Notice muscle and eyes, / soft as seaglass from the... Richard Tillinghast http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15696 1. / As nomads camp where others camped before, / As mice find winter digs under the stair, / As this year's swallows build their summer nest / Among the raftered nurseries of the past; / As mosses lodge in crevices of stone— / We too lodge in lodgings not our own. / A good hotel is its... Rachel Mennies http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15695 Deborah wasn't a Jew, and then / she is: one day, the salt from lox—so / flushed, so red—no longer / cloys, but harkens to a parted sea, / a mat of smoke and ocean / on the tongue. Or maybe / a relative in Argentina picks up / the phone, calls Deborah, speaks / the Barchu slowly,... Lisa Russ Spaar http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15694 In blunder of dusk I negotiate rush hour / past the strip-mall fitness center, / plate glass tableaux of bodies in treadmill / silhouette, an elbow in the signage above gone dark. / I can hear from here the earbuds stair-stepping, / bottomless techno sham, no bridge, no left hand, / & consider the fit of... Cleopatra Mathis http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15693 Why now do I care to look— / though everything outlined in these woods / makes itself known: prints of a snowshoe hare, / long narrow pods in pairs, slightly dug-in at the heels / as they hop forward; the chipmunk's and vole's faint / gifted script, and one ribbon of something / curving out on... Rick Hilles http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15692          1. Ramsløg (Allium Ursinum) / All May, and everywhere /          the scent / of scallions seeps in from /          the shadows / wherever the Baltic salts /          the open air / in breezy atmosphere appear /    ... Marilyn Nelson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15691 Now you're a buddy mucking / ten yards away with a rifle, / identical as an armed popcorn / in the enemy's crosshairs, then / you're saying hello darkness. / Now you see, / now you don't. / Is anyone ever ready? / Do you get an explanation? / An apology? / Or does the water that was you, / that... Michael Blumenthal http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15690 I sit in the garden listening / to my inner voice. What / could my inner voice be saying? / The birds are singing, says my inner voice, / the storks are nesting. My inner voice / looks up at the sky. The moon / is waning, it says, the sun / is setting. My inner voice / says... Gabriel Spera http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15689 My love is like a deep and placid lake... / Not now, sweetie, Daddy's busy, OK? / OK: my love's a deep and peaceful lake... / Here, Daddy can fix it. All better. Now go play. / Um, my love, yes—a rose that blooms in spring... / You tell her Daddy says she has to... Jehanne Dubrow http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15688 Like the Soviets, my body had a plan /   for every phase of development. / First hair in places where it wasn't meant /      to grow, bramble covering the compound. / Then curves like water waiting for a dam. /   Then electricity. And worse, a slight / atomic humming... Barbara Hamby http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15687 A young woman is walking with her boyfriend, and it's deep /      summer in the South, like being in a sauna / but hotter and stickier, and she's wearing a tank top /      and a cotton skirt so thin I can see her black / underpants, and this is the way I... Gretchen Primack http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15686 You are a wretch and a leech and a dirty / old man and have been trying to push / inside me for years. Well, come on then. / There's something about the plum warm / air. Usually at this time of day I don't / want to see people. Usually when I'm on / the... Janet Foxman http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15685 Dad who thinks life is a paper bag / Gets heavier and heavier / You hold until the bottom drops out / Says make me a poem that starts sad / And ends happy / Nobody's ever done that before / He's never read the one about the dead people / Shining in paradise and the light... Dick Allen http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15684 "To be with a koan," / said the Zen Master, / "has nothing to do with Hamlet, / those old jokes about small pigs / or tiny villages, / bees and bee keepers. No, / to be with a koan, / you must get inside it / without forcing your entry. / It’s like you’re lemonade powder / dissolving in water. / Something other than you / does the stirring, / but there’s nothing other than... Brian Culhane http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15683 Persistence has lent this tall white pine / In old age an upstanding vigor, as branch / And bole, though showing telltale patches / Of blight, seem to say, "You too may stanch / Dripping sap or knit broken limbs in time, / If you but accept pain, take joy in snatches." / The white pine's... John Ashbery http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15682 Don't try this at home. On second thought, come in, / your tumbling face ungladden. And see what happens. / The boy said, I have the look of two / through the other side of the shower. And how do we / get that, except by adding it up / in one long, fateful column.... Brenda Shaughnessy http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15681 A strong, pale wind on the thighs, / it was no seaspray, no AC, / but cold mnemonic, a breath / of spotless decision, / a kind of bulk, a true surface / thickened by foreign pears / as if winter brought its fruit / first to me for approval / before it let December / fill its basket to... Alan Shapiro http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15680 I saw him as I drove by— / I don't have to tell you what he looked like— / spreading out a plastic sheet / as for a picnic / except he wasn't picnicking; / he was lying down to sleep / in the middle of the sidewalk / in the middle of the day / on a busy... Karl Kirchwey http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15679 October 11, 1963: /           I think I saw the premiere of this show, / a month before Oswald shot Kennedy, /           when I was seven, half a century ago. / I recognize William Shatner in the lead, /        ... Louise Glück http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15678 div style="margin-top:25px;margin-bottom:10px;">1. / Today, when I woke up, I asked myself / why did Christ die? Who knows / the meaning of such questions? / It was a winter morning, unbelievably cold. / So the thoughts went on, / from each question came / another question, like a twig from a branch, / like a branch from a black... José María Hinojosa / translated from the Spanish by Mark Statman http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15677 Alone I sailed. / Where will I arrive? / If the hot air balloon were lost, / on what land would it fall? / If the ship were to wreck, / it would sink in what waters? / Alone I started. / No one knows why. / But, I, yes I, know! /   /       (Text of the poem... Alan Shapiro http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15676 What led you down, first mother, from the good / dark of the canopy, and then beyond it? / What scarcity or new scent drew you out / that day into the vertical-hating flatness / of the bright veldt, alone, or too far from / the fringes of the group of other mothers / following the... Lawrence Raab http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15675 If it's the title of a movie, you expect / everything to become important—a kiss, / a shrug, a glass of wine, a walk with the dog. / But if the day is real, life is only / as significant as yesterday—the kiss / hurried, the shrug forgotten, and now, / on the path by the... David Huddle http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15674 The vultures of this landscape came to call / this morning—found a bare-limbed tree outside / my kitchen window, settled in & held / my gaze, big tar blobs against a milky sky: / We understand you, their presence informed me, / & I you, I told them in silence. /        ... Lloyd Schwartz http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15673 1. / A horrific scene: helpless in his passion / for the ruthless but cornered Beatrice Joanna, / who's hinted how grateful she'd be to be / rid of her inconvenient fiancé (she's now in love / with someone else), the hideous Deflores / (who'd do anything for her) murders the fiancé / and delivers the victim's... Joanne Diaz http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15672 Art can make war look wrong, but most of the time / it doesn't. Consider this terracotta jar, once filled / with olive oil to anoint the dead, now a souvenir / of fire, clay, and spittle standing in the back / of the Ancient Wing. Look closer: some dancers / are clothed in robes, others are naked, and all / wear... Ann Kim http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15671 knock on wood / and they / appear, / rampant / statues. / they solo, / reluctant / underdolls / unsheathed / at last, / not made / by spite, / but spill / so sure / a question, / so mute / a curve ... Kathryn Stripling Byer http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15670      Piney woods / where we played Fort Apache /         oozed rosin. /  Cow pies baked /     in the dog day / heat while we picked /     what our Mama / had promised she'd turn /        into cobblers /    ... Blas Falconer http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15669 Rain against the roof sounds like a slow tire / over gravel, as if a friend has come. / The train rumbles through the dark, and my body, tuned / to hear you cry before you cry, stirs. / The lamp floats in the window, the only window lit / at this late hour on... Beckian Fritz Goldberg http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15668 We were born in the light / of the war of the Gargantuas. / We were born into the picture / as others might be born into the world, / with the bloom of a giant ape foot / over Tokyo, with the blink of / the Lizard Men in New York. Not God, / but the God-hairs... Dean Young http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15667 People are compelled to be together good and bad. / You've agreed to shrimp with the geology couple. / If you like one 85% and the other 35%, / that's not so bad. / You need to like one at least 70% / and like the other not less than 25% / otherwise it's agonizing and... Saadi Youssef / translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon and Peter Money http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15666 We will go to God / naked. / Our shroud is our blood, / our camphor: / the teeth of dogs / turned wolves. /
/ The closed cell suddenly swung open / for the female soldier to come. / Our swollen eyes could not make her out, / perhaps because she comes from a mysterious world, / she did not... Mary Oliver http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15665 It didn't behave / like anything you had / ever imagined. The wind / tore at the trees, the rain / fell for days slant and hard. / The back of the hand / to everything. I watched / the trees bow and their leaves fall / and crawl back into the earth. / As though, that was that.... Adrienne Rich http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15664 *Fox* / I needed fox    Badly I needed / a vixen for the long time none had come near me / I needed recognition from a / triangulated face     burnt-yellow eyes / fronting the long body the fierce and sacrificial tail / I needed history of fox     briars of legend it... Martha Ronk http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15663 No sky                a gray backdrop merely and absence / and below: the scraggle of dusty fronds, the scrub oak and scrub jay / whose abrasive noises sharpen in response. / Shadows proliferate in deep furrows                no sky above / merely... Jacqueline Osherow http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15662 It's the sort of painting I could never stand— / a white square askew on a white background— / one more aesthetic incarnation / of that swindled emperor, naked again, / preening in his nonexistent clothes; / I'd lived in Florence—where painting breathes— / seen how inanimate materials / (gold beaten to dust, crushed-up jewels / mixed for... James Arthur http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15661 div style="line-height:24px;"> / Effortlessness, I learn again, /         means putting all opinion & mulishness aside, /         so when this almost-nothingness / alights, as occasionally it must, /         it lands with the padding footfall of a child ballerina / who's terrified to be there, &... David Wojahn http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15660 Assume, dear vagabond, you are permitted /     One last survey. Your twenty-one grams of sentience, /          Little soul—the weight exactly / Of a ruby-throated hummer—shall hover /     The foliated stamens of your /          Earthly measure. How you dart &... Stephen Knauth http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15659 Driving the mountain with the windows down / we hit a damp low-slung cloud. / The air cooled, the radio slurred its speech. / A minute later, on the other side, / the sun was shining, but the cloud / had already passed through us. ... Gerard Woodward http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15658 In a nest no bigger than the breast pocket / Of your old art teacher's tweed jacket / They are raising a family, biro-black and bubble-eyed, / Blind when we came here. / She climbs a coiled path of air / And picks berries of blood from it, / Chucks herself back and banks on a... David Hernandez http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15657 I'm this tiny, this statuesque, and everywhere / in between, and everywhere in between / bony and overweight, my shadow cannot hold / one shape in Omaha, in Tuscaloosa, in Aberdeen. / My skin is mocha brown, two shades darker / than taupe, your question is racist, nutmeg, beige, / I'm not offended by your question... Rosie Breese http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15656 *The little death* / The bed is fissured with shadow. / When the snow came you said you loved me / as much as you ever had, and left / this little death. My animal cry, / a fracture across a field of white.
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/ *No more talk* / This sentence: / a trail of full stops / sputtering... Robert Bly http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15655 The mourning dove's call woke me / In the still night, when it was still night / To me. Those sounds were older even / Than the box radio, and they said, / "Your mother is walking along the road. / I saw your dead father last night / Near the cottonwood grove." / I slept all... Quinn Latimer http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15654 The vast sadness of my family / is an ocean rehearsing its sorrow / against the intractable night. / By light we are careful, bruised / and beautiful as script, hair tangled / from evening's beating. We stoop / to inspect the night's debris / and do not recognize black / half-hearts of shell (that are ours), / wool... Hadara Bar-Nadav http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15653 Here's a plain pile of sand. /               Watch it tall /               and mount itself. / A window gives birth /               to a thousand windows. /          ... Ken McCullough http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15650 What he said was vast, given his limits. / At some mojave of the soul, we stopped / to gas up, and I was inclined to bolt— / wrong look, wrong answer, might raise his demons, / but what did I know, who was I to say? / He tuned Tom Harmon on the radio,... Brad Leithauser http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15649 Scuba divers will sometimes drown / within a night sea / after confusing up and down. / It seems so _basic_ — up/down — and yet, / immersed in a black neutral buoyancy, / the world's boundaries all wet, / a person may mislay his only meaningful / compass — the heart in his head — / and mistake Earth's centripetal pull / for that other mustering... Fleda Brown http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15648 We dressed for church. I had a white hat / and white gloves when I was fifteen, no joke. / You had to do that to show God you cared. / God's eyes were stained glass, and his voice / was pipe organ. He was immortal, invisible, / while my pantyhose itched and my atheist / father chewed his tongue and threatened... Aidan Mathews http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15646 A bird's building I don't know what / On the old over-spill loudspeaker / At the west door with the new wheelchair ramp. / Inside in the left confessional / The parish hygiene committee has stored / The mobile font and a Nilfisk vacuum cleaner. / Pews that were sold will probably surface / In a LGBT pub soon. And those marble / Altar-rails with the... Camille Dungy http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15645 We passed the baby over the bed, and later we passed tissue, /       and her Bible with its onion skin pages, its highlighted lessons / and dog-eared parables she kept handy with bookmarks /       whose tassels hung and swayed as her hair / might have done when she was very... Lucille Clifton http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15644 hey music and / me / only white, / hair a flutter of / fall leaves / circling my perfect / line of a nose, / no lips, / no behind, hey / white me / and i'm wearing / white history / but there's no future / in those clothes / so i take them off and / wake up / dancing. ... Benjamin Bloch http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15642 I've learned nothing. It was with me / then and always, every day a burning house / and me running into the street / with nothing but my lamentations, awful sounds. / And the alarms that sang when spoken to, / the stern involuntary muscles. / When I was hungry I tightened my belt, / if I... James Harms http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15641 We’ve all been in towns / that wouldn’t have us, whose woods / beyond the cemetery / hide houses made of leaves, / their windows lit low / by peat fires, the slow stink / of heat rising through trees / then sinking into grass, the mounds / that seem to shrug and settle. / And the exiles we are, in overcoats / and heavy shoes, we present / our sticky faces... Derick Burleson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15640 It wasn't the river coming into me / wasn't the load of glacial silt the boils / of current the eddies shifting sandbars / driftwood gulls crying endlessly of want / the nested eagles' bickering. Wasn't salmon / either though I was there to catch them / brought my daughter there to catch them / the mountain... Frances Leviston http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15639 div style="margin-top:25px;margin-bottom:10px;">1. / When Sulis rose from the open ground / and entered Minerva, she mastered that shape / with such perfection she seemed to vanish / under history's golden heel, / as if Minerva sank one foot in the fountain / and poured her rival off— / only to hear in her victory-moment / a worshipper offer verbatim the... Colleen J. McElroy http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15638 for over an hour we watched / a hummingbird trapped / in the arch of a skylight / so close it was to life / or death or some release / from the awful thrumming / of wings too weak to fall / back into place after each / attempt to reach the sky— / my neighbors and I... Coleman Barks http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15637 April 8th out my upstairs window. / The white oak is reaching miniature hands toward me, / toward everyone, a big sphere of little hands, / each holding a sprig of seaweed / from the earth-ocean they rise, faceless, out of. / Catkins be their name. / They are not seeds. Acorns are the seeds / of... Steven Cramer http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15635 Dickey's death feels all over me. / I try not digging at the thing. He died / before I could grow his hemlock seed. / Boyo, the tricksters of this cemetery, / long-sleeved shorts with their shirts off, / can't tell a cow's dead till it's slaughtered. / He was a sublime Halloween snicker, / bat dark... Marcus Wicker http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15634 You know those people who are uncomfortable / having a conversation at a comfortable level? / Like, you ask Tony his thoughts on Kobe / or the LA Lakers. And Tony responds: / Schwarzenegger ruined their state. / Four years in office and more debt than '03? / Come on, man. Fuck California. / Yeah. So Tony's... Donald Revell http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15633 Unreal precision of the houses at first light / 45 years of rain and bodice / Grasses woods wildflowers / To be the only woman at this hour / Out in it one beauty one movie / And I am her hapless mule / Out of the blue one morning / My father took me north upriver... Mark Perlberg http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15632 A tall slender man sits at a rolltop desk / in the office of Passage Broker S. Jarmulsky, / 32 Canal Street, near the west tower of Brooklyn Bridge. / His name is Ivar, my Swedish grandfather. / He wears a thin brown beard, a mustache, and works / on papers of immigrants like himself,... Alicia Ostriker http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15631 Honey I am one gorgeous permanent wave / of dunebeige yellowgold coalblack European Asian / African force funneled through centuries / of ejaculating ancestors right here to me / said the impure old woman / Absolutely true science informs us / we hybrids are the ones that survive / the endless brutalities of storm and drought / and the rivalry of our peers / said the naturally selected... Sharon Dolin http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15630                  Not pushing a rock— /         like my husband, of erstwhile fame, Sisyphus, / I had been pulling him—a dead night-weight /                  on my chest—pulling the way sailors heave /  ... Pat Boran http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15628 It used to be simple: / shipwrecked, you turned the boat over / and started from scratch, / your new home the nave / of a church, its prow pointing back / over the ocean / towards your previous life. / You lived with the loss, / did what you could, carried on. / You learned from mistakes, / your... Ana Maria Shua / translated from the Spanish by Steven J. Stewart http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15627 !--prose-->Deep in the heart of every child, every mother, every spectator, lies that secret wish to see the trapeze artist fall, to see him smash his bones against the ground, spill his dark blood on the sand, that fundamental wish to see the lions fight over the tamer's remains, the... Susan Wheeler http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15625 It's stringy     out here /                            in the stratosphere. /   / The sad night ticks like a homemade bomb. /   / I dream each night (in Cancerqueen, so many nights!) about the / churning streets, the way each person passing, in... Guillaume Apollinaire / translated from the French by the Editors of The Paris Review http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15624 Under Eads Bridge over the Mississippi at Saint Louis / Flows the Seine / And our past loves. / Do I really have to remember all that again / And remember / Joy came only after so much pain? / Hand in hand, face to face, / Let the belfry softly bong the late hour. / Nights go... Natasha Trethewey http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15623 In the portrait of Jefferson that hangs /      at Monticello, he is rendered two-toned: / his forehead white with illumination— / a lit bulb—the rest of his face in shadow, /      darkened as if the artist meant to contrast / his bright knowledge, its dark subtext. / By 1805, when... Bruce Bond http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15622 If memory has a center, let it be here. / Unless, that is, a fever takes it, the brain / a hole the size of who we were, or worse, / who we would be, who we are now, or now. / Ask the man inside his small bay window. / Not that his wife... William Wenthe http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15621 The cat purrs us awake, pawing the pillow, / and our response, the day's first gesture, / is a gathering into each other's arms. / I remember this later, making the bed; / but she's not here, so I sit her stuffed bear / in her reading chair, open a book / of poems in its... Marilyn Chin http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15620 Dear Mei Ling: / We don't know how you became a self-righteous, left-wing vegan / bigot so soon. At one week you spurned your mother's milk. At / two months, you spat out a mouthful of congee that had a hint of / sardine oil in it. At one year, you declared your independence... Alpay Ulku http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15619 1. / I saw a vast ocean on which sailed the fleets of every navy that had ever / been. The ocean was still too vast for them. The fleets were specks / of color on a canvas that was light and... Jessica Greenbaum http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15617 Robbie Gross is dribbling, then fakes a shot, then takes it, / the metronome of his solo practice an accompaniment / so persistently tapping its foot in my days that, 4 a.m., / forty years later, hearing a basketball tock / on the sidewalk below my window, I am returned / to my first room,... Jared Harel http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15616 Whoever designed this, / separating states / into pale-yellow, pine-green, / decided to divide us / with a volleyball net, a taut / incision clear across Kansas, / North and South / at it yet again. He (or she) / plastered this metaphor / across an inner-city schoolyard / where a weary boy / weeps over Jersey, / having scraped his elbow... Stuart Dybek http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15615 Pigeons fold their wings and fade / into the gray facades of public places; / flags descend from banks, silk slips / floating to beds. Hips thrust / like those of lovers, as workers crank / through turnstiles, and waiting / for the Ravenswood express at stations / level with the sky, they shield their eyes / with... Charles Baudelaire / translated from the French by John Kinsella http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15612 Music often carries me away like a sea! / Toward my pale star, / Beneath a ceiling of mist or in a vast sky, / I cast anchor; / My chest a bowsprit and lungs billowing / Like sails, / I scale the back of waves gathering / As night drops its veil; / I feel all the... Kerri Webster http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15611 We looked for golden birds. We looked and looked. / We issued threat advisories. Our survival kits / were beautiful: tin, tin, pocket mirrors, root foods, / anodynes. We buried our seeds deep, we lined our bibs / with lead. Oh darling, we said, and rubbed a little bit. / We rode our fine horses,... Michael Waters http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15610 Not nude exactly, pajama'd in mud, / The grandfathers stood like unlovely trees / Crooking bare branches as our train curved past, / The century flown forward without them. / A bean field away the old women swayed, / Furrowed bellies and breasts daubed like birds' nests, / A fairy-tale forest of breathing bark / Summoned by...