/ A drink of water. A glass held up: an honor, a toast. / So in rivers and brooks of tide the lake comes calving, / stressed and breaking across the stony beaches; in light- / stunned whitecaps it comes in crawls, and recedes, and recalls.... Terry Savoie http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15095 Sensing he'd / be the one / Buddhist in / town, let alone / the only Zen / dentist in all / Mississippi / in '69, I / set an appt. to / have him have / a look-see / at my abscessed / molar, praying / for a bitty / brass Buddha / to squeeze, to / brace me / against the pain, / but all he... Ben Mazer http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15094 I was handled by the handler’s handler / someone (I know who) had sent me to. / A mountain zephyr blew the sunlight cold. / I read the little village paper backwards / and nibbled at my ham. Coffee is birth. / I was surprised to see how things had changed / since I first dreamed I came here long ago. / The villagers... Paula Bohince http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15092 What is it with men? With / horses? That you must go / sunblind to see them and even then / what do you know? / Their namesake / mushrooms intoxicate so. Inviting / the eye to earth, cajoling / a pose of supplication. / Virile specimens. Cavalry / of the after-storm's / absinthe grasses. Sprung overnight: / pink gills, silky... Gerard Fanning http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15091 In Leeson Street / we find ourselves / in a Georgian chapel of ease, / an elite mass rock, / in an Irish lexicon, / in a credo unravelling, / in ambivalent government attire, / we stand, genuflect, / stand again and disperse, / miming handshakes / and the bluster of concern. / What stains our hands— / March as before / whipped... Sean O'Brien http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15090 This must be where I came in, gaberdined / Against the fog but part of it, to take the dark air, / Strolling on the glistening concrete of a tenfoot / When walking at night would be legal, / Which puts us somewhere in the nineteen fifties, / Entering the vast and ramifying silence / Issued... Wayne Miller http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15089 There in the image that recurred / —of a house catching fire / in the middle of a hard freeze— / I was sure you were the house. / • / But now I see / you were the fire filling the house / with motion, your light opening / the rooms from the dark, / paling the oak's curve / like... Xochiquetzal Candelaria http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15088 The woman in the building across from me / hauls onto the fire escape a yucca plant / and squeezes it between a crate / of herbs and a sapling fern tree. / She looks a lot like me from twenty feet away. / A forelock lies sweaty against her cheek / as if she's forgotten... Jim Tilley http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15087 He'd called upon the owl one too many times, / so the turkey vulture flew down to serve / as keeper of the forest, diviner of fortune, / haruspex standing watch over a buck's / spilled entrails, patch of snow gathered at its feet / melting into augury of spring, a spring / with no guts... Elizabeth Willis http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15086 Welcome to our treasured island / seized from the tribe / of enemy combatants / who nursed us through / the winter of 1642 / This heap of shoes / This copper beech / This highway butter / This featureless cottage / about to be filled / with "genuine antiques" / This track into milkweed / seen from the ground / This monumental... Carl Phillips http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15085 Fallopian, estranged somehow, / forgetless against a backdrop of plain / sky, the limbs of the trees / fail, and rally. Everywhere / the kinds of patterns that / should be breakable, but by now it's / been this way, it seems, forever. The wind / strikes. The wind dies down. To amplify / what's true past recognition—never... Yusef Komunyakaa http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15084 In the days when a man / would hold a swarm of words / inside his belly, nestled / against his spleen, singing. / In the days of night riders / when life tongued a reed / till blues & sorrow song / called out of the deep night: / Another man done gone. / Another man done gone.... Jim Moore http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15083 1 /          Chilly morning at the sea: I see / jade-green water, the turquoise blue, eternity /          everywhere I look. But what really gets me / is the shape of your skirt on a hanger, /          hooked on the showerhead.... Charles Wright http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15082 This is the executioner's hour, /                                            deep noon, hard light, / Everything edge and horizon-honed, / Windless and hushed, as though a weight were about to fall, / And shadows begin to... Martín Espada http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15081 In 1941, my father saw his first big league ballgame at Ebbets Field / in Brooklyn: the Dodgers and the Cardinals. My father took his father's hand. / When the umpires lumbered on the field, the band in the stands / with a bass drum and trombone struck up a chorus of Three... Osip Mandelstam / a new version by Christian Wiman http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15080 Pointless any happiness that happens by plan: / To live in nature is to suffer luck. / Thus blessed, thus cursed, I am myself again, / Empty-tipsy, drinking to the lees my lack. / Wind-tousled cloud, cloud-tousled chance, / Deep in the unseen an anchor drops, and clings. / O my lilting, my light-sheer, my linen existence:... Kate Northrop http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15079 Up the side of the hill / The house is a lace of stones / A few grown over with earth / And a few smooth / And ridged, as molars / What was yard, sunlight now, / An expanse of grass— / And the stones / Forming the past house / Are worse than a map: / Allocation of rooms,... Bruce Smith http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15078 A fly like an envoy for the Lost Boys or a delegate sent to dicker with the dead. / Buzz wants out or in? Does it descend from one who grazed the face / of Dickinson and whispered in her ear the middle octave key of F? / Does it want nectar or... Carol Ann Davis http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15077 The boy with his mother in the photo, / the boy with riding boots and a long path behind him / leading to the seashore in fall, / whose legs tangle below the knee his mother's skirts— / wisteria stitched in into twill—he is in some difficulty / now that world is mostly gone. Everyone has a... Robert Pinsky http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15076 Air an instrument of the tongue, / The tongue an instrument / Of the body, the body / An instrument of spirit, / The spirit a being of the air. / A bird the medium of its song. / A song a world, a containment / Like a hotel room, ready / For us guests who inherit / Our... Reginald Shepherd http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15075 no dove at all, coo-rooing through the dusk / and foraging for small seeds / My mother was the clouded-over night / a moon swims through, the dark against which stars / switch themselves on, so many already dead / by now (stars switch themselves off / and are my mother, she was never / so celestial,... Kate Daniels http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15074 In the piney, pink stria of summer morning skies, we awoke / to the muted, moan-like howling of the hungry redbones / locked in their chain-link compounds. They lived their lives / like that: locked in wire cages until released to hunt, fragmented / images of earlier expeditions flickering in and out of whatever... Albert Goldbarth http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15073 —by which it doesn't mean in the bedroom or dining room, / but the universe. The answer is a demi-hopeful / "possibly not," although whatever other life exists / Out There in the pettipoint billions of planet possibilities might be / no more than a gelid smear that quivers in light / and quiets in... Clare Rossini http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15067 I wanted sky. That was my ambition. And now I'm being tugged / Up a small steel mountain, / A burly chain beneath the car hauling my weight / And a trail of my fellow aspirants. Poised at the top, we waver. / Then the slow turn downward, / The gathering speed, hurtling / Toward the... Gail Mazur http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15065 In ancient Greece, a man could withdraw into the desert / to praise his gods in solitude— / he'd live out his days by himself in a cave of sand. / Eremos, Greek for desert—you could look it up. / Hermit crabs live mostly alone / in their self-chosen hermitages, they learn young / to muscle... Jennifer Grotz http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15062 At its most dull before dawn, the sea's / a stubble field of light still covered with the moony film / pink dawn sponges away. / This is the hour when the moon is a fishhook / steadily pulled up out of the liquid sky / into some drier realm. / And the doves dart and... Alex Lemon http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15061 The most troubling thing is everything. It's all happening / At the same time. Interpreting dreams while watching Let's Make / A Deal. Eating tofurkey & Cherry Garcia while practicing / Yoga. Happy Baby. Down Dog. The temperature drops / Sixty degrees in ten minutes. Stop signs wobble, wobble, / & then everyone is outside... Janice Gould http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15060 It was raining, / it was autumn, / a girl was in my arms. / Perhaps to the east / the moon rose / over the crest of the mountains; / to the south / a procession of ghosts came / swinging their censors of iron, / and somewhere a prickly pear / thrust forth its limb of thorns, / a... Eleanor Lerman http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15059 This thing— / you would think, for example, that it / would show up when you are driving / through the gas fields of a neighboring state, / the air along the edges like hair on fire, / burning up the horizon— / but that would mean it is a feeling, or a / sense memory, something... Matt Mauch http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15058 I want to stop being so human, / low to the ground, dragging this / bag of bones around, udder with nothing / left to give, no memory of grip pull twist squeeze, / how it lets the inside out. I want to stop / making my way through the day / like I'm a shim.... Susan Wood http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15057 Once I said I didn't have a spiritual bone / in my body and meant by that / I didn't want to think of death, / as though any bone in us / could escape it. Maybe / I was afraid of what I couldn't know / for certain, a thud like the slamming / of a... Michael Heffernan http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15055 Since everything had gotten so much worse, / I tried to take in at least some one thing / to make out how we came to where we were, / with the result that, on my walk that morning, / which I take solemnly every day, over toward the creek / that rises beyond the... Dana Levin http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15052 I / Slicked /             with a birther's goo, it /             gleams up green from the ground— / Little blade. / How much toil, to split the sealed doors /             of the mother— / And scrape up / ... James Galvin http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15050 The old man, in his day, well let’s just say / He took a lot of meat without a license. / That he was arrogant, well that just goes / Without saying, so we don’t, but see, / He had a reason. He thought that a man / Who owned his land shouldn’t have to pay to / Hunt. Not the Government,... Adam Sol http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15049 The young man knows he's going to die today, but he's wrong. / The other young man figures the army is the best way to improve his life, /     but he's wrong. / They both think their weapons will protect them, but they're wrong. / They both believe their prayers will... Dorianne Laux http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15048 Metz is alive for now, standing in line / at the airport Starbucks in his camo gear / and buzz cut, his beautiful new / camel-colored suede boots. His hands / are thick-veined. The good blood / still flows through, given an extra surge / when he slurps his latte, a fleck of foam / caught on... Anita Skeen http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15047 winter plods on like a Russian novel, spring /     hints, haiku / tight blouses unbutton, jackets unzip, /     skin is not just skin / rich soil proliferates / in the heart, in the hand / that can never let go / rivers flow unseen, underground,... Pamela Gemin http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15046 His mad jazz slammed its way up basement stairs / through closed doors and double-glazed windows / all over the neighborhood. The one true / American art form, he called it, records turned up so loud / the floorboards buzzed. No rock and roll / allowed. No three-chord progressions in this house; / no rudimentary hook,... Nicole Cooley http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15045 i>Photograph #1, The Lying-in Hospital / Past the Emergency Pavilion's bordered brick, over / a roundabout, through the revolving door's glass / triangles that refuse to scatter into shadow, / turn at the Diagnostic Imaging Center beside the sign, / etched in stone: This Building Dedicated / To the Well-Being of Mothers and Babies, / Anno Domini,... Bobby C. Rogers http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15044 July already, and the land is soon to burn, the sun at midday casting / its least shadow. Across the road, the unmown pasture will whiten / under its glare, and the world goes brittle with heat. / The land loves the light, and suffers from the light, and lets it go / when... Ece Temelkuran / translated from the Turkish by Deniz Perin http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15043 Truthfully, I ruminated when I came down from the tree. / Had sorrow made me say all these things? / Had someone been with me, they would say at once / that I was 'deeply wounded.' / I would like to show them / the squirrel that flickers in and out of sight, small as... David Sergeant http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15040 i>Six months left to live, they told me, / Quite certain. Quite, I said, from quit / And from quittement, completely. / Also, in bull-fighting, a move to distract / The bull with the fluttering cape. / Could I tell you anything you do not know? / In midsummer, a cricket ball thrown up / And going... David Clewell http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15039 No one knows how he makes his way in this imperfect world. / He doesn't have a come-on, a gimmick, or a pitch— / to say nothing of a proper name he'll own up to. / He's so good at whatever he does, it calls for no introduction. / His face is a composite... Jacqueline Osherow http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15038 It was otherworldly. You'd have been rapturous: / lightning over the temples \ wine-dark sky— / no one in that drenched expanse but us / unless you call the thunder a god's voice. / We were soaked completely through, the girls and I. / Even without the storm, you'd have been rapturous, / showing your girls... David Kirby http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15036              "I am the beautiful Little Richard," says Little Richard / as he limps to his piano, "and you can see that I am telling /                           you the truth" before kicking off... Kay Ryan http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15034 Like standing / on splitting ice / one foot on one / one on the / other piece. / Distressed like / the family of man / at the divorce / of the plates: / some cast into / a suddenly new / world as though / having sinned; / those kept behind / trapped and / bereft. But in / a person, one / foot will lift / and the split / resolve. So / why do the / self-saved / feel half left? ... Jeanne Marie Beaumont http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15033 A string to me says spine. I am patient / in long labors. In taking pains. / Dip, drip. Let them hang. / Repeat the steps. / I adore the odor of beeswax each day. / Authentic & pure as I suppose a / martyr would be. I'm none. / At dusk, / I light the tallest all... Danielle Cadena Deulen http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15032 They loved each other, but a lemon tree / grew between them—no solace in the way / it leaned, as if to whisper from her yard / into his, across the coyote fence, / a promise of something greater. The fruit / was a luminous yellow, triumphant / in the branches—at night, he'd stare / at the... Samuel Hazo http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15031 It's like a play. /                      Or rather /    the revival of a play in which /    you're still the main character. / The set, the lighting and the stage /    are what they were, but not /  ... Anna Rabinowitz http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15030 Patience. Dawn. Her long wait's not been a waste. / His shoulders come within range of her site. / One bullet between his eyes will seal /                                an end to roaming free. / "Pay dirt! I've hit pay... Timothy McBride http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15029 As a boy, I heard "leopard colony" / and dreamed of joining him for a glimpse / of the big cats with the terrifying skin. / At night, in bed, I'd whisper / "Da-mi-en of Mol-o-kai ... " / each syllable mysterious and transporting, / like "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Tarzan of the Apes." / Stark photographs... R. T. Smith http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15028 My father was hooked on one brand, Ancient Age, / always in pints, perhaps to stow snug in the glove box / with the pearl-handled pistol, and likely to prove / he was a moderate man, and he would tell stories / of his partner Earl Thatcher, a devotee of excess, / intolerance and wrath,... Debora Greger http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15026 parted the overgrown hedge. / There stood the tree she remembered— / still on its last limbs and still "self-pruning," / as the tree-surgeon called it— / still the largest sweet gum in the underworld. / From the dogwood, berries dripped, / bright as blood. A frog called out / for company. The owl that hunted it / rowed the... Lynn Melnick http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15025 Mostly you just disappear. When I don't see you dead / I know you're alive, I can see you by the clothes you're wearing, / by your boot print on the unloved grass. / We make an ugly street ugly, a giant room stripped, / its high wood beams and bed big enough for... Jennifer Franklin http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15024 If you saw her, you would think she was beautiful. / Strangers stop me on the street to say it. / If they talk to her they see that this beauty / Means nothing. Their sight shifts to pigeons / On the sidewalk. Their eye contact becomes / As poor as hers. They slip away slowly, / With varying degrees of grace.... Arthur Smith http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15023 I was as low as I /           had ever been, but not /                      as low as the downstairs / black Vietnam vet /           on dialysis, legally blind, /          ... Matt W. Miller http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15022 We're no more than a few silver / seconds in the air when that winged / and cocky boy gets sucked / into a turbine sparking off a fire / that rips the starboard wing / away from the fuselage, shucking / passengers out and raining / us over northern California, dozens / of us dropping towards the... Mark Jarman http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15021 The manikin's head is filled with water so / When the bonfire brings it to a boil / It explodes and shoots up into the air— / Not enough water to put out the fire / Which will burn on, consuming the manikin / And itself, throwing its light on the happy faces of the crowd.... Patty Seyburn http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15019 The pastries were awfully dry. / An absence of hummingbirds— / of any humming, and birds' lead / feathers made it difficult to fly. / Clouds had not yet learned / to clot, billow, represent. / Stars unshot, anonymous. / Moon and sun indifferent. / No one owned a house, a pond, / a rock on which to rest your... Eugene Dubnov / translated from the Russian by X. J. Kennedy with the author http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15018 Someone approached me from the plain. / I cried out, taken unawares. / Tin hoarfrost sparkled in my hands / And resurrected childhood fears. / Before us loomed a road. The smell / Of farm shit blew forth to disperse. / Before me passed two trickling wisps / Of dust upon its destined course / And then a... David Wojahn http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15017 Their meat is prized by Yankee whalers /       & thus the beach is strewn with upturned shells, /              Rorschach yellow undersides, weathering against / black sand & too weighty even empty for a man to heft. /       The rowboat... Anthony Madrid http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15016 I have passed too many years among cool, designing beings. / I have contracted their reptile manner in my soul. / Last night I lay awake, judging the earth and all its creatures. / My dozen angry blood cells were frowning in the jury box. / Having nothing to say, I said nothing a... Paisley Rekdal http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15015 I have been taught never to brag but now / I cannot help it: I keep / a beautiful garden, all abundance, / indiscriminate, pulling itself / from the stubborn earth. Does it offend you / to watch me working in it, / touching my hands to the greening tips or / tearing the yellow stalks back,... Henri Cole http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15013 You gave me a nice bite; I hope I didn't rip your wing off, / pushing you away. We were sitting by the window; / outside there was rain on steroids. Your voice was so funny— / up, down; soft, loud—but distant, I thought, reading / my magazine. Then I felt your subtle knife touching me, / as if I... Chad Davidson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15012 Oil is a sign of generosity, generosity / a sign of oiliness, unctuousness, / they say, drizzled in rendered fat / like the grilled bread dressed in virgin / olive oil, called fettunte, which sounds / vulgar, from vulgate, which is fortunate, / since we all speak that, which is a sign / of our general uneasiness... Marilyn Chin http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15011 I take off my favorite antique Navajo turquoise / Pull off my red cashmere sweater / Wiggle out of my black leather jeans, Lord, they've been tight! / I wipe off my kohl eye shadow and plum lip gloss / I free my hair from my mother-of-pearl comb / I put on my original face... Melanie McCabe http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15009 The wind that bends the pin oak to the bedroom glass, / that pries my porch roof jagged from the torn flashing / to betray how little stands between me and rain, will be / your wind tomorrow. Moving east in gales, it’s bound / to whip up whitecaps on your Atlantic; to lash the flags / along the... Natasha Trethewey http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15008 Like the moon that night, my father—         /            a distant body, white and luminous. / How small I was back then, /            looking up as if from dark earth. / Distant, his body white and luminous, /  ... Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna / translated from the Portuguese by Lloyd Schwartz, with Rogério Zola Santiago http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15007 Over the starlit rooftops, in Iran, / echoes the agonized voice /                                       of those who only want / to say something. / Not the litany of the muezzins / and their monotonous prayers, / asking no questions,... Adrienne Rich http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15006 Saw you walking barefoot / taking a long look / at the new moon's eyelid / later spread / sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair / asleep but not oblivious / of the unslept unsleeping / elsewhere / Tonight I think / no poetry / will serve / Syntax of rendition: / verb pilots the plane / adverb modifies action / verb force-feeds noun... Dawn Wood http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15005 A kiss of death, apparently, to focus / on that tree in Kelvingrove. When he passed / a few weeks later, it was the sole one felled / and now it shelters Persephone. / Six pomegranate seeds? Not on these hills, / where winter's thaw drags its heels, and summer / takes its own water-course, the... John Hodgen http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15004 !--prose-->A man I know named Watters commanded riverboats during the war in Vietnam. He drilled through the heart of the Mekong. Now he teaches peace studies to wide-eyed kids, the arc of his life having turned him this way, utterly, as if by design. They stare at him, silent as... Brenda Hillman http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15003 Around each word we're hearing, / there spins an original flame; /    the unborn wait in a circle of commas, / upright robins wheel to Wheeler / & termites with arms in their heads /        dig under the chairs— / It is impossible to describe the world; / that's why you... Ander Monson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15002 In the busy machine of the emergency room, / I talk with a man whose face is barely face, / is mostly laceration—accident-remnant / while driving his sister's car / that he stole while drunk and drove and totaled. / He's glad he didn't kill someone, he says. / We are surrounded by: black eyes, / blood... Galway Kinnell http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=15000 *1* / So from poet to poet we proceeded / in our celebration of Christopher Smart’s / long-undiscovered poem Jubilate Agno, composed / by this profligate, drunken, devout, mad polymath / between 1757 and 1763 while incarcerated / for a year in St. Luke’s Hospital for the Insane / and then for four or five years more in the less / bedlamic asylum at Bethnal Green. / Drawing... Lily Brown http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14999 I climbed a giant leaf at the end / of my imagination. Across / the spotted water, the hill / fastened its yellow bushels. / The imagination asked for all the cities, / for the canopy to get its machines out / and tile the leaves. My friend Lily / assumes what I want and it's so... John M. Anderson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14998                 1. / The orchard dwarves come like that in the flat bed, pregnant / with themselves, plumped on the sod in a medicine / ball lump of burlap like an amputee's stump-sock. They tilt / at each other in the morning shadow, green pears swinging... David Kirby http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14997            I love the way they call each other "mister"— /      "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Alejandro Escovedo" / and "Mr. David Pulkingham on guitar"— /            as well as the way they always talk of the other /      bands... Robert Cording http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14996 Late in the day, the rain abating, / I force myself outside for my daily walk. / I do not go far. Everything is doused / and diamonded with water. Even the stones / seem polished. At each bud of every scrub / roadside tree, and even on the thorns / of wild roses, hangs a... Amal al-Jubouri / translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell and Husam Qaisi http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14995 i>My body before the occupation / —Uranium for disarmed weapons / Ammunition for wars to come / A loaf of hot bread / aching to be eaten /       ~ / My body after the occupation / —Unable to reach heights of pleasure / Disabled half-deaths / it cannot bear its final breaths
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/ My grave before the occupation... Tony Hoagland http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14993 "I'm sorry," / the novelist apologized— / "my story has a beginning, / middle and an end." Then she commenced / her explication of / the tapestry hanging on the wall. / Usually these large, time-faded rectangles /                                      ... Jim Moore http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14992 Out of the darkness, men come /     with knives. They work quickly, / muttering back and forth. /     By the time the police arrive, / the boar is gone. The foreigners, /     each one of us, stand around / the wrecked car, /     everyone still... David Rigsbee http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14990 At the knock and sound of my name / I would rise and sit before my father's meal— / fried eggs, grits, link sausage, canned / biscuits—watching him pore over, / then fold, the Morning Herald by his place. / In the still dark we would cross town / in an old Chevy, pick up a man... Arthur Vogelsang http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14989 Lay down beside me I signaled to my wolf / Three pats of the sofa in the early morn / Then two pats of the heart to say why. / He did it silently, no reply when one does / What's to do. I must rest my hand on you / For a while for... Lucia Perillo http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14988 The woman who wears dark glasses large as goggles / has her hand wrapped around the elbow of the young woman / who is beautiful. Where does it come from, / this compulsion not just to know their thinking / but to live inside her for a while, the one / whose eyes are hidden... Tom Yuill http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14987 *1. Ode to the Moon* / I sit up and see the moon at night. / It is right there past my nose. The bright / Half-tortilla, she brings scrambled eggs to mind. / I'm chirped at by thoughts when I sit up and see / The moon. I'm not here waiting for the smacking... Travis Nichols http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14985 Behind my hand is another hand. / Behind my head, another head. / Iron filings fill the hand, / sway with the movements of the head. / A mouth made of aluminum moths / moves in the mouth of the head. / Blue ink flows from the veins in the hand, / tooth-wounds open in the ears... Lisa Russ Spaar http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14984 Splotchy, sudden rashers of rain / swipe all afternoon the concrete terrain / of the amphitheater; then fickle eruptions / of sun sparkle the dripping hustings, / the green tiltyard of wilting umbrellas. / Summer's sprawl encroaches, threatening / to unedge even what would always, / like a heroine in James, delay—not say— / withdraw—exactly as every border... George Amabile http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14983 Lallygagging on bent stems, late / this year because of the snow / in May, their rag-tag magenta / cluster-heads freshen the still heat / like a rush of wind in the leaves / or the cool brush of deep sea / crinolines as the ripple kiss / of a breeze opens their bunched petals / just enough... Bob Hicok http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14982 A rabbi, priest, and belly dancer walk into a bar. / Everyone turns their way, recognizing a joke / when they're in one. The belly dancer, for all the swivel / in her hips, is modest, and asks the rabbi and priest / to go to another bar, but the rabbi and priest agree... Megan Harlan http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14980 Imagine a love turned out / as bread best cast / to the rivers, feedings / for smaller, far-flung things— / fire-flights of stillness, / forms alighting, then airborne, / until the breeze begins / to feel like hunger, / the wayward sweep of desire— / for the holy wheel / rotating foot, breath, and earth, / the pilgrim's chaff, / frayed and... Laura Mullen http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14979 this light that looks like / lightning / outside is inside /           sputtering dance / of tattered flame /           in a draft between / doors / knot of wick / softening wall /           of wax / it's not that /    ... Philip Gross http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14978 after the work stopped /           water filled the quarry pit / (just a kerb of raw pink limestone showing / by the cherry-ripe DANGER DEEP WATER sign) /                      then it was available for light / and for transients,... James Doyle http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14977 Flesh and blood turn mathematic. / The limbs illustrate opaque angles, / the sky rotates three hundred sixty / degrees around eyes burning / black zeros into its center. The light / is solid geometry, testing the premises / of interlocking masses: rifle stocks / that won't be stripped of hands, / legs nesting among the salley branches,... Jeffrey Greene http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14976 My mother occupies her own light / at the lowest aperture / of winter. She is bundled up, / walking Angel, her Golden— / long dead now—from the carriage-house hotel / where we are staying / toward the black trees / where kings of Europe once hunted. / Thin snow blows / from the monolith of a cooling tower / by... Dick Allen http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14975 For a long time, walking it, /          we sang Woody Guthrie songs, / This land is your land, this land is my land, /          and got along / with whoever came our way, although, to be honest, /          few came back / and those who... Toi Derricotte http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14974 My mother and father, light- / skinned, but too new / to make the upper cut, / were, nevertheless, welcomed / into the marble foyer / under an icebox-sized chandelier / to mix martinis with double-edged / men and women trained to outwit / and out-white the whites. Almost all / were light and straight-featured / enough to pass—some did, / some... Annie Freud http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14973 The look you shot me, milk-blue squid of Kimmeridge, / was one of recognition. / To you, I must have seemed an ogre, the kind that mothers / warn their children of. Something in you stiffened— / and the whole wild treble-clef of you leapt five foot / clear of the water, / then vanished through the... Richard Terrill http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14971 One of thirty nights I can't sleep / I awaken to motion in the last dark / out the window, tight against the hillside. / I put on my glasses to stop / the glass in the old house from wavering. / Three of them, maybe twenty feet away, / they nuzzle new snow, / leaves and... C. D. Wright http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14970 div style="line-height:25px"> / THE VERY REVEREND PILLOW [at Bedside Baptist]: The injury that the rock-hard lie of inequality performs is unspeakable; it is irremediable, can be insurmountable. And very very thorough. No peculiar feeling to the contrary can be permitted to gain hold. You get my meaning.
/     Back then,... Martha Silano http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14968 a gravy with little brown specks / a gravy from the juices in a pan / the pan you could have dumped in the sink / now a carnival of flavor waiting to be scraped / loosened with splashes of milk of water of wine / let it cook let it thicken let it be... Adrienne Rich http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14966 *i: hers* / Mute it utters ravage    Guernican / mouth in bleak December / Busted-up lines of Poe: /   —each separate dying ember /   wreaks its ghost upon the floor / January moon mouth / phosphorescence purged in dark to / swallow up the gone / Too soon / Dawn, twilight, wailing / newsprint, breakfast, trains / all... David Bottoms http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14965 Sometimes when I've made the mistake of anger, which sometimes / breeds the mistake of cruelty, I walk / down the rocky slope above the ruined mill on Sope Creek / where sweet gum and hickory weave sunlight / into gauzy screens. And sometimes when I've made the mistake / of cruelty, which always breeds... Paul Guest http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14964 I've been thinking about thinking about / obliteration, again, the time, all of it, / I spent swept up in its romance. / Dust before a broom's baleen maw. Circuit / of the second hand which, even now, / holds a magic or a beauty / in its indifferent grasp. Easy thoughts, / which on a lesser... Ansie Baird http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14962 My mother shrugged off life / Three thousand miles from Paris, / City of her birth. It takes / Two weeks of bureaucratic tape / Before I fly her scant remains / From Buffalo to this historic place, / May 9, 1975, a fine night / For being scattered, if ever / There was one. Co-conspirators, / We creep... Martha Greenwald http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14961 Miles still to Bracknell, as the woman shifted / Three parcels across her mountainous lap, / And in that instant, accordion of skirts lifted, / Petticoats above the knees, Shelley watched / Her calves collapse, molten flesh like poultices / Leaking through sackcloth, tubers gone to rot, / The carriage air fetid and contagious. / He swaddled... J. D. McClatchy / translated from the Italian of Lorenzo Da Ponte http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14960                                            Scene 5 /          THOSE BEFORE TO ONE SIDE, AND DONNA ELVIRA. /                            ... Attilio Bertolucci / translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14959 This is a year of poppies: our land / was brimming with them as May burned / into June and I returned— / a sweet dark wine that made me drunk. / From clouds of mulberry to grains to grasses / ripeness was all, in the fitting / heat, in the slow drowsiness spreading / through the universe of green. / My life... Linda Kunhardt http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14958 Pam's at the plastic surgeon / waiting for him to slit / under her eyelids, / then sew the folds together. / Everybody does it; it takes / off years. She flips / through Good Housekeeping / and reads a description / of how maraschino cherries / are made. They inject / a normal cherry, dissolve / the pit, then bleach... Theodore Worozbyt http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14956 !--prose-->After losing the arm I lay sleeping for days and then I went down to the river. To wash my body seeing my dog run and the spittle glitter on his muzzle. A row of thin stakes I had pulled from the grass and hidden well had been replaced with... Rebecca Foust http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14955 The boat had no hull. It was a wing / fired in porcelain, glass and steel / skimming the waves and our girl gone / with you to let out the mainsail. The win / was what mattered, speed and style. / The boat had no hull, just a wing / so that waves slipped past... Billy Collins http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14954 Every reader loves the way he tells off / the sun, shouting busy old fool / into the English skies even though they / were likely cloudy on that seventeenth-century morning. / And it’s a pleasure to spend this sunny day / pacing the carpet and repeating the words, / feeling the syllables lock into rows / until I can... Gray Jacobik http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14953 Arrow-arum, water purslane, and false /             pimpernel are new to me now /                          that I live on a riverine tidal marsh. / These plants grow about or in the cove /    ... D. A. Powell http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14952 First, it's just the faces disappearing. / Because, deflected, as the faces long have been, / with their hunched trunks / and mercilessly twisted necks, / they can only be regarded from a ground's-eye view. / The bellwort tips its fallow head down / in the hot tomato field. The green snake rests / beneath the green... Jane Hirshfield http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14951 The egg had frozen, an accident. / I thought of my life. / I heated the butter anyhow. / The shell peeled easily, / inside it looked / both translucent and boiled. / I moved it around in the pan. / It melted, the whites / first clearing to liquid, / then turning solid / and white again like good... Michael Longley http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14950 I have flown the Atlantic / To reach you in your chair. / Cuddling up, we talk about / Flowers, important things, / And hold hands to celebrate / Spring gentian's heavenly / (Strictly speaking) blue. / You grow anemones, / You say, wind's daughters. / I say the world should name / A flower after you, Stanley. / We read... Eamon Grennan http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14949 Last night you called me out to the December dark / to look up and see what neither of us had ever seen / before: a burnished flock of Canada geese, bent / into a flexed bow and heading south across a clear- / starred moonless sky in silence, winging it / to warmer quarters, and... Joshua Clover http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14948 Option-ARMs and the man I sing who first / came from Detroit-Berlin into Black-Scholes / flight to liquidity flight to safety flight to quality
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/ Real city derelict house derelict storefront / ostalgia for the productive forces / dude that's not emptiness it's abstraction / asserting itself on the home front now / who will love in your... Marvin Bell http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14947 i>1. About the Dead Man and the Numbers / The dead man is outside the pale. / The dead man makes space for himself the way a soccer player moves to the place to be next. / The angles shift, the pace slows and picks up, it matters more, then less, then more,... Rosmarie Waldrop http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14946 !--prose--> /

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/ A view of the sea is the beginning of the journey. An image of Columbus, starting out from the abyss, enters the left hemisphere. Profusion of languages out of the blue. Bluster, blur, blubber. My father was troubled by inklings of Babel and multiplication on his table. Afraid that... Ian Duhig http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14944 A ranger in the old Immigrants' Station on Angel Island / noticed how shadows rippled on some replastered walls; / he found this was done to cover poems carved there / by the Chinese applying to navvy on the railways. /     A dragon out of water /     is at... Claudia Emerson http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14943 div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:8px;font-weight:bold">1