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203,552 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35717/larkinesque | Michael Ryan | Larkinesque | Reading in the paper a summary
of a five-year psychological study
that shows those perceived as most beautiful
are treated differently,
I think they could have just asked me,
remembering a kind of pudgy kid
and late puberty, the bloody noses
and wisecracks because I wore glasses,
though we all know by now how awful i... |
234,480 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54642/virtuosi | Lisel Mueller | Virtuosi | People whose lives have been shaped by history-and it is always tragic- do not want to talk about it, would rather dance, give parties on thrift-shop china. You feel wonderful in their homes, two leaky rooms, nests they stowed inside their hearts on the road into exile. They know how to fix potato peelings and apple co... |
202,794 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35337/the-gift-of-the-magi | Peter Meinke | The Gift of the Magi | DECEMBER 1982
PETER MEINKE
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
The angel of the Lord sang low
and shucked his golden slippers off
and stretched his wings as if to show
their starlit shadow on the wall
and did the old soft shoe, yeah,
did the buck and wing.
The Magi put their arms around
each other, then with choru... |
238,380 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56852/el-tigre-market | Juan Delgado | El Tigre Market | As apparent as the rest, the asphalt cracks
are crowded with yellow weeds, the rust goes
beyond its bleeding color, and the lot's rails,
battered by cars, cast larger bars by noon.
On one side of the market someone painted
a row of flower pots, hanging geraniums
for the locals who must now go across town.
As apparent a... |
204,588 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/36237/in-a-cab | Baron Wormser | In a Cab |
Form amends our laboring nerves.
Without this blessing, plain life grows eager and soft.
The handshaking brio of feckless energy
Taints all contentment; gain becomes a reason.
Musicians could do otherwise.
Instead they chose a solitude that flowers,
All frustration funnelled
Into an hour or two of studied power.
Errin... |
200,312 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/34092/movie-night | Stephen Dunn | Movie Night |
On the empty walls some of the newcomers
project their private, small Guernicas
which no one else can see-
while in the large room with the screen
Liv Ullman touches Max von Sydow
with a lust so deepened by grief
the rest of us feel our miseries
are amateurish, some of us are even elated
to have Bergman for such a fri... |
194,832 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/31348/saties-suits | John Koethe | Satie's Suits |
Orange is the hue of modernity.
Greater than gold, shakey and poetic,
Our century's art has been a gentle surrender
To this color's nonchalant "stance"
Towards hunger and the unknown, and its boldness:
For it has replaced us as the subject of the unknown.
We still like the same things, but today we handle them
diffe... |
224,734 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48458/ovid-in-the-third-reich | Geoffrey Hill | Ovid in the Third Reich | I love my work and my children. God
Is distant, difficult. Things happen.
Too near the ancient troughs of blood
Innocence is no earthly weapon.
I have learned one thing: not to look down
So much upon the damned. They, in their sphere,
Harmonize strangely with the divine
Love. I, in mine, celebrate the love... |
210,186 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/39046/equinox-56d21c87cb554 | Christopher Buckley | Equinox |
Wine-sap aura and atmosphere, pale
as if flour had been sifted over
the horizon's long rope as it cinches up
the day and leaves us, leads us to that last
ash or amber space between the boughs
that a thousand starlings fill like a shower
of black stars, reiterating their harsh sense
of the dark, which is only the dista... |
233,202 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/53840/evolution-of-my-block | Jacob Saenz | Evolution of My Block | As a boy I bicycled the block
w/a brown mop top falling
into a tail bleached blond,
gold-like under golden light,
like colors of Noble Knights
'banging on corners, unconcerned
w/the colors I bore-a shorty
too small to war with, too brown
to be down for the block.
White Knights became brown
Kings still showing black ... |
168,836 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/17612/stallion | Frank Mitalsky | Stallion | Sunset romps past again today
Streaking his golden mane;
He lifts his flaming nose to neigh,
Calling his mate in vain.
The trees he brushed are left on fire,
The earth rings from his feet:
The mountain burns a lost desire
As night slips down the street.
|
163,088 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14393/gray | William Rose Benét | Gray | Fold on fold the purple, crimson then-
Gold? I shook my head and turned away.
What? I turned and glared in that barbaric den.
"Gray!"
Ashes, rats! You cannot, cannot mean it, surely?
"Yes," I chirped, "I'm weary; I have had a day;
One thing only suits me, purely and demurely-
Gray."
Doves and twilight ... |
187,228 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27499/sometimes-and-after | H.D. | Sometimes and After |
Yet sometimes I would sweep the floor,
I would put daisies in a tumbler,
I would have long dreams before, long day-dreams after;
there would be no gauntleted knock on the door,
or tap-tap with a riding crop,
no galloping here and back;
but the latch would softly lift,
would softly fall,
dusk would come slowly,
and ... |
186,944 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27356/in-childhoods-chair | Kimon Friar | In Childhood's Chair |
KIMON FRIAR
IN CHILDHOOD'S CHAIR
By antique mirrors blurred with memories,
In an old drawing-room of gold and green
Hung with Mozartian melodies, she sits
In childhood's chair in the late afternoon,
The curtains drawn on adolescent streets
Where copulate in error lust and dream,
And drawn on lilt... |
201,416 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/34644/last-signals | Margaret Kent | Last Signals |
I
In the vision the particulars rule, but
the air's still round and the navigator's fingers
are made of glass, sounding the stars like clear test tubes
filling with light.
But what of our baggage, the farewells?
At the runway's edge, the semaphores wave through the
rain
their ... |
162,700 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14181/quilts | Mary Willis Shuey | Quilts |
They gave me the quilt that Great-aunt Elizabeth made-
A quilt of pink roses, and tiny careful stitches.
It goes in my chest, for in October I marry.
Pink roses, with stems of green on a background of white,
And Great-aunt Elizabeth pieced it for her own chest.
She pieced it with trembling hands, for her lover had go... |
202,970 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35425/the-way-of-the-world | Askold Melnyczuk | The Way of the World |
December 1980
Reading Duns Scotus, I find this passage,
a quotation from Avicenna:
Those who deny
a first principle
should be beaten
or exposed to fire until
they concede that to burn
and not to burn
or to be beaten
and not to be beaten
are not identical.
The Soviet Army masses
at the Polish bord... |
173,186 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/20051/in-argos | H. L. Davis | In Argos | SE DE VoL. XLII
ee No. II
A Magazine of Verse
MAY 1933
TWO POEMS
IN ARGOS
You know Troias? Agamemnon? I was born in his
town,
Was born in Argos. A small town, bordering the sea.
I remember not much. Hard work. We used to have
olives,
Bread soak... |
251,135 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/155588/battle-of-the-rams | Romeo Oriogun | Battle of the Rams | The field has ceased to be lush wonder, from the eyes of a bird I watched them go again and again, horns finding the softness behind fur. Here, what seek for death is been praised. Young boys jump into the air to know the weightlessness of joy. Every year they come here to know death, to know the last sound of a dying ... |
206,054 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/36972/the-uncles | Roberta Spear | The Uncles |
They say that as a young child
you were especially smitten
with the older men-those red-nosed
unmarried uncles of your father.
They held you up until you brushed
the veil of heat that hugged
the ceiling. You could see
the crescent fold of cheek, flesh
pocked and marbled with a hundred
dying rivers. Gold suspenders,
bo... |
190,102 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28967/view-56d21295d8aaa | Judith Van Leeuwen | View |
Keep the cliff immovable, keep
it in mind, with the light
sea reaching, reaching
and falling, trying and failing
to climb the rock.
Not to translate is the greater art
Life on leaves of paper
sea into meaning, stones
into eternity. There is a bottom
to all this, comforting none.
URBANIZATIONAL
They would have died... |
202,110 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/34994/perturbation | Aris Alexandhrou | Perturbation |
The astronomers receive groups of students,
members of the YMCA, Marxists,
and roughly explain the installations,
permit them to peer at the planet Neptune.
There's no way of avoiding such visitors.
Whether you want to or not,
you will see them yawning behind their hands,
standing before a mainspring
as though confron... |
186,482 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27120/the-painted-lady | Margaret Danner | The Painted Lady | The Painted Lady is a small African
Butterfly gayly toned deep tan and peach
That seems as tremulous and delicately sheer
As the objects I treasure, yet this cosmopolitan
Can cross the sea at the icy time of the year
In the trail of the big boats, to France.
Mischance is as wide and grey as the lake here
In Chicago. ... |
179,372 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/23439/figures-of-space | Marguerite Young | Figures of Space |
Why did Nature after such large expense
Declare the pact of her unaltered peace
And let the invader softly enter in,
Sleep, sleep with no defense but the tired sentry
Sleeping at the outer wall of space,
So wind herself in fleece of that cold flame,
In the dream of space, in Jason's silver fleece,
Nocturnal rabbits... |
207,040 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37467/respite-56d21adede6fc | J. W. Rivers | Respite |
Ah Dieu! que la guerre est jolie
Avec ses chants, ses longs loisirs.
Apollinaire
We came last week,
Running faster than fear,
Through a great clangor of horns
To take cover in this grove.
The meadow haze is lifting.
My buddies, calm and composed,
Are settled down,
Perhaps a bit awkwardly
On... |
161,302 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/13363/death-and-the-jester | Ernest Rhys | Death and the Jester | Black crow, art thou come
For Dagonet's wit?
It is quick as the light
Or the dragon-fly's dart.
It is born in a smile,
It is bred in the heart,
It is light, it is laughter.
It took life when Eve laughed
At the lion-cub's play;
It slept then awhile,
When her sorrow came after
With the son of the snake.
Eve's joy was my ... |
236,698 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55905/the-house-top | Herman Melville | The House-top | No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air
And binds the brain-a dense oppression, such
As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,
Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.
Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads
Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by.
Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf
Of muffled sound, the a... |
194,276 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/31070/esther | W. S. Merwin | Esther |
Tomorrow they will come for you
old female word from the corner
lucidity
motionless in the dark
they will take you out to be
bared elsewhere
opened before it is May
there is no one else here... |
187,954 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27875/the-beauty-of-jobs-daughters | Jay Macpherson | The Beauty of Job's Daughters |
The old, the mad, the blind have fairest daughters.
Take Job: the beasts the accuser sends at evening
Shoulder his house and shake it; he's not there,
Attained in age to inwardness of daughters,
In all the land no women found so fair.
Angels and sons of God are nearest neighbours,
And even the accuser may repair
To w... |
248,421 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/149515/small-talk | Momtaza Mehri | Small Talk | you michelangelo's crouching boy/you d'angelo's purr/you dead currency/you dead presidents/you a stick of incense/you a stick-up artist/you haraami/you the hum of a lifetime basined in my lap/count our tallies of loss backward for me/run to the bank & translate it into a fistful of green of your choice/or something els... |
224,756 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48472/snake-56d229bd70868 | Dannie Abse | Snake | When the snake bit
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa
while he was praying
the snake died. (Each day
is attended by surprises
or it is nothing.)
Question: was the bare-footed,
smelly Rabbi more poisonous
than the snake
or so God-adulterated
he'd become immune
to serpent poison?
Oh great-great-great-uncles,
your palms weighing a... |
236,452 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55771/magi | Brenda Shaughnessy | Magi | If only you'd been a better mother.
How could I have been a better mother?
I would have needed a better self,
and that is a gift I never received.
So you're saying it's someone else's fault?
The gift of having had a better mother myself,
my own mother having had a better mother herself.
The gift that keeps on not... |
215,088 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41505/silent-film | Kurt Brown | Silent Film | Doors opened and shut,
the director shouted orders
through a bullhorn,
or babbled just
out of the frame.
A carpenter hammered flats nearby
for the next production.
All of this, and more,
while the actors blocked it out,
already living
in that small square of light
where silence reigned
lik... |
162,858 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14267/peace-56d2081b0303b | Agnes Lee | Peace | Sie VoL. XIII
BER) e
À. No. III
A Magazine of Verse
DECEMBER, 1918
PEACE
Sn bells and flags!
Suddenly-door to door -
Tidings! Can we believe,
We who were used to war?
Yet we have dreamed her face,
Knowing her light must be,
... |
253,557 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159811/mathematical-love-poem-with-a-proof | Sharon Olds | Mathematical Love Poem, with a Proof | I am on the plane, in the air, before I
see what just happened-I fell in love
with him, again, in the car to the airport.
It happened sentence
by sentence, slowly,
like pick-up sticks. As a child, I would lay one
atop a precarious nest of its fellows,
and then another. With Carl, you don't
know when he's going to feel ... |
193,724 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/30794/historic-pun | George Oppen | Historic Pun |
La petite vie, a young man called it later, it had been
the last thing offered
In that way,
A way of behaving, a way of being in public
Which we lacked-
If there was doubt it was doubt of himself
Finding a force
In the cafés and bistros
Force of the familiar and familiars
The force of ease
They gather on the st... |
186,550 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27155/birth-56d2111621b5e | Selwyn S. Schwartz | Birth |
Born of love, caged in anatomy's miraculous
Blood and flesh, my son has known grace;
Animated in the beginning, in my home's world,
He plays with strange performing toys
His innocent interludes of still another world.
Flocking jewels on his timeless clocks
Tick patiently his hunger's complaint for things;
A judge wit... |
179,890 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/23712/on-your-radio-tonight | Joseph D. Bennett | On Your Radio Tonight |
In a thousand homes a thousand
Brass pianos cluck the keys.
Above, Orion stalks the strands
And Scorpio crawls through starry seas,
The house, roaring, shaking on its earth,
Strains its metal mouth and wails.
The listeners, crouched to share its mirth,
Gash their faces with their nails,
Wild honey and locusts nouris... |
174,516 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/20838/one-knocking-at-a-door | C. F. MacIntyre | One Knocking at a Door | He knocks, but knocks so lightly
none save the ready ear
that listens with receptive heart
can hear.
Then, diffident and silent,
he suddenly retires,
retracting the extended hand
of his desires.
Tomorrow you may pass him
but lack the eye to heed
one with a quiet competence
surpassing need.
|
200,684 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/34278/late-echo | John Ashbery | Late Echo | Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.
Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally
... |
226,336 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49591/love-of-my-flesh-living-death | Lorna Dee Cervantes | "Love of My Flesh, Living Death" | Once I wasn't always so plain.
I was strewn feathers on a cross
of dune, an expanse of ocean
at my feet, garlands of gulls.
Sirens and gulls. They couldn't tame you.
You know as well as they: to be
a dove is to bear the falcon
at your breast, your nights, your seas.
My fear is simple, heart-faced
above a flare ... |
190,444 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/29148/limited-view | James Hearst | Limited View |
The clutter and ruck of the stubble publish the time
That prompts my steps, I know what I have to do
For my bread before frost locks the land against
My plow and fire shoulders the chimney flue.
Rocks have a word that crows repeat over and over
On the cold slopes of winter where the picking is poor,
It echoes in empt... |
216,364 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/42147/tutelary | Michael Ryan | Tutelary | What a fuckup you are.
What dumbshit you do.
Your father's voice
still whispers in you,
despite the joys
that sweeten each day.
Your Genius it isn't
until, dying away,
it worms back through
the sparkling dream
where you drown him
in an inch-deep stream:
your knee in his b... |
222,580 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46882/proverbs-56d226f5efe25 | Thomas Merton | Proverbs | 1. I will tell you what you can do ask me if you do not understand what I just said
2. One thing you can do be a manufacturer make appliances
3. Be a Man-u-fac-tu-rer
4. Make appliances sell them for a high price
5. I will tell you about industry make appliances
6. Make appliances that move
7. Ask me if you do no... |
250,861 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/155225/forgotten-portraits | Janine Solursh | Forgotten Portraits | Suddenly nobody knows where you are.
You're just a memory,
an echo,
an idea thin as smoke.
Your last text, call, letter, Facebook post-
only footprints in the surf.
Your edges blur and you become
a friend's story,
a lover's history.
Initially, you beat against the panes in set-aside frames
begging to be taken out
and ... |
240,798 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58127/arts-leisure | Jessica Hagedorn | Arts & Leisure | i read your poem
over and over
in this landscape
of women
women purring
on balconies
overlooking
the indigo sea
my mother's
blue taffeta dress
is black as the sea
she glides
out my door
to the beach
where sleek white boats
are anchored
under a full,
luscious moon
still
i am still
the wind
outside my window
my mothe... |
178,884 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/23192/jack-spratt-et-ux | Winfield Townley Scott | Jack Spratt et Ux | Rise up, rise up, Jack Spratt. And you, his wife,
Lie down, lie down to hark the risen cock.
He splits the darkness with his barnyard laugh,
Morning floods in through the simmering crack.
Does the sun drink the dew or earth the sun?-
Hard, hard to tell in all this battering light.
Sun's for singing on, not thinking on;... |
1,546,341 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53762/someone | Howard Moss | Someone | You watch the night like a material
Slowly being crammed into a tube of rooms;
It showers into gunshot, pepper, dew,
As if a hand had squeezed it at one end,
Is blank as innocence when daylight comes
Projecting sunlit patches on the wall
That fade. Too much is going on, too much
Of life, you say, for you to live alone
... |
236,382 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55736/report-from-the-subtropics | Billy Collins | Report from the Subtropics | For one thing, there's no more snow
to watch from an evening window,
and no armfuls of logs to carry into the house
so cumbersome you have to touch the latch with an elbow,
and once inside, no iron stove waiting like an old woman
for her early dinner of wood.
No hexagrams of frost to study carefully
on the cold glass... |
218,150 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43114/song-of-three-smiles | W. S. Merwin | Song of Three Smiles | Let me call a ghost,
Love, so it be little:
In December we took
No thought for the weather.
Whom now shall I thank
For this wealth of water?
Your heart loves harbors
Where I am a stranger.
Where was it we lay
Needing no other
Twelve days and twelve nights
In each other's eyes?
Or was it at Babel
And the days too sma... |
252,707 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/158160/interrogation-in-a-nail-salon | Khải Đơn | Interrogation in a Nail Salon | [How long have you been here?]
From the airplane window, she saw dragon's eyes
floating to sheeny green mangrove feet
its scales a rainbow mirror
dancing light on her mother's mud wall
... |
168,844 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/17616/university-portraits | Harriet Monroe | Why Not Poets? | COMMENT
WHY NOT POETS?
TK recent enterprises for the distribution of books
suggest the above question. Both the Book-of-the-
Month Club and the Literary Guild offer their subscribers
"twelve books a year, one each month," ata cost equal to,
or less than, the publishers' retail pric... |
211,614 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/39766/respirating-buds | John Tranter | RESPIRATING BUDS |
I
It's just an empty room
in a beach house. You go
somewhere for drinks, stay out late,
get lost coming home. It's the awful page I
choose to look at in a diary, a challenge
like walking under a nest of hornets
to show I can do it. It's what draws
flame down from the sky, it
waits for me too... |
210,212 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/39059/beneath-the-plaza-of-illustrious-hombres | William Greenway | Beneath the Plaza of Illustrious Hombres |
Whoever knows Mexico beneath the surface, is sad.
THE PLUMED SERPENT
Perhaps because I was told
the city was built above rivers
in that high desert, I dream
rapids foaming below the streets,
my family swirling over boulders
to drown beneath the plaza of fountains
that's over the car park and t... |
236,430 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55760/the-american-on-his-first-honeymoon | Rita Mae Reese | The American on His First Honeymoon | What we can say has already been said
about each painting in the gallery-
about the quality of light, the way she holds her head.
So we are silent in the subway, silent in bed.
Our bodies too are mute; we fall asleep knowing
what we could say has already been said.
Over toast and coffee and the newspaper thoroughly... |
170,790 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/18703/menta-the-drunkard | Emanuel Carnevali | Menta the Drunkard | OBSERVATIONS
MENTA THE DRUNKARD
Menta, what green phantoms do you see in the bottom of
the wine glass?
Do they not scare you away, Menta, old woman?
What cares have you yet, old woman,
for whom the world must be a heap of ashes?
What secret marvelous worlds do you construct
when your ... |
240,888 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58173/palling-around | Gregory Pardlo | Palling Around | He heard in curtains of sleet cleaving
from magnolia leaves encrypted Aztec
frequencies, he said. When the sun
god liquors loose each ashen tongue
the planet tattles. We are advised
to listen: this he'd grunt to signal his
dwindling fuse and the bartender would
show him the door. In his honor I tune
my form to the ema... |
248,775 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150295/grace-5cfa852f5d239 | Sarah Gambito | Grace | You won't
kill me
because I
will not
oblige you
by dying.
I hold all
my hands
under
the cherry
trees.
Clusters of
shyest
pinks
joining
hands.
Laced
like this,
diadem
like this,
we live the
past/
present/
future/
all at once
and even now.
Wouldn't we tear
seas,
cities,
money
to get to
each other?
The public
gard... |
249,731 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/152952/spellcaster | Jeannine Hall Gailey | Spellcaster | A golden-haired girl born
in a month of sacrifice,
poor little lamb
throws off her wool coat
and pulls out boots she stole
and rides off on a reindeer instead
and of course she can speak to roses-
isn't that the point?
Eventually she ends up in a castle
but it's not her home.
It's a place to liberate,
to escape, to ... |
181,924 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/24767/amazing-minute | Kenneth Slade Alling | Amazing Minute | TWO POEMS
AMAZING MINUTB
The house has the cohesion of the stairs;
The stairs cohere in him who makes ascent,
Who traverses that brief plateau, the landing-
In this amazing minute all who mount
Their million terraces of stone or wood
And all their purposes are. soluble
In his identity, what ea... |
202,752 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35316/forgotten-men-2 | Edward Brash | Forgotten Men 2 |
Speaking of the south, Walter Inglis Anderson returned
there after having left the Pennsylvania Art Museum
School to paint the wildlife of Horn
Island off the Mississippi coast. He knew
how old birds were and felt some ancient inclination
to cover nearby surfaces with portraits
of inhabitants most men ignore or eat. T... |
253,281 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/159339/land-ho | Kwame Dawes | Land Ho | I cannot speak the languages
spoken in that vessel,
cannot read the beads
promising salvation.
I know this only,
that when the green of land
appeared like light
after the horror of this crossing,
we straightened our backs
and faced the simplicity
of new days with flame.
I know I have the blood of survivors
coursing ... |
250,643 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/154991/the-uncle-poem | Jackson Holbert | The Uncle Poem | avuncular
trees
or was it avuncular skyscrapers?
yea it was the skyscrapers but
I don't know man
I remember it was tuesday
the cars were doing their
normal car shit some asshole
was blasting Puccini
out of his BMW and some other
asshole was singing
an opera as he walked
down Main Street
what else
I saw my grandmother
t... |
229,932 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51985/zebra | C. K. Williams | Zebra | Kids once carried tin soldiers in their pockets as charms
against being afraid, but how trust soldiers these days
not to load up, aim, blast the pants off your legs?
I have a key-chain zebra I bought at the Thanksgiving fair.
How do I know she won't kick, or bite at my crotch?
Because she's been murdered, machin... |
249,239 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151502/object-lesson-5dc04e2bb70da | Claire Schwartz | Object Lesson | You learn to recognize beauty by its frame.
In the gilded hall, in the gilded frame, her milky neck
extended as she peers over the drawn bath. A target,
a study, a lesson: she requires you
to be beautiful. You should save her, no matter the price.
No matter the price, the Collector will take it. His collection makes ... |
169,216 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/17823/the-spotted-birds | Anthony Wrynn | The Spotted Birds | TWO POEMS
THE SPOTTED BIRDS
I waited where the spotted birds
Flew upward from the water and the rocks.
I waited, not to watch the claws,
The scattered drops, the throats; but thoughts and words
Were fettered in my mind. Remote,
The wind against my eyes, from that waste shore
I watche... |
209,750 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/38825/the-mosaic-of-creation | Debora Greger | The Mosaic of Creation |
San Marco, Venice
1 THE FIRST DAY: THE SEPARATION
OF LIGHT FROM DARKNESS
High in the dark light that we call weak
God has six days. He's young, smooth-cheeked-
and already something's not to his taste,
an angel, as always, in too great haste
to roll the earth back into night
before he c... |
239,680 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57535/poem-written-with-issa-in-my-dream | Matthew Rohrer | Poem Written with Issa [“In my dream”] | In my dream
his voice began to fade
I had to call him
the next day
I feel about average
he said
I'm going out
to buy some juice
a huge frog
was in the driveway
a small boat drifting
the river flowed in silence |
221,634 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46304/retrospect-56d226248e844 | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | Retrospect | There is a better thing, dear heart,
Than youthful flush or girlish grace.
There is the faith that never fails,
The courage in the danger place,
The duty seen, and duty done,
The heart that yearns for all in need,
The lady soul which could not stoop
To selfish thought or lowly deed.
All that we ever dre... |
250,061 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/153974/how-to-stuff-a-pepper | Nancy Willard | How to Stuff a Pepper | Now, said the cook, I will teach you
how to stuff a pepper with rice.
Take your pepper green, and gently,
for peppers are shy. No matter which side
you approach, it's always the backside.
Perched on green buttocks, the pepper sleeps.
In its silk tights, it dreams
of somersaults and parsley,
of the days when the sexes... |
221,568 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46231/cool-pastoral-on-bloor-street | John Reibetanz | Cool Pastoral on Bloor Street | 1.
Consider the tragic fortitude
of mannikins, the courage it takes
under casual poses to do
nothing interminably each day.
To face unflinching (through sunlit glass
that bars them from it) the rushing surf
of life within reach where they must stand
marooned on their islands' plastic turf,
and not to ... |
226,756 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49901/reading-a-memoir-at-cedar-island | Nicole Pekarske | Reading a Memoir at Cedar Island | We arrive eight hours before morning
but the Sound luminesces enough to gloss
jabbed brushstrokes of cedar, the strand
prickled with fringes of eelgrass,
and the world's baby teeth ground down
to this pall of sand.
It's gusting so strong I can barely pee straight -
You can see in each stunted and strung-out
live o... |
172,586 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/19716/the-steppe | Helene S Pulse | The Steppe | IN UKRAINE
THE STEPPE
How good, when two friends walk the steppe together,
To top low hills that show a sudden town,
All pink and blue, that sets them guessing whether
It's better looking on or plunging down
Into the streets where bare-foot, red-scarfed girls
Sit in the sun with sold... |
190,060 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28946/the-rothko-paintings | Michael Goldman | The Rothko Paintings |
Currents around a pole, or a fire
damping to stillness,
they conduce to our calm in their process,
terminal, voiceless.
Unbound, yet selves in the exigence
of merely having to be,
like a new map, these continents
explore us to the sea.
LYRIC (ll)
This house is shrieking with consent,
un... |
194,338 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/31101/home-thoughts | Lewis Turco | Home Thoughts |
Time buzzes in the ear. Somewhere
nearby, beyond my peripheral
vision, an insect throbs its heartsong
to the couch. A twilleter fuzzes
against a burning lamp. Outdoors,
a common goatsucker strings twelve
yellow streetlights on its bill. Between
its hoarse shrieks, the town sky drops pieces
of clum among my snoring... |
199,750 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/33811/andy | Paul Backhurst | Andy |
PAUL BACKHURST
ANDY
Hearing the flimsy plastic tap again
on the casement glass (it seemed it wished to gain
admittance-now to boldly force entrance
and by reverberation shatter the pane),
I turn to acknowledge the plaintive wind,
now mixed with rain in a gentle rhythm falling,
to loose... |
1,546,786 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55103/the-return-56d236479a5c2 | Jan Owen | The Return | Mondays Began with one plait loose, a pip in your teeth and late for Geography, lined and blank, facts to the right, tall stories left. To sail the heat in a weatherboard classroom boat with banana and vegemite colouring the air sargasso green. To ship ten thousand things on cursive seas to the edge of the known page -... |
202,668 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35274/meeting-place | A. R. Ammons | Meeting Place |
The water nearing the ledge leans down with
grooved speed at the spill then,
quickly groundless in air, bends
its flat bottom plates up for the circular
but crashes into irregularities of lower
ledge, then breaks into the white
bluffs of warped lace in free fall that
breaking with acceleration against air
unweave bi... |
217,890 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42956/empire-of-dreams | Charles Simic | Empire of Dreams | On the first page of my dreambook
It's always evening
In an occupied country.
Hour before the curfew.
A small provincial city.
The houses all dark.
The storefronts gutted.
I am on a street corner
Where I shouldn't be.
Alone and coatless
I have gone out to look
For a black dog who answers to my whistle.
I have a kind o... |
246,473 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/145654/naming-the-heartbeats | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Naming the Heartbeats | I've become the person who says Darling, who says Sugarpie, Honeybunch, Snugglebear-and that's just for my children. What I call my husband is unprintable. You're welcome. I am his sweetheart, and finally, finally-I answer to his call and his alone. Animals are named for people, places, or perhaps a little Latin. Plant... |
237,558 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56394/wild-kingdom | Tyrone Williams | Wild Kingdom | This is your foreign correspondent,
Aristotle, for The Poetics,
reporting live from the Mediterranean
where the skulls and bones of a few Egyptians
crown the tradeships of His Majesty,
wave back and forth:
starfish-moons-Februaries.
To my right, our military advisor,
Hernando Cortez,
oversees operations at the Aztec/
... |
179,410 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/23459/airplanes-1938 | Edward Weismiller | Airplanes, 1938 | That was when flight was the long, silver dream
Curling with cloud, and spangled by the sun:
Teaching no death, except what heaven might seem;
No end of time; only how time might run
Endless and endless, over and under space,
Always the same, and being the same, not there-
Strong as a circling web of metal lace,
Or fr... |
169,338 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/17888/earth-grows-old | Audrey Wurdemann | Earth Grows Old |
Soundless she turns on poles of crystaline
And ancient ice, where steadfastly she's grown,
Leaf-garmented and wrapped in living green
That merges in the agate veins of stone.
Wearied with fruitful years, she, in a way
That planets have, essays a knowing smile,
Not to be thought too old for many a day-
Death's all the ... |
243,577 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90842/la-salamandre | Galway Kinnell | The Salamander |
Î
And now you are Douve in the last room of summer.
A salamander darts on the wall. Its gentle human head gives
off the death of summer. "I want to be engulfed in you, narrow
life," cries Douve. "Empty flash, run on my lips, pierce me!
"I love blinding myself, surrendering myself to the... |
222,714 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46966/little-bo-peep | Mother Goose | Little Bo-Peep | Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
And can't tell where to find them;
Leave them alone, and they'll come home,
Bringing their tails behind them.
Little Bo-Peep fell fast asleep,
And dreamt she heard them bleating;
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were still all fleeting.
Then up she took her little c... |
189,906 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28869/the-change-of-life | James Scully | The Change of Life |
JAMES SCULLY
THE CHANGE OF LIFE
Into what silence had your still life cried?
You seemed unchanged, and yet were something new-
poised in pure being, a winter's bride,
like snow that stays, a moment, on the sea.
... Mother, the water taps gushed from their worn
mouths; the loose slip wrinkled ... |
175,000 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/21121/without-ceremony | Carl Bulosan | Without Ceremony | THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY
WITHOUT CEREMONY
Hurriedly the crowd disappeared at the street's end.
Forever the curious faces look and stare, obscuring,
Leaving the possible truth unseen -
Open and big faces are nothing but blurred images.
These are faces that are saddened by the spying years,
Faces tha... |
174,564 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/20863/twilight-56d20c4154753 | Laura Lee Bird | Twilight | This is the star-quiescent hour of night
When water-lilies lift the tapers of their light
Along still lakes. The sunken vales lie deep,
And hills of pearl where dews in clover sleep
Their blessed silver silence keep.
The winging moon glides beautifully free -
The argent shadow of a sable swallow, she
Whose pinions lu... |
241,688 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58590/beverly-huh | Jamila Woods | beverly, huh. | you must be
made of money.
your parents
must have grown
on trees.
bet you're black
tinged with green.
bet you sleep
on bags of it.
bet your barbies
climb it.
bet you never
wanted.
bet you never
had to ask.
bet you golf.
bet you tennis.
bet you got
a summer house.
bet you got
a credit card
for your 5th birthday.
bet you... |
221,522 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46177/business | A. F. Moritz | Business | Stiff, thick: the white hair of the broad-faced father,
who leads his shambling son along
cracked sidewalks, by dusty glass half hiding
goods never sold. The son is the taller one
but still a child: not aware of his clothes,
of what expressions seize on his soft face.
His gait lolls, loosely directed from some weak,
di... |
1,546,239 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53107/how-wonderful | Irving Feldman | How Wonderful | How wonderful to be understood,
to just sit here while some kind person
relieves you of the awful burden
of having to explain yourself, of having
to find other words to say what you meant,
or what you think you thought you meant,
and of the worse burden of finding no words,
of being struck dumb . . . because some brigh... |
207,034 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37464/in-his-sleep-my-father-inspects-the-work-of-the-army-corps-of-engineers | Brent Hendricks | In His Sleep, My Father Inspects the Work of the Army Corps of Engineers |
As part of the Arkansas River Project,
Allowee, Oklahoma, was flooded in 1947.
With his arms held wide
he dives into the black water,
swims away from the light on the dock,
down to the lake bottom where he was born.
Past the gas station, the general store,
and out the one long dirt road... |
165,408 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/15703/suddenly | Jessica Nelson North | Suddenly | We have a gray room. The walls are gray and bare.
I have hung pictures and set flowers there.
I have made curtains with wide and snowy hem
For our tiny windows to make the best of them.
You look at me. Your look is still and gray.
Your look is cool and dim and far away.
I cannot open the stubborn husks that shut
Your ... |
228,140 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50758/the-work-56d22e11a1f7a | Tom Sleigh | The Work | 1. Today
Today, this moment, speechlessly in pain,
He fights the terror of being poured out,
The fall into darkness unquenchably long
So that even as he hurtles he keeps holding
Back like a dam the flood overtops-but nothing now
Can stop that surge, already he swirls
To the source of Voices, the many throats inside t... |
219,560 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44320/yesterday-56d2235e36a70 | Edgar Albert Guest | Yesterday | I've trod the links with many a man,
And played him club for club;
'Tis scarce a year since I began
And I am still a dub.
But this I've noticed as we strayed
Along the bunkered way,
No one with me has ever played
As he did yesterday.
It makes no difference what the drive,
Together as we walk,
Till ... |
207,564 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37730/still-life-belt-on-bureau | Robert B. Shaw | Still Life: Belt on Bureau |
Surely it must be asleep. And camouflaged,
brown against brown, although its grain,
more delicate, can't match the wood's precisely.
It lies in a loose coil, relaxed, but self-protective.
The immemorial shape of menace and potential.
There, at the center of its limp constriction,
you can make out most of its brazen ... |
165,614 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/15817/never-did-i-dream | Harold Lewis Cook | Never Did I Dream | Harold Cook
NEVER DID I DREAM
I never thought that I should walk
In ecstasy the streets of town,
Or find a heart more beautiful
Than red leaves fluttering down.
I did not know archangels pass
In human guise among the trees;
And never, never did I dream
That I should walk with these.... |
206,124 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37007/mystery-play | Henry H. Hart | Mystery Play | HENRY HART
MYSTERY PLAY
November 22, 1963
It is almost Christmas.
A blue woman kneels over the bandaged child,
the hay ringed with wooden cattle.
Above, angels flutter from windows.
The star on the créche
sticks its spokes into everything.
How suddenly it happens,
the fa... |
192,750 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/30307/the-affair | Marvin Bell | The Affair | For R.
He learned early to turn out the light.
He could do no wrong:
too much of New England
and a heady share of pain-
soldier's, poet's, teacher's pain,
the agonizing husbandry-
all the years of his beating.
All men met in him
a life wholly above dreams,
a posture so banded
we could picture him wigged
as h... |
205,550 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/36719/over-brogno | Sydney Lea | Over Brogno |
If from behind the stars
the perilous Archangel came down,
our thunderous heartbeats would kill us.
Rilke
After the ten or twenty
quiet minutes
within the empty
church at San Giovanni,
the lisping wavelets of the Como arm
... |
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