id int64 160k 1.59M | url stringlengths 46 285 | author stringlengths 0 217 | title stringlengths 1 241 | body stringlengths 100 77.3k |
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172,772 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/19819/epithalamium | Muna Lee | Epithalamium | I find you surely in denial,
You come closest in withdrawal:
Love so tested by long trial
Lifts the head in proud avowal.
If I sought you, I should lose you;
If you faltered, you were other.
What you ask not, how refuse you?
Separate, how taut the tether!
Life becomes one endless prayer
To life's immutable refusa... |
253,473 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159636/table | Ann Lauterbach | Table | People gather. They
eat, drink, speak. They
are among themselves
happily. They
celebrate this or that
occasion.
The cat
does not like
the cat door I installed.
It is not transparent.
I removed the flap. Now
the cat goes through
an open opening.
A distant
sound, a small ... |
201,882 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/34879/the-guitar-lesson | Stephen Dobyns | The Guitar Lesson |
Hand gripping the girl's thigh, pressed nearly upon
what her Bible calls her loins, the girl's music teacher
tries to make her sing. But she will not sing.
She will not play the piano or even the guitar.
Stretched on her back across the woman's knees,
blue skirt yanked past her navel, the girl pretends
to be asleep, w... |
204,114 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35998/blackberry-winter | Bethany Schroeder | Blackberry Winter |
Through winter's laying in and every
early camphored night
we asked what color eyes
would our eyes make-
how much would the brain weigh-
would blood and blood in us
determine blood and blood.
I read the almanac for signs;
you threw the I Ching
and ordered a parents' guide.
Now something resists.
Cattails grow like pi... |
208,080 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37989/beautiful-girl-cafe | Rita Signorelli-Pappas | Beautiful Girl Cafe |
At dusk while we sat and talked
in our Beautiful Girl Cafe
across from the Pitti Palace
your imagination practiced loving
that tall, virginal waitress
serving us cups of lemon tea.
When she left our table
your temples rustled with
a delicate wreath of pine,
and when she drifted through
the airy garden behind the bar
... |
167,332 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/16779/anthology-of-oom | Isidor Schneider | Anthology of Oom | Oom Make your mouth a cavern,
It will say oom.
One o is a hoop for a clown to jump through,
Two pierce a corridor,
M is its infinitely reaching wall.
Doom D makes it
The labyrinth of destiny.
Boom With B
It struts with a reiterative
Pomp of sound.
Whom With Wh
I... |
253,285 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/159364/musee-des-beaux-arts-63a1efde036cd | W. H. Auden | Musée des Beaux Arts | About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did no... |
243,701 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90964/idling | Stanley Moss | Idling | There's wondering, idle thoughts,
thinking over what was last said,
some poetry in my head
like traffic outside the window.
In my forgetful marrow, I consider
often lying words, like everything and all .
Nothing is another matter.
Nothing comes of everything and all.
Something comes of nothing.
I know the word no means... |
691,206 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/162690/prodigal-daughter | Erika L. Sánchez | Prodigal Daughter | Every day is yesterday
& like the loneliness
of water, I have always
existed. My body brackets
a quiver in a world that doesn't
love us. Despite the tyrants,
the "I" is forever
insatiable. Alone in Spain once,
I ran out of money &
for days ate nothing
but eggs. The bad life ,
my mother would say. & yet
I was r... |
178,374 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/22935/if-the-diver | Angelo P. Bertocci | If the Diver |
If the diver poises,
Naked, white, and adolescent,
On his plank athwart the blue;
If bold flight breaks,
And bends, sun-silvered, toward a crescent
For the clean fall,
No curve is traced beyond recall;
It is a well-remembered clue
For us.
We, too, have shaken off the land
That sucks a root down through the feet
To bin... |
194,422 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/31143/survey | Paul Lawson | Survey |
We're up in a balloon
with so many beliefs to be shattered
our voices quaver
below, the people
seem to be shouting we're gods
the dogs believe in us
they bark
they're all we hear
except an occasional ooga
at a crossroads
translation is impossible
but the visibility is good
you can see everything here
look
somebody ... |
253,439 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159619/framed-pictures | Dorothea Lasky | Framed Pictures | At the very last moment
It is morning
Nothing is redemptive
About it
There's a buffet breakfast somewhere
That no one cares about
It's the next day
After hours of sex in the garden
We are walking across the golden walkway
A lion is running
He shouts that the green city is near
But something else propels us
Not the stal... |
214,580 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41251/the-unmothering | Debra Bruce | The Unmothering |
Because her absence is now a presence
wherever you go, although it's true she never
approved of what you live by,
knew what you're most moved by;
because you are as capable as she
was culpable, you now consider dropping
all charges against her, notwithstanding
the decades it took to make
an impeccable case.
Who among... |
211,260 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/39586/longings | F. D. Reeve | Longings |
Front flat as a flounder, man alone,
upright, the indenture of himself,
forever searches for his missing half.
Some say the noblest lovers are men loving men-
pure parthenogenetic nature -
two heroes yearning for a golden mean.
O brave implausibility! O bold
and death-defying sacrifice!
Each ... |
220,164 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44880/the-cats-song | Marge Piercy | The cat’s song | Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother's forgotten breasts.
Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to ... |
180,008 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/23771/lucretius | William Michaux | Lucretius |
Lucretius, starting from the exquisite
Languor of venery, looked round and said,
"Was that an earthquake tremor, or was it
Only a fickle atom in my head?"
Such answer as Lucretius might have made
Himself, and had in thought begun to make,
Was not forthcoming; idle language strayed
Beyond his ears and made him feel opa... |
215,262 | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41593/like-your-face | Diane Ackerman | Like Your Face | OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2002
DIANE ACKERMAN
LIKE YOUR FACE
After Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Like your face,
a thousand-leafed day,
and I who rejoice
in what's measureless
measure the onset of evening
and the imagined scent
of your eyelashes
shivering like flowers in the wind.
What fate threw us togethe... |
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