PoetryMTEB/PoetryFoundationSubjectsClassification

id stringlengths 16 16	title stringlengths 1 203	author stringlengths 2 40	poem stringlengths 1 87.3k	labels_l1 listlengths 1 10	labels_l2 listlengths 0 15	labels_l1_names listlengths 1 10	labels_l2_names listlengths 0 15
b525e78ad54e3c32	I Saw England — July Night	Ivor Gurney	She was a villageOf lovely knowledge	[ "S3", "S11" ]	[ "S3-9", "S3-11", "S11-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life" ]
44a88c760dcd36f5	Morning After	Langston Hughes	I was so sick last night I Didn’t hardly know my mind. So sick last night I Didn’t know my mind. I drunk some bad licker that Almost made me blind. Had a dream last night I Thought I was in hell. I drempt last night I Thought I was in hell. Woke up and looked around me— Babe, your mouth was open like a well....	[ "S6", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S6-6", "S8-7", "S9-1" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
dcf91dd07ec2f0e7	Lamenting Widow	Ho Xuan Huong	A woman wails, boo hoo, mourning her man Shut up, shame on you, don't cry to the hills! O little sister, I should have warned you Don't eat the meat, if it makes you cough blood!	[ "S3", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S3-4", "S6-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Mourning" ]
972c19534a3ca32e	To Sleep	John Keats	O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws Aroun...	[ "S5", "S6" ]	[]	[ "Religion", "Living" ]	[]
3f8077d7f2d1f163	The Niche	Samuel Menashe	The niche narrows Hones one thin Until his bones Disclose him	[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S9-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
2d37d169aa31db28	The Mayor of Scuttleton	Mary Mapes Dodge	The Mayor of Scuttleton burned his nose Trying to warm his copper toes; He lost his money and spoiled his will By signing his name with an icicle-quill; He went bare-headed, and held his breath, And frightened his grandame most to death; He loaded a shovel, and tried to shoot, And killed the calf in the leg of his boot...	[ "S3", "S9", "S11" ]	[ "S3-9", "S9-4", "S11-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Activities", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Fairy-tales & Legends", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
2a8c6eb9177bf4d6	Transformed Creatures	Liu Xia	You have a strange pet — one eye is a cat’s, the other a sheep’s. Yet, it won’t socialize with felines, will attack any flock. On moonlit nights, it wanders on the roof. When you’re alone it will lie in your lap preoccupied, slowly studying you until — on its face — a challenge. Translated from the Chinese	[ "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S2-5", "S8-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]
bd064c84979fbfc7	A Noiseless Patient Spider	Walt Whitman	A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measurele...	[ "S2", "S5" ]	[ "S2-5", "S5-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
1fb56b8488939fbe	Maudlin; Or, The Magdalen’s Tears	Linda Gregerson	If faith is a tree that sorrow grows and women, repentant or not, are swamps, a man who comes for solace here will be up to his knees and slow getting out. A name can turn on anyone. But say that a woman washes the dust from a stranger’s feet and sits quite dry-eyed in front of her mirror at night. The candle ...	[ "S1", "S3", "S5", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S3-4", "S5-2", "S10-4" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Religion/Christianity" ]
301d9d6a91654562	A Route of Evanescence, (1489)	Emily Dickinson	A Route of Evanescence, With a revolving Wheel – A Resonance of Emerald A Rush of Cochineal – And every Blossom on the Bush Adjusts it’s tumbled Head – The Mail from Tunis – probably, An easy Morning’s Ride –	[ "S6", "S7" ]	[]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[]
b4c46ccbfc3236d4	“The Secretary of Liquor”	Mark Rudman	(JOHN F. KENNEDY’S INFORMAL APPOINTMENT OF DEAN MARTIN TO HIS CABINET) What the fuck did they want, these men who needed the company of others to make a life, as he needed a woman to make babies? —Dino, nick tosches I...	[ "S3" ]	[ "S3-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]
3d10a40a55e39f10	The House on Moscow Street	Marilyn Nelson	It's the ragged source of memory, a tarpaper-shingled bungalow whose floors tilt toward the porch, whose back yard ends abruptly in a weedy ravine. Nothing special: a chain of three bedrooms and a long side porch turned parlor where my great-grandfather, Pomp, smoked every evening over the news, a long sunny k...	[ "S5", "S8", "S11" ]	[ "S5-2", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S11-2" ]	[ "Religion", "Relationships", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural", "Religion/Christianity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
0d6c41a994193baa	Song of the Witches: “Double, double toil and trouble”	William Shakespeare	(from Macbeth) Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-bro...	[ "S2", "S5", "S8" ]	[ "S2-5", "S8-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
2655aa52bcde1390	kept busy	joanne burns	from our deep cool verandah we spy on the world passing by. we both wear glasses in order to pick out the details. even as children we noticed all. people would say dont like those twins they look at you funny. we were reassured. our powers had been confirmed. but that was a long while ago. now we are 60. we have lived...	[ "S3", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S3-2", "S8-3", "S8-4", "S8-5", "S9-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Friendship", "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]
590f552d9d64fb6b	The Story of Madame Chevalier	Ciaran Carson	You remember the Incredible Shrinking Man? I said. Well, last night I dreamed I was him. It began the same way. The shirt cuffs were the first thing that came to my attention, drooping down over my knuckles in the bedroom mirror. And my waistband and shoes were getting looser by the day. Within weeks you could per...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[]
b2b3763dcb0fc3b8	Quf: ק	Peter Cole	Fucked art thou, with luck, o reader within the palace within the palette within the impatience within, who tilts his letters into the light of the mind’s muttering unto itself, releasing their sounds to the whirlpool fierce of an ear to draw creations in— Who brings forth a kiss of circumference, the glyphs hooked an...	[ "S2", "S3", "S5", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S2-8", "S3-11", "S5-3", "S5-6", "S10-2", "S10-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/Judaism" ]
538025c46d81152f	Woodcut	LaWanda Walters	The trouble with Jane Eyre isn’t what I thought when I slammed shut the book on those pictures trying to fly out at me because I misunderstood, being too young to read. When you’re unable to read a book you can’t understand the illustrations either. Those were my mother’s books, a green bound set of that one and...	[ "S3", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S3-4", "S6-8", "S10-4", "S10-8" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Youth" ]
d4bfc2fe22c0a38e	The Darker Sooner	Catherine Wing	Then came the darker sooner, came the later lower. We were no longer a sweeter-here happily-ever-after. We were after ever. We were farther and further. More was the word we used for harder. Lost was our standard-bearer. Our gods were fallen faster, and fallen larger. The day was duller, duller was disaster. ...	[ "S1", "S2", "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S1-3", "S2-4", "S2-6", "S2-10", "S5-3" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Winter", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Religion/Faith & Doubt" ]
4df07cddcdced647	Have You Prayed?	Li-Young Lee	When the wind turns and asks, in my father’s voice,Have you prayed? I know three things. One: I’m never finished answering to the dead. Two: A man is four winds and three fires. And the four winds are his father’s voice, his mother’s voice . . . Or maybe he’s seven winds and ten fires. And the fires are seeing,...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-4", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
3378f3897875f006	Pretty	Stevie Smith	Why is the word pretty so underrated? In November the leaf is pretty when it falls The stream grows deep in the woods after rain And in the pretty pool the pike stalks He stalks his prey, and this is pretty too, The prey escapes with an underwater flash But not for long, the great fish has him now The pike is a ...	[ "S2" ]	[]	[ "Nature" ]	[]
384a85929fbaece1	Mother Earth	Yoko Ono	The sky is high We shit on earth We look up the sky The earth gives birth To our future	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-9" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space" ]
44804af36506bce3	Mingus in Diaspora	William Matthews	You could say, I suppose, that he ate his way out, like the prisoner who starts a tunnel with a spoon, or you could say he was one in whom nothing was lost, who took it all in, or that he was big as a bus. He would say, and he did, in one of those blurred melismatic slaloms his sentences ran—for all the music was...	[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]	[ "S10-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Music" ]
06c94405447dc084	untitled (for Natalee and Jeremy)	derek beaulieu	derek beaulieu often works at the edges of language, using isolated letters to create visual, instead of verbal, patterns and deconstructing found texts to tease out hidden meanings. His "untitled (for Natalee and Jeremy)," produced for two of his friends, is either a visual poetry epithalamium or simply a joyous celeb...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-2" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]
44541c2c99c2ac4a	'I Love You'	Vahni Capildeo	for Geraldine Monk 'I love you,' he wouldn't say: it was against his philosophy; I-love-you didn't mean what it meant, plus the verray construction of the phrase caused bad-old-concrete-lawman-vandal-verbal-mildew-upon-the-grape- harvest-and-war-for-rare-minerals-required-to-manufacture-commu- nications-devices da...	[ "S1", "S10" ]	[ "S1-6", "S10-2" ]	[ "Love", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]
cc907def3de82196	Truth-Taking Stare	David Wojahn	... in which generally the patient has the sense of having lost contact with things, or of everything having undergone a subtle but all-encompassing change, reality revealed as never before, though eerie in some ineffable way. —Louis Sass Or gallery. Or strange askew museum. Or painting of a hotel bed with some chea...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S6-6", "S10-1", "S10-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Living/Health & Illness" ]
c7fd71bdbb2fdc47	The Return	Frank Bidart	As the retreating Bructeri began to burn their own possessions, to deny to the Romans every sustenance but ashes, a flying column sent by Germanicus commanded by Lucius Stertinius routed them; and there, discovered amid plunder and the dead, was the Eagle of the nineteenth legion, l...	[ "S3", "S4" ]	[ "S3-11" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
d178e6958bd67582	Value Added	Stephen Sandy	No one knew what the stones like squatting frogs signified. There they were, fuming in rows, out of the ground; every critic had his explanation or hers. But—we had to remember—they came to nothing, every one; those large stones out of the earth served the systems of those who considered them, as explaining some...	[ "S2", "S10" ]	[ "S10-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]
875a5e76c544509a	Ode to the Electric Fish that Eat Only the Tails of Other Electric Fish,	Thomas Lux	which regenerate their tails and also eat only the tails of other electric eels, presumably smaller, who, in turn, eat ... Without consulting an ichthyologist — eels are fish — I defer to biology’s genius. I know little of their numbers and habitat, other than they are river dwellers. Guess which river. I have o...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-5" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Animals" ]
da52fb18fb913cf9	Celebrating Childhood	Adonis	Even the wind wants to become a cart pulled by butterflies. I remember madness leaning for the first time on the mind’s pillow. I was talking to my body then and my body was an idea I wrote in red. Red is the sun’s most beautiful throne and all the other colors worship on red rugs. Night is another candle. ...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S3-9", "S10-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life" ]
109a9f13156fa3ce	Difference, Difference	Christine Gosnay	Gravel path stirred by the rain fallen hard through the sweetgum trees, path that leads to the bend where the trail splits open in air: Everything is lighted evenly. It is a queer hour. The difference between light and shadow is the jealousy turn in the eye. The sun is all in the bottle cap that glints in the ...	[ "S6" ]	[]	[ "Living" ]	[]
a74f95878f1145c8	TWELFTH BIRTHDAY	Rachel Hadas	As if because you lay(deeply embarrassing) inside my body, I could (inconceivable) follow your swift thoughts into their blue immersion even now, stilettoes flickering, or schools of fish maneuvering, first clear and then occluded, though now and then a piercing gleam cuts through; as if the snow reflections tha...	[ "S6", "S7", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S6-7", "S8-3", "S10-8" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
7a286487d722920c	Still Life #1	Elaine Equi	Look deep into the blueberry eyes of breakfast.	[ "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S9-1", "S10-7" ]	[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
89e0f8f095be69a2	A Shropshire Lad 26: Along the field as we came by	A. E. Housman	Along the field as we came by A year ago, my love and I, The aspen over stile and stone Was talking to itself alone. "Oh who are these that kiss and pass? A country lover and his lass; Two lovers looking to be wed; And time shall put them both to bed, But she shall lie with earth above, And he beside another love." And...	[ "S1", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S1-3", "S1-5", "S1-7", "S6-4" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/New Love", "Love/Romantic Love", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
cd1a6b1ba1f3c487	Keeping Things Whole	Mark Strand	In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body’s been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[]
065d5007efec4764	The Lady and the Doctor	Helen Leigh	A physician of eminence, some years ago, Was called in, to attend on a lady of fashion, Who had long been admired — and the toast of each beau, Tho’ now, her sunk features excited compassion. The doctor no sooner the lady had eyed, Than he begged, ‘She for once would his freedom forgive If he stepped from the rul...	[ "S3", "S10" ]	[ "S3-2", "S3-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
d501bfcd47c249fd	Jubilate Orfeo Se Intorno Eurydice	Paolo Javier	zookeeper killed by wolves in Sweden beside the beach you take me to watch baby seal pups it's your birthday, Coyo B, maligayang bati sleep comes over me make it through gongyo it's noon lean into salvation innocence nude turquoise pause blank space your subject head cinnamon rule narration suture destiny book ...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S10-2", "S10-3" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Music" ]
3f4f54fe2f13b37b	from The Rape of Lucrece	William Shakespeare	Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under, Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss; Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder, Swelling on either side to want his bliss; Between whose hills her head entombed is; Where like a virtuous monument she lies, To be admired of lewd unhallowed eyes. Without the bed her oth...	[ "S1" ]	[ "S1-1" ]	[ "Love" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]
e0d38398d166bb92	“What potion should I give the night so she’ll always wonder?”	Abraham Sutzkever	What potion should I give the night so she’ll always wonder?Her pounding heart’s a rider galloping from the burning wood.Maybe my pharmacist is awake the next street over?In a crucible of bone, snake tears mixed with herbs.Should I hurry? Call the doctor? A heart like hers is rare.And to tell the truth, if it shattere...	[ "S1" ]	[ "S1-3" ]	[ "Love" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss" ]
4782c7763d297566	Checklist	Stephen Dunn	The housework, the factory work, the work that takes from the body and does not put back. The white-collar work and the dirt of its profits, the terrible politeness of the office worker, the work that robs the viscera to pay the cool surfaces of the brain. All the work that makes love difficult, brings on slee...	[ "S2", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S9-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
8b41864a46df5eec	God	Isaac Rosenberg	In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire, Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned! His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls. The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power, On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry, He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more...	[ "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S5-3" ]	[ "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt" ]
190602fbb6a035b9	Road Work	Linda Kunhardt	“So,” she said, sipping tea from a Chinese oxblood cup,“did anything good happen because of your divorce?”“Well, my emotional palette is wider now. It includescolors like,” I paused... “like that.” I pointed to the cup. In southeast Winnemucca bypass Route 7 connects ...	[ "S1", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S8-1", "S10-4" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
9016a17f20cbc392	Spirits of the Dead	Edgar Allan Poe	I Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. II Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shal...	[ "S2", "S6", "S11" ]	[ "S2-9", "S6-4", "S11-2" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
9945c0a182f93d40	Astrophil and Stella 90: Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame	Sir Philip Sidney	Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame, Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee; Thine eyes my pride, thy lips my history; If thou praise not, all other praise is shame. Nor so ambitious am I, as to frame A nest for my young praise in laurel tree: In truth I sweare, I wish not there should be Graved in min...	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[ "S1-4", "S1-7" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Romantic Love" ]
3c7abb3ef93412cc	Book 6, Epigram 30	Thomas Bastard	Upon the plain as I rode all alone, Assaulted by two sturdy lads I was; I am a poor man Sires, let me be gone. Nay, but ye shall be poor before ye pass. And so I was: yet lost nothing thereby. Would they had robbed me of my poverty.	[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]	[ "S3-6", "S4-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
294bd3cdc2983b1c	The Bomb Shelter	Teresa Mei Chuc	When bombs are exploding outside, it means that there are implosions. Vibrations travel through air and liquid. My amniotic fluid is imprinted with airplanes dropping bombs and screams and fire. In the bomb shelter in Saigon, my father teaches my two-year-old brother French. "Je m'appelle Chuc Nai Dat." "Je m'a...	[ "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S3-11", "S8-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
37c286e86fcdc94a	Long time a child, and still a child, when years	Hartley Coleridge	Long time a child, and still a child, when years Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,— For yet I lived like one not born to die; A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears, No hope I needed, and I knew no fears. But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking, I waked to sleep no more, at once o’ertaking The vangu...	[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S6-1", "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Aging" ]
72e99f4335ea6c1b	American History	Michael S. Harper	Those four black girls blown up in that Alabama church remind me of five hundred middle passage blacks, in a net, under water in Charleston harborso redcoats wouldn't find them. Can't find what you can't see can you?	[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]	[ "S3-6", "S3-8", "S6-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
4f2d0106bdd1001c	Upon the Loss of his Mistresses	Robert Herrick	I have lost, and lately, these Many dainty mistresses: Stately Julia, prime of all; Sappho next, a principal; Smooth Anthea, for a skin White, and heaven-like crystalline; Sweet Electra, and the choice Myrrha, for the lute, and voice; Next, Corinna, for her wit, And the graceful use of it; With Perilla; all are gone; O...	[ "S1", "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S1-3", "S1-6", "S1-8", "S3-4" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Classic Love", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
53c8e9fcadeb9e12	simonides	Rodney Koeneke	Simonides, whose bitterness yoked art to memory stayed unimpressed with host and god alike. Suppose the dropped crust had occurred at your table, the tremor floored your rowdy hall of praise. Loss provokes economy: sound to scale, word to fee. Ghosts learn death from threnody.	[ "S6", "S10", "S11" ]	[ "S6-4", "S10-6", "S11-2", "S11-3" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural", "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
622ac1949ebbe057	Broken Promises	David Kirby	I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed; I have seen them playing cards under a single light-bulb and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely, knowing I would only let them win. I have seen them in the foyers of theaters, coming back late from the interval long after the others have taken their...	[ "S6" ]	[]	[ "Living" ]	[]
68675394156e342f	The Haunted Oak	Paul Laurence Dunbar	Pray why are you so bare, so bare, Oh, bough of the old oak-tree; And why, when I go through the shade you throw, Runs a shudder over me? My leaves were green as the best, I trow, And sap ran free in my veins, But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird A guiltless victim's pains. I bent me down to hea...	[ "S2", "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S2-8", "S3-6", "S3-8", "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
7fcef19ad1076617	Smell Is the Last Memory to Go	Fatimah Asghar	on my block, a gate on my block, a tree smelling of citrus & jasmine that knocks me back into the arms of my dead mother. i ask Ross how can a tree be both jasmine & orange,	[ "S2", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S2-8", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
b4ad4ba850196e99	from Rider [II]	Mark Rudman	And yesterday something shattering happened. Not yesterday, but several (that’s becoming a favorite word) weeks ago I came across Kitaj’s The Jewish Rider and wept: there he was in the very image of my stepfather; the pate where a few strands of hair still frolic, the same skinny legs, the same misguided attempt...	[ "S1", "S5", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S5-6", "S9-5" ]	[ "Love", "Religion", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Religion/Judaism", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]
56dae6b460cf208c	Burroughs	Robert Glück	fleshes his dirty rotten hunka tin I am right strapped into head electrodes he sticks a gun in teen age drug Harry S Truman decided to drop first I am right sequence repeat dim jerky far away smoke cop rat bares his yellow teet kicks in the door I am right survivors burned time and...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]	[ "S3-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]
ff07756fb8ccb4ad	Me	Amrita Pritam	Lots of contemporaries— but “me” is not my contemporary. My birth without “me” was a blemished offering on the collection plate. A moment of flesh, imprisoned in flesh. And when to the tip of this tongue of flesh some word comes, it kills itself. If saved from killing itself, it descends to the paper, where a m...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
27afe69c511c991b	Secret Life	Li-Young Lee	Alone with time, he waits for his parents to wake, a boy growing old at the dining room table, pressing into the pages of one of his father's big books the flowers he picked all morning in his mother's garden, magnolia, hibiscus, azalea, peony, pear, tulip, iris; reading in another book their names he knows, and then t...	[ "S2", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S2-8", "S6-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Coming of Age" ]
9ee5ca7aceb780da	A Poet! He Hath Put his Heart to School	William Wordsworth	A poet!—He hath put his heart to school,Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staffWhich art hath lodged within his hand—must laughBy precept only, and shed tears by rule.Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff,And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool,In fear that else, when Critics grave and coolHave killed him, S...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
3cd251d3e4183bdf	Ingathering	Carolyn Kizer	The poets are going home now, After the years of exile, After the northern climates Where they worked, lectured, remembered, Where they shivered at night In an indifferent world. Where God was the god of business, And men would violate the poets’ moon, And even the heavens become zones of war. The poets are go...	[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]	[ "S3-11", "S10-6" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
2f8782dd192b2eb2	Book 2, Epigram 21: In Momum.	Thomas Bastard	Momus, to be a Poet Laureate, Has strained his wits through an iron grate. For he has rhymes and rhymes, and double strains, And golden verses, and all kinds of veins, Now to the press he presses hastily, To sell his friends stinking eternity. For who would be eternal in such fashion, To be a witness to ...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
71339bcdd3ed26e3	The Red Shoes	Sheila Black	Someone buried red slippers under the floorboardsand the mice nested in them. The floors splintered no matterhow many cans of deck paint we used. And one nightat the Embajada I broke a tooth, and the very nextnight three teenagers were shot dead as they sat ata booth by the window eating mofongo. The neighborwoman used...	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-1", "S3-2", "S6-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Living/Mourning" ]
ba5ae5c19bd69a59	Mama Said ...	Mary Moore Easter	(there’ll be days like this.) — The Shirelles These folks ’bout to respect me into the grave.At eighty Mama said, (mama said) “People think you change when you’re old but you still got a girl inside.” And men could see her, too — that pin...	[ "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S6-1", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
6135b1cbff4714f1	On Teaching	Kahlil Gibran	Then said a teacher, Speak to us of Teach- ing. And he said: No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawn- ing of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lov...	[ "S5", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S5-4", "S9-6" ]	[ "Religion", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Religion/God & the Divine", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]
2b9f25155a8a4433	Sonnet 32: If thou survive my well-contented day	William Shakespeare	If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripp'd by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme...	[ "S1", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S1-3", "S1-6", "S1-7", "S6-4", "S10-6" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Romantic Love", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
69bf7794ecaa0fbb	The Dead	Don Paterson	Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom; though they speak with more than just the season's tongue— the colours that they blaze from the dark loam all have something of the jealous tang of the dead about them. What do we know of their part in this, those secret brothers of the harrow, invigo...	[ "S2", "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S2-8", "S3-2", "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
3b5dc87b72328b37	Climbing Milestone Mountain, August 22, 1937	Kenneth Rexroth	For a month now, wandering over the Sierras, A poem had been gathering in my mind, Details of significance and rhythm, The way poems do, but still lacking a focus. Last night I remembered the date and it all Began to grow together and take on purpose. We sat up late while Deneb moved over the zenith And I tol...	[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S6", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S2-9", "S3-6", "S6-4", "S8-4", "S9-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
94b5c87e669a64c8	Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd	William Shakespeare	When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main, Increasing store with...	[ "S1", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S1-3", "S1-6", "S1-8" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Classic Love" ]
d087bf3d62de2e3a	Dress Rehearsal	Chloe Honum	Branches etch the film of iceon the studio window. A crow looks in,hopping and shrieking when I dancein my black tutu, trimmed with silver. The ballet master says,	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-10" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance" ]
0748bec4bf11eb7e	Farewell to Matilda	Thomas Love Peacock	Oui, pour jamais Chassons l’image De la volage Que j’adorais. PARNY. Matilda, farewell! Fate has doom’d us to part, But the prospect occasions no pang to my heart; No longer is love with my reason at strife, Though once thou wert dearer, far dearer than life. As to...	[ "S1", "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S3-4", "S8-1" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
801e7411c0badaed	A Regret	David Trinidad	Kurt, early twenties. Met him after an AA meeting in Silverlake (November, eighty-five). I remem- ber standing with him up- stairs, in the clubhouse, how I checked his body out. But not who approached whom. Or what we talked about before we leaned against my car and kissed, under that tarnished ...	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-3", "S8-6" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Relationships/LGBTQ+" ]
08a21e7cbeda27d6	Increment	Josephine Miles	So populous the regionThat from the next regionThe crowing of children, barking of cars could be heard,So that a continuous linkageOf sounds of living ranIn the limber air,District to district, Woodlake to Montclair,Freestone to Smithfield, and one child’s cryWas not concealed from any trade route,Or passer by,Or upsta...	[ "S3" ]	[ "S3-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
dd8f0a37dd8e30fd	September, 1819	William Wordsworth	Departing summer hath assumed An aspect tenderly illumed, The gentlest look of spring; That calls from yonder leafy shade Unfaded, yet prepared to fade, A timely carolling. No faint and hesitating trill, Such tribute as to winter chill The lonely redbreast pays! Clear, loud, and lively is the din, From social warblers ...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-3", "S2-7" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Fall", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
3d97592898ec6f3f	Action Town	Todd Colby	Right now I'm sipping a mango lassi in Action Town. I'm not bereft at all. In fact, I'm pleasantly aware of people moving on all fours. Our voice and text messages will be erased in no time. When I walk into stores they call me Spark Plug because I have a sparky manner. Things get all wavy from their constant att...	[ "S1", "S3" ]	[ "S1-6", "S3-1" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
9fa8f415ed8a1760	September 1913	William Butler Yeats	What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone; For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave. Yet they were of a different kind, The n...	[ "S3", "S4" ]	[ "S3-11" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
35888018af285edb	Girl, 11	Jonterri Gadson	A mouth is a sideways woman, her curves and dips, the way she opens, how her hollow center can sing. Mother, your mouth is a fallen cello, your husband's hands— a casket. Full of me.	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-3", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Coming of Age", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
a0ac90f8dea67489	Craft [The first great poet]	Quan Barry	The first great poet of the crisis the one whose generation was left as if firebombed though if you look back at the seminal work you will see that only a handful of of the poems explicitly  touch on that dark time  the blood filling with ...	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-11", "S6-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Mourning" ]
68f642b784dd4e19	The Miller's Daughter	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	It is the miller’s daughter, And she is grown so dear, so dear, That I would be the jewel That trembles at her ear: For hid in ringlets day and night, I’d touch her neck so warm and white. And I would be the girdle About her dainty, dainty waist, And her heart would beat against me, In sorrow and in rest: And I...	[ "S1" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-4", "S1-7" ]	[ "Love" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Romantic Love" ]
04a4653155e57330	X Number	Chris Glomski	of waves dropped into froth Jellyfish a jar of innards half-buried in sand Dead nature What are these things and who are they for? This blue rug is its own genre And these painted apples round out the essence of what can be made into what can be eaten Winter interest 3.9 APR April come...	[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S2-1", "S2-6", "S4-1" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Nature/Spring", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
26a435e1cbbb5317	Dressing My Daughters	Mark Jarman	One girl a full head taller Than the other—into their Sunday dresses. First, the slip, hardly a piece of fabric, Softly stitched and printed with a bud. I’m not their mother, and tangle, then untangle The whole cloth—on backwards, have to grab it Round their necks. But they know how to pull Arms in, a reflex of ...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S6-7", "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Parenthood" ]
afa86a071a3f4bf0	everything i’ve called women	Nate Marshall	if i said baby you might think a certain thing but nah. that’s only maybe what i mean, perhaps i’ll say ma & your mind says Cam’ron, women creeping up but i’m a changed man, & that’s not game ma. it’s practice in high school & THOT isn’t out yet. we’re classic Chicago & bustdowns bloom in our mouths. my Ma spits ...	[ "S1", "S3", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S1-1", "S3-4", "S3-8", "S10-2", "S10-3" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
65199d6c26476a54	[dear dusty moth]	Robin Blaser	dear dusty moth wearing miller’s cloth, Sophia Nichols’ soft voice calls wings at dusk across railroads and sagebrush to lull me to sleep, ‘Come to these window corners, come, rest on my boy’s dreams and flight, come tonight’ 2 September 2002	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S2-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Animals" ]
580212ada5f84384	anabatic	Tom Pickard	at first they recce, easy, around the edge of breaththen gathered gangs unleashand breach but the wind has no objective,riding the slope of my roof	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-10" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Weather" ]
4dbd8410f26b3e52	Book of Memory	Rebecca Hazelton	In my seeing there was a blank and he filled that blank with words, there were words for darkness which made it lift, there were words for cover which ripped them off, there were legs that crossed and hearts that crossed, promises red and read, and the pluck of banjo had a name for that twang, and the way he calle...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S3-4" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
9cfd8e9c5608ecfc	Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?	William Shakespeare	Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or...	[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S1-7", "S1-8", "S2-2" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Love/Classic Love", "Nature/Summer" ]
bd1884afcebd7910	The Garden Body: A Florilegium	Sylvia Legris	1 A pepper of bees opens the pupils. An ensemble of aromatics Chorus aphrodisia, mariner’s root, bright sky and night star, heavenly rainbow. Amethyst, azure, blue flower-de-luce. Flowering ring. • White archangelic the bee nettle, the dead nettle. A hide of nettle cloth, of finely-nerved sedge. Take heed the e...	[ "S1", "S2", "S6", "S9", "S10", "S11" ]	[ "S1-1", "S2-8", "S9-2", "S10-8", "S11-3" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Activities/Gardening & Farming" ]
52d463cb0fa430b8	Song	Adonis	from “Elegy for the First Century” Bells on our eyelashes and the death throes of words, and I among fields of speech, a knight on a horse made of dirt. My lungs are my poetry, my eyes a book, and I, under the skin of words, on the beaming banks of foam, a poet who sang and died leaving this singed elegy befo...	[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S6-4", "S10-2", "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
83c881fb2fd42bc7	Song: “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more”	William Shakespeare	(from Much Ado About Nothing) Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, but let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny, nonny. Sing no more ditties, sing ...	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[ "S1-8", "S1-9", "S8-1" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Classic Love", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
a9d5f3a051190142	Crows in a Strong Wind	Cornelius Eady	Off go the crows from the roof. The crows can’t hold on. They might as well Be perched on an oil slick. Such an awkward dance, These gentlemen In their spottled-black coats. Such a tipsy dance, As if they didn’t know where they were. Such a humorous dance, As they try to set things right, As the wind reduces...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-5" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Animals" ]
f7ff6d53ae0adbad	Buying Camels in Dresden	Wong May	Like all great riversThe Elbe is familiar at first sight.The barges spic & span as the front parlorsOf model homes in Saxony —The steam paddle-wheelers & other vessels,No less impeccable — all runWith a near soporific efficiency.You lean out & ...	[ "S3", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S3-1", "S3-2", "S9-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
323329b9816972bf	Study/Trees	Leonard Gontarek	Leaves flare up, kitchen matches in the permanent trees. Black flash of pike on Mirror Lake, dropping like a roll of nickels. I don’t want nudes in paintings, I don’t want Beauty through the heart, small harpoon that opens when pulled out. I want to break another eggroll with you in moonlight. Ugly maples, when ...	[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S1-7", "S2-8" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]
28f1a5fb1c6cb824	"Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare."	Edna St. Vincent Millay	Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondag...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[]
e39398e1e36afc69	Sunflowers	José Antonio Rodríguez	No pitying/“Ah” for this one —Alan Shapiro No, nor a fierce hurrahfor what it does without choice,for following the lightfor the same reason the light follows it.Just a thing rough to the touch, a facelike a thousand ticks turning their backs,suckling at something you can’t see,and a body like a tag off the earthso th...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-8" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]
8057e610c64c337d	Handy Guide	Dean Young	Avoid adjectives of scale.Dandelion broth instead of duck soup.Don’t even think you’ve seen a meadow, ever.The minor adjustments in our equationsstill indicate the universe is insane,when it laughs a silk dress comes out its mouthbut we never put it on. Put it on.Cry often and while asleep.If it’s raw, forge it in fire...	[ "S6" ]	[]	[ "Living" ]	[]
a946f306218fcbbf	The Plate	Anthony Hecht	Now he has silver in him. When sometimeDeath shall boil down unnecessary fatTo reach the nub of our identity, When in the run of crimeThe skull is rifled for the gold in teeth,And chemistry has eaten from the spineSuperfluous life and vigor, why then heWill show a richness to be wondered at, And...	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-11", "S6-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
f5ed517d45baa4e0	God's World	Edna St. Vincent Millay	O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, World, I cannot get thee close enough! Long have I known a ...	[ "S2", "S5" ]	[ "S5-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion" ]	[ "Religion/God & the Divine" ]
c6d5f934c733153d	January in Detroit or Search for Tomorrow Starring Ken and Ann	Ken Mikolowski	I think it is interesting though not exactly amusing how we go from day to day with no money. How do we do it, friends ask, suspecting we really have some stash stacked away somewhere. But we certainly do not and we also do not know how we do it either. You sure are lucky, some of our friends say. I am none...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S3-1", "S4-1", "S8-5", "S9-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
8aa25d032d0762b4	Losses	Wesley McNair	It must be difficult for God, listening to our voices come up through his floor of cloud to tell Him what’s been taken away: Lord, I’ve lost my dog, my period, my hair, all my money. What can He say, given we’re so incomplete we can’t stop being surprised by our condition, while He is completeness itself? Or is ...	[ "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S5-4", "S6-1", "S6-5" ]	[ "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Aging", "Living/Mourning" ]
12fd9f14c45f35fc	Chocolate	Rita Dove	Velvet fruit, exquisite square I hold up to sniff between finger and thumb - how you numb me with your rich attentions! If I don't eat you quickly, you'll melt in my palm. Pleasure seeker, if i let you you'd liquefy everywhere. Knotted smoke, dark punch of earth and night and leaf, for a taste of you any wo...	[ "S1", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S9-1" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
912a3a430ffb4eb1	Stefan Zweig, 1881–1942	Gerard Malanga	Stefan Zweig, come back, come back. Do not be afraid. Do not look the other way, but on all sides. Come take the road with me into those dark woods where eerie sounds of nature coalesce, where fledglings kiss you on the head and talk to you. Come fly with me, come be my friend in those darkest hours, in those da...	[ "S2", "S6", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S2-8", "S9-7", "S10-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
3fadded5cfbed0f9	Desert	Josephine Miles	When with the skin you do acknowledge drought, The dry in the voice, the lightness of feet, the fine Flake of the heat at every level line; When with the hand you learn to touch without Surprise the spine for the leaf, the prickled petal, The stone scorched in the shine, and the wood brittle; Then where the pipe ...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-7" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
965b7ed40c571b66	Neighbors Smoke on an Apartment Porch Owned by a Mental Health Agency	Sheryl Luna	Dazed with rambling gossip, their looming net of mistakes, their love of rumor, they all dream arousal. They are far from indifferent. Their language bellows need. A gull darts over and behind bare buildings, shaggy forests, mountains, city streets. Trees lose leaves, and one man insists the leaves aren’t dying...	[ "S6", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S8-3", "S9-4" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

b525e78ad54e3c32

I Saw England — July Night

Ivor Gurney

She was a villageOf lovely knowledge

[ "S3", "S11" ]

[ "S3-9", "S3-11", "S11-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life" ]

44a88c760dcd36f5

Morning After

Langston Hughes

I was so sick last night I Didn’t hardly know my mind. So sick last night I Didn’t know my mind. I drunk some bad licker that Almost made me blind. Had a dream last night I Thought I was in hell. I drempt last night I Thought I was in hell. Woke up and looked around me— Babe, your mouth was open like a well....

[ "S6", "S8", "S9" ]

[ "S6-6", "S8-7", "S9-1" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]

[ "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

dcf91dd07ec2f0e7

Lamenting Widow

Ho Xuan Huong

A woman wails, boo hoo, mourning her man Shut up, shame on you, don't cry to the hills! O little sister, I should have warned you Don't eat the meat, if it makes you cough blood!

[ "S3", "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S3-4", "S6-5" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Mourning" ]

972c19534a3ca32e

To Sleep

John Keats

O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws Aroun...

[ "S5", "S6" ]

[]

[ "Religion", "Living" ]

[]

3f8077d7f2d1f163

The Niche

Samuel Menashe

The niche narrows Hones one thin Until his bones Disclose him

[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S9-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

2d37d169aa31db28

The Mayor of Scuttleton

Mary Mapes Dodge

The Mayor of Scuttleton burned his nose Trying to warm his copper toes; He lost his money and spoiled his will By signing his name with an icicle-quill; He went bare-headed, and held his breath, And frightened his grandame most to death; He loaded a shovel, and tried to shoot, And killed the calf in the leg of his boot...

[ "S3", "S9", "S11" ]

[ "S3-9", "S9-4", "S11-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Activities", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Fairy-tales & Legends", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

2a8c6eb9177bf4d6

Transformed Creatures

Liu Xia

You have a strange pet — one eye is a cat’s, the other a sheep’s. Yet, it won’t socialize with felines, will attack any flock. On moonlit nights, it wanders on the roof. When you’re alone it will lie in your lap preoccupied, slowly studying you until — on its face — a challenge. Translated from the Chinese

[ "S2", "S8" ]

[ "S2-5", "S8-8" ]

[ "Nature", "Relationships" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]

bd064c84979fbfc7

A Noiseless Patient Spider

Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measurele...

[ "S2", "S5" ]

[ "S2-5", "S5-8" ]

[ "Nature", "Religion" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]

1fb56b8488939fbe

Maudlin; Or, The Magdalen’s Tears

Linda Gregerson

If faith is a tree that sorrow grows and women, repentant or not, are swamps, a man who comes for solace here will be up to his knees and slow getting out. A name can turn on anyone. But say that a woman washes the dust from a stranger’s feet and sits quite dry-eyed in front of her mirror at night. The candle ...

[ "S1", "S3", "S5", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S3-4", "S5-2", "S10-4" ]

[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Religion/Christianity" ]

301d9d6a91654562

A Route of Evanescence, (1489)

Emily Dickinson

A Route of Evanescence, With a revolving Wheel – A Resonance of Emerald A Rush of Cochineal – And every Blossom on the Bush Adjusts it’s tumbled Head – The Mail from Tunis – probably, An easy Morning’s Ride –

[ "S6", "S7" ]

[]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[]

b4c46ccbfc3236d4

“The Secretary of Liquor”

Mark Rudman

(JOHN F. KENNEDY’S INFORMAL APPOINTMENT OF DEAN MARTIN TO HIS CABINET) What the fuck did they want, these men who needed the company of others to make a life, as he needed a woman to make babies? —Dino, nick tosches I...

[ "S3" ]

[ "S3-7" ]

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]

3d10a40a55e39f10

The House on Moscow Street

Marilyn Nelson

It's the ragged source of memory, a tarpaper-shingled bungalow whose floors tilt toward the porch, whose back yard ends abruptly in a weedy ravine. Nothing special: a chain of three bedrooms and a long side porch turned parlor where my great-grandfather, Pomp, smoked every evening over the news, a long sunny k...

[ "S5", "S8", "S11" ]

[ "S5-2", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S11-2" ]

[ "Religion", "Relationships", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural", "Religion/Christianity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

0d6c41a994193baa

Song of the Witches: “Double, double toil and trouble”

William Shakespeare

(from Macbeth) Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-bro...

[ "S2", "S5", "S8" ]

[ "S2-5", "S8-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Religion", "Relationships" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

2655aa52bcde1390

kept busy

joanne burns

from our deep cool verandah we spy on the world passing by. we both wear glasses in order to pick out the details. even as children we noticed all. people would say dont like those twins they look at you funny. we were reassured. our powers had been confirmed. but that was a long while ago. now we are 60. we have lived...

[ "S3", "S8", "S9" ]

[ "S3-2", "S8-3", "S8-4", "S8-5", "S9-3" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Activities" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Friendship", "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]

590f552d9d64fb6b

The Story of Madame Chevalier

Ciaran Carson

You remember the Incredible Shrinking Man? I said. Well, last night I dreamed I was him. It began the same way. The shirt cuffs were the first thing that came to my attention, drooping down over my knuckles in the bedroom mirror. And my waistband and shoes were getting looser by the day. Within weeks you could per...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[]

b2b3763dcb0fc3b8

Quf: ק

Peter Cole

Fucked art thou, with luck, o reader within the palace within the palette within the impatience within, who tilts his letters into the light of the mind’s muttering unto itself, releasing their sounds to the whirlpool fierce of an ear to draw creations in— Who brings forth a kiss of circumference, the glyphs hooked an...

[ "S2", "S3", "S5", "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S2-8", "S3-11", "S5-3", "S5-6", "S10-2", "S10-8" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/Judaism" ]

538025c46d81152f

Woodcut

LaWanda Walters

The trouble with Jane Eyre isn’t what I thought when I slammed shut the book on those pictures trying to fly out at me because I misunderstood, being too young to read. When you’re unable to read a book you can’t understand the illustrations either. Those were my mother’s books, a green bound set of that one and...

[ "S3", "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S3-4", "S6-8", "S10-4", "S10-8" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Youth" ]

d4bfc2fe22c0a38e

The Darker Sooner

Catherine Wing

Then came the darker sooner, came the later lower. We were no longer a sweeter-here happily-ever-after. We were after ever. We were farther and further. More was the word we used for harder. Lost was our standard-bearer. Our gods were fallen faster, and fallen larger. The day was duller, duller was disaster. ...

[ "S1", "S2", "S5", "S6" ]

[ "S1-3", "S2-4", "S2-6", "S2-10", "S5-3" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Religion", "Living" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Winter", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Religion/Faith & Doubt" ]

4df07cddcdced647

Have You Prayed?

Li-Young Lee

When the wind turns and asks, in my father’s voice,Have you prayed? I know three things. One: I’m never finished answering to the dead. Two: A man is four winds and three fires. And the four winds are his father’s voice, his mother’s voice . . . Or maybe he’s seven winds and ten fires. And the fires are seeing,...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S6-4", "S8-3" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

3378f3897875f006

Pretty

Stevie Smith

Why is the word pretty so underrated? In November the leaf is pretty when it falls The stream grows deep in the woods after rain And in the pretty pool the pike stalks He stalks his prey, and this is pretty too, The prey escapes with an underwater flash But not for long, the great fish has him now The pike is a ...

[ "S2" ]

[]

[ "Nature" ]

[]

384a85929fbaece1

Mother Earth

Yoko Ono

The sky is high We shit on earth We look up the sky The earth gives birth To our future

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-9" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space" ]

44804af36506bce3

Mingus in Diaspora

William Matthews

You could say, I suppose, that he ate his way out, like the prisoner who starts a tunnel with a spoon, or you could say he was one in whom nothing was lost, who took it all in, or that he was big as a bus. He would say, and he did, in one of those blurred melismatic slaloms his sentences ran—for all the music was...

[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]

[ "S10-3" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Music" ]

06c94405447dc084

untitled (for Natalee and Jeremy)

derek beaulieu

derek beaulieu often works at the edges of language, using isolated letters to create visual, instead of verbal, patterns and deconstructing found texts to tease out hidden meanings. His "untitled (for Natalee and Jeremy)," produced for two of his friends, is either a visual poetry epithalamium or simply a joyous celeb...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-2" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]

44541c2c99c2ac4a

'I Love You'

Vahni Capildeo

for Geraldine Monk 'I love you,' he wouldn't say: it was against his philosophy; I-love-you didn't mean what it meant, plus the verray construction of the phrase caused bad-old-concrete-lawman-vandal-verbal-mildew-upon-the-grape- harvest-and-war-for-rare-minerals-required-to-manufacture-commu- nications-devices da...

[ "S1", "S10" ]

[ "S1-6", "S10-2" ]

[ "Love", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]

cc907def3de82196

Truth-Taking Stare

David Wojahn

... in which generally the patient has the sense of having lost contact with things, or of everything having undergone a subtle but all-encompassing change, reality revealed as never before, though eerie in some ineffable way. —Louis Sass Or gallery. Or strange askew museum. Or painting of a hotel bed with some chea...

[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S6-6", "S10-1", "S10-3" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Living/Health & Illness" ]

c7fd71bdbb2fdc47

The Return

Frank Bidart

As the retreating Bructeri began to burn their own possessions, to deny to the Romans every sustenance but ashes, a flying column sent by Germanicus commanded by Lucius Stertinius routed them; and there, discovered amid plunder and the dead, was the Eagle of the nineteenth legion, l...

[ "S3", "S4" ]

[ "S3-11" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]

d178e6958bd67582

Value Added

Stephen Sandy

No one knew what the stones like squatting frogs signified. There they were, fuming in rows, out of the ground; every critic had his explanation or hers. But—we had to remember—they came to nothing, every one; those large stones out of the earth served the systems of those who considered them, as explaining some...

[ "S2", "S10" ]

[ "S10-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]

875a5e76c544509a

Ode to the Electric Fish that Eat Only the Tails of Other Electric Fish,

Thomas Lux

which regenerate their tails and also eat only the tails of other electric eels, presumably smaller, who, in turn, eat ... Without consulting an ichthyologist — eels are fish — I defer to biology’s genius. I know little of their numbers and habitat, other than they are river dwellers. Guess which river. I have o...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-5" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Animals" ]

da52fb18fb913cf9

Celebrating Childhood

Adonis

Even the wind wants to become a cart pulled by butterflies. I remember madness leaning for the first time on the mind’s pillow. I was talking to my body then and my body was an idea I wrote in red. Red is the sun’s most beautiful throne and all the other colors worship on red rugs. Night is another candle. ...

[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

[ "S3-9", "S10-5" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life" ]

109a9f13156fa3ce

Difference, Difference

Christine Gosnay

Gravel path stirred by the rain fallen hard through the sweetgum trees, path that leads to the bend where the trail splits open in air: Everything is lighted evenly. It is a queer hour. The difference between light and shadow is the jealousy turn in the eye. The sun is all in the bottle cap that glints in the ...

[ "S6" ]

[]

[ "Living" ]

[]

a74f95878f1145c8

TWELFTH BIRTHDAY

Rachel Hadas

As if because you lay(deeply embarrassing) inside my body, I could (inconceivable) follow your swift thoughts into their blue immersion even now, stilettoes flickering, or schools of fish maneuvering, first clear and then occluded, though now and then a piercing gleam cuts through; as if the snow reflections tha...

[ "S6", "S7", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S6-7", "S8-3", "S10-8" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

7a286487d722920c

Still Life #1

Elaine Equi

Look deep into the blueberry eyes of breakfast.

[ "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S9-1", "S10-7" ]

[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

89e0f8f095be69a2

A Shropshire Lad 26: Along the field as we came by

A. E. Housman

Along the field as we came by A year ago, my love and I, The aspen over stile and stone Was talking to itself alone. "Oh who are these that kiss and pass? A country lover and his lass; Two lovers looking to be wed; And time shall put them both to bed, But she shall lie with earth above, And he beside another love." And...

[ "S1", "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S1-3", "S1-5", "S1-7", "S6-4" ]

[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/New Love", "Love/Romantic Love", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

cd1a6b1ba1f3c487

Keeping Things Whole

Mark Strand

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body’s been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[]

065d5007efec4764

The Lady and the Doctor

Helen Leigh

A physician of eminence, some years ago, Was called in, to attend on a lady of fashion, Who had long been admired — and the toast of each beau, Tho’ now, her sunk features excited compassion. The doctor no sooner the lady had eyed, Than he begged, ‘She for once would his freedom forgive If he stepped from the rul...

[ "S3", "S10" ]

[ "S3-2", "S3-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

d501bfcd47c249fd

Jubilate Orfeo Se Intorno Eurydice

Paolo Javier

zookeeper killed by wolves in Sweden beside the beach you take me to watch baby seal pups it's your birthday, Coyo B, maligayang bati sleep comes over me make it through gongyo it's noon lean into salvation innocence nude turquoise pause blank space your subject head cinnamon rule narration suture destiny book ...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S10-2", "S10-3" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Music" ]

3f4f54fe2f13b37b

from The Rape of Lucrece

William Shakespeare

Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under, Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss; Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder, Swelling on either side to want his bliss; Between whose hills her head entombed is; Where like a virtuous monument she lies, To be admired of lewd unhallowed eyes. Without the bed her oth...

[ "S1" ]

[ "S1-1" ]

[ "Love" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]

e0d38398d166bb92

“What potion should I give the night so she’ll always wonder?”

Abraham Sutzkever

What potion should I give the night so she’ll always wonder?Her pounding heart’s a rider galloping from the burning wood.Maybe my pharmacist is awake the next street over?In a crucible of bone, snake tears mixed with herbs.Should I hurry? Call the doctor? A heart like hers is rare.And to tell the truth, if it shattere...

[ "S1" ]

[ "S1-3" ]

[ "Love" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss" ]

4782c7763d297566

Checklist

Stephen Dunn

The housework, the factory work, the work that takes from the body and does not put back. The white-collar work and the dirt of its profits, the terrible politeness of the office worker, the work that robs the viscera to pay the cool surfaces of the brain. All the work that makes love difficult, brings on slee...

[ "S2", "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S9-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

8b41864a46df5eec

God

Isaac Rosenberg

In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire, Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned! His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls. The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power, On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry, He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more...

[ "S5", "S6" ]

[ "S5-3" ]

[ "Religion", "Living" ]

[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt" ]

190602fbb6a035b9

Road Work

Linda Kunhardt

“So,” she said, sipping tea from a Chinese oxblood cup,“did anything good happen because of your divorce?”“Well, my emotional palette is wider now. It includescolors like,” I paused... “like that.” I pointed to the cup. In southeast Winnemucca bypass Route 7 connects ...

[ "S1", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S8-1", "S10-4" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]

9016a17f20cbc392

Spirits of the Dead

Edgar Allan Poe

I Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. II Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shal...

[ "S2", "S6", "S11" ]

[ "S2-9", "S6-4", "S11-2" ]

[ "Nature", "Living", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

9945c0a182f93d40

Astrophil and Stella 90: Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame

Sir Philip Sidney

Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame, Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee; Thine eyes my pride, thy lips my history; If thou praise not, all other praise is shame. Nor so ambitious am I, as to frame A nest for my young praise in laurel tree: In truth I sweare, I wish not there should be Graved in min...

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[ "S1-4", "S1-7" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Romantic Love" ]

3c7abb3ef93412cc

Book 6, Epigram 30

Thomas Bastard

Upon the plain as I rode all alone, Assaulted by two sturdy lads I was; I am a poor man Sires, let me be gone. Nay, but ye shall be poor before ye pass. And so I was: yet lost nothing thereby. Would they had robbed me of my poverty.

[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]

[ "S3-6", "S4-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]

294bd3cdc2983b1c

The Bomb Shelter

Teresa Mei Chuc

When bombs are exploding outside, it means that there are implosions. Vibrations travel through air and liquid. My amniotic fluid is imprinted with airplanes dropping bombs and screams and fire. In the bomb shelter in Saigon, my father teaches my two-year-old brother French. "Je m'appelle Chuc Nai Dat." "Je m'a...

[ "S3", "S8" ]

[ "S3-11", "S8-3" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

37c286e86fcdc94a

Long time a child, and still a child, when years

Hartley Coleridge

Long time a child, and still a child, when years Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,— For yet I lived like one not born to die; A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears, No hope I needed, and I knew no fears. But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking, I waked to sleep no more, at once o’ertaking The vangu...

[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

[ "S6-1", "S10-5" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Aging" ]

72e99f4335ea6c1b

American History

Michael S. Harper

Those four black girls blown up in that Alabama church remind me of five hundred middle passage blacks, in a net, under water in Charleston harborso redcoats wouldn't find them. Can't find what you can't see can you?

[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]

[ "S3-6", "S3-8", "S6-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

4f2d0106bdd1001c

Upon the Loss of his Mistresses

Robert Herrick

I have lost, and lately, these Many dainty mistresses: Stately Julia, prime of all; Sappho next, a principal; Smooth Anthea, for a skin White, and heaven-like crystalline; Sweet Electra, and the choice Myrrha, for the lute, and voice; Next, Corinna, for her wit, And the graceful use of it; With Perilla; all are gone; O...

[ "S1", "S3", "S8" ]

[ "S1-3", "S1-6", "S1-8", "S3-4" ]

[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Classic Love", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

53c8e9fcadeb9e12

simonides

Rodney Koeneke

Simonides, whose bitterness yoked art to memory stayed unimpressed with host and god alike. Suppose the dropped crust had occurred at your table, the tremor floored your rowdy hall of praise. Loss provokes economy: sound to scale, word to fee. Ghosts learn death from threnody.

[ "S6", "S10", "S11" ]

[ "S6-4", "S10-6", "S11-2", "S11-3" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural", "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

622ac1949ebbe057

Broken Promises

David Kirby

I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed; I have seen them playing cards under a single light-bulb and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely, knowing I would only let them win. I have seen them in the foyers of theaters, coming back late from the interval long after the others have taken their...

[ "S6" ]

[]

[ "Living" ]

[]

68675394156e342f

The Haunted Oak

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Pray why are you so bare, so bare, Oh, bough of the old oak-tree; And why, when I go through the shade you throw, Runs a shudder over me? My leaves were green as the best, I trow, And sap ran free in my veins, But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird A guiltless victim's pains. I bent me down to hea...

[ "S2", "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S2-8", "S3-6", "S3-8", "S6-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

7fcef19ad1076617

Smell Is the Last Memory to Go

Fatimah Asghar

on my block, a gate on my block, a tree smelling of citrus & jasmine that knocks me back into the arms of my dead mother. i ask Ross how can a tree be both jasmine & orange,

[ "S2", "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S2-8", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-3" ]

[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

b4ad4ba850196e99

from Rider [II]

Mark Rudman

And yesterday something shattering happened. Not yesterday, but several (that’s becoming a favorite word) weeks ago I came across Kitaj’s The Jewish Rider and wept: there he was in the very image of my stepfather; the pate where a few strands of hair still frolic, the same skinny legs, the same misguided attempt...

[ "S1", "S5", "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S5-6", "S9-5" ]

[ "Love", "Religion", "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Religion/Judaism", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]

56dae6b460cf208c

Burroughs

Robert Glück

fleshes his dirty rotten hunka tin I am right strapped into head electrodes he sticks a gun in teen age drug Harry S Truman decided to drop first I am right sequence repeat dim jerky far away smoke cop rat bares his yellow teet kicks in the door I am right survivors burned time and...

[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]

[ "S3-7" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]

ff07756fb8ccb4ad

Me

Amrita Pritam

Lots of contemporaries— but “me” is not my contemporary. My birth without “me” was a blemished offering on the collection plate. A moment of flesh, imprisoned in flesh. And when to the tip of this tongue of flesh some word comes, it kills itself. If saved from killing itself, it descends to the paper, where a m...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

27afe69c511c991b

Secret Life

Li-Young Lee

Alone with time, he waits for his parents to wake, a boy growing old at the dining room table, pressing into the pages of one of his father's big books the flowers he picked all morning in his mother's garden, magnolia, hibiscus, azalea, peony, pear, tulip, iris; reading in another book their names he knows, and then t...

[ "S2", "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S2-8", "S6-3" ]

[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Coming of Age" ]

9ee5ca7aceb780da

A Poet! He Hath Put his Heart to School

William Wordsworth

A poet!—He hath put his heart to school,Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staffWhich art hath lodged within his hand—must laughBy precept only, and shed tears by rule.Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff,And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool,In fear that else, when Critics grave and coolHave killed him, S...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

3cd251d3e4183bdf

Ingathering

Carolyn Kizer

The poets are going home now, After the years of exile, After the northern climates Where they worked, lectured, remembered, Where they shivered at night In an indifferent world. Where God was the god of business, And men would violate the poets’ moon, And even the heavens become zones of war. The poets are go...

[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]

[ "S3-11", "S10-6" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]

2f8782dd192b2eb2

Book 2, Epigram 21: In Momum.

Thomas Bastard

Momus, to be a Poet Laureate, Has strained his wits through an iron grate. For he has rhymes and rhymes, and double strains, And golden verses, and all kinds of veins, Now to the press he presses hastily, To sell his friends stinking eternity. For who would be eternal in such fashion, To be a witness to ...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

71339bcdd3ed26e3

The Red Shoes

Sheila Black

Someone buried red slippers under the floorboardsand the mice nested in them. The floors splintered no matterhow many cans of deck paint we used. And one nightat the Embajada I broke a tooth, and the very nextnight three teenagers were shot dead as they sat ata booth by the window eating mofongo. The neighborwoman used...

[ "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S3-1", "S3-2", "S6-5" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Living/Mourning" ]

ba5ae5c19bd69a59

Mama Said ...

Mary Moore Easter

(there’ll be days like this.) — The Shirelles These folks ’bout to respect me into the grave.At eighty Mama said, (mama said) “People think you change when you’re old but you still got a girl inside.” And men could see her, too — that pin...

[ "S6", "S7", "S8" ]

[ "S6-1", "S8-3" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

6135b1cbff4714f1

On Teaching

Kahlil Gibran

Then said a teacher, Speak to us of Teach- ing. And he said: No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawn- ing of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lov...

[ "S5", "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S5-4", "S9-6" ]

[ "Religion", "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Religion/God & the Divine", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]

2b9f25155a8a4433

Sonnet 32: If thou survive my well-contented day

William Shakespeare

If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripp'd by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme...

[ "S1", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S1-3", "S1-6", "S1-7", "S6-4", "S10-6" ]

[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Romantic Love", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

69bf7794ecaa0fbb

The Dead

Don Paterson

Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom; though they speak with more than just the season's tongue— the colours that they blaze from the dark loam all have something of the jealous tang of the dead about them. What do we know of their part in this, those secret brothers of the harrow, invigo...

[ "S2", "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S2-8", "S3-2", "S6-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

3b5dc87b72328b37

Climbing Milestone Mountain, August 22, 1937

Kenneth Rexroth

For a month now, wandering over the Sierras, A poem had been gathering in my mind, Details of significance and rhythm, The way poems do, but still lacking a focus. Last night I remembered the date and it all Began to grow together and take on purpose. We sat up late while Deneb moved over the zenith And I tol...

[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S6", "S8", "S9" ]

[ "S2-9", "S3-6", "S6-4", "S8-4", "S9-7" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]

[ "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

94b5c87e669a64c8

Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd

William Shakespeare

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main, Increasing store with...

[ "S1", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]

[ "S1-3", "S1-6", "S1-8" ]

[ "Love", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Classic Love" ]

d087bf3d62de2e3a

Dress Rehearsal

Chloe Honum

Branches etch the film of iceon the studio window. A crow looks in,hopping and shrieking when I dancein my black tutu, trimmed with silver. The ballet master says,

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-10" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance" ]

0748bec4bf11eb7e

Farewell to Matilda

Thomas Love Peacock

Oui, pour jamais Chassons l’image De la volage Que j’adorais. PARNY. Matilda, farewell! Fate has doom’d us to part, But the prospect occasions no pang to my heart; No longer is love with my reason at strife, Though once thou wert dearer, far dearer than life. As to...

[ "S1", "S3", "S8" ]

[ "S3-4", "S8-1" ]

[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]

801e7411c0badaed

A Regret

David Trinidad

Kurt, early twenties. Met him after an AA meeting in Silverlake (November, eighty-five). I remem- ber standing with him up- stairs, in the clubhouse, how I checked his body out. But not who approached whom. Or what we talked about before we leaned against my car and kissed, under that tarnished ...

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[ "S1-1", "S1-3", "S8-6" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Relationships/LGBTQ+" ]

08a21e7cbeda27d6

Increment

Josephine Miles

So populous the regionThat from the next regionThe crowing of children, barking of cars could be heard,So that a continuous linkageOf sounds of living ranIn the limber air,District to district, Woodlake to Montclair,Freestone to Smithfield, and one child’s cryWas not concealed from any trade route,Or passer by,Or upsta...

[ "S3" ]

[ "S3-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]

dd8f0a37dd8e30fd

September, 1819

William Wordsworth

Departing summer hath assumed An aspect tenderly illumed, The gentlest look of spring; That calls from yonder leafy shade Unfaded, yet prepared to fade, A timely carolling. No faint and hesitating trill, Such tribute as to winter chill The lonely redbreast pays! Clear, loud, and lively is the din, From social warblers ...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-3", "S2-7" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Fall", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

3d97592898ec6f3f

Action Town

Todd Colby

Right now I'm sipping a mango lassi in Action Town. I'm not bereft at all. In fact, I'm pleasantly aware of people moving on all fours. Our voice and text messages will be erased in no time. When I walk into stores they call me Spark Plug because I have a sparky manner. Things get all wavy from their constant att...

[ "S1", "S3" ]

[ "S1-6", "S3-1" ]

[ "Love", "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]

9fa8f415ed8a1760

September 1913

William Butler Yeats

What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone; For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave. Yet they were of a different kind, The n...

[ "S3", "S4" ]

[ "S3-11" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]

35888018af285edb

Girl, 11

Jonterri Gadson

A mouth is a sideways woman, her curves and dips, the way she opens, how her hollow center can sing. Mother, your mouth is a fallen cello, your husband's hands— a casket. Full of me.

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S6-3", "S8-3" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Coming of Age", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

a0ac90f8dea67489

Craft [The first great poet]

Quan Barry

The first great poet of the crisis the one whose generation was left as if firebombed though if you look back at the seminal work you will see that only a handful of of the poems explicitly  touch on that dark time  the blood filling with ...

[ "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S3-11", "S6-5" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Mourning" ]

68f642b784dd4e19

The Miller's Daughter

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It is the miller’s daughter, And she is grown so dear, so dear, That I would be the jewel That trembles at her ear: For hid in ringlets day and night, I’d touch her neck so warm and white. And I would be the girdle About her dainty, dainty waist, And her heart would beat against me, In sorrow and in rest: And I...

[ "S1" ]

[ "S1-1", "S1-4", "S1-7" ]

[ "Love" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Romantic Love" ]

04a4653155e57330

X Number

Chris Glomski

of waves dropped into froth Jellyfish a jar of innards half-buried in sand Dead nature What are these things and who are they for? This blue rug is its own genre And these painted apples round out the essence of what can be made into what can be eaten Winter interest 3.9 APR April come...

[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S2-1", "S2-6", "S4-1" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[ "Nature/Spring", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]

26a435e1cbbb5317

Dressing My Daughters

Mark Jarman

One girl a full head taller Than the other—into their Sunday dresses. First, the slip, hardly a piece of fabric, Softly stitched and printed with a bud. I’m not their mother, and tangle, then untangle The whole cloth—on backwards, have to grab it Round their necks. But they know how to pull Arms in, a reflex of ...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S6-7", "S10-5" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Parenthood" ]

afa86a071a3f4bf0

everything i’ve called women

Nate Marshall

if i said baby you might think a certain thing but nah. that’s only maybe what i mean, perhaps i’ll say ma & your mind says Cam’ron, women creeping up but i’m a changed man, & that’s not game ma. it’s practice in high school & THOT isn’t out yet. we’re classic Chicago & bustdowns bloom in our mouths. my Ma spits ...

[ "S1", "S3", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S1-1", "S3-4", "S3-8", "S10-2", "S10-3" ]

[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]

65199d6c26476a54

[dear dusty moth]

Robin Blaser

dear dusty moth wearing miller’s cloth, Sophia Nichols’ soft voice calls wings at dusk across railroads and sagebrush to lull me to sleep, ‘Come to these window corners, come, rest on my boy’s dreams and flight, come tonight’ 2 September 2002

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[ "S2-5" ]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[ "Nature/Animals" ]

580212ada5f84384

anabatic

Tom Pickard

at first they recce, easy, around the edge of breaththen gathered gangs unleashand breach but the wind has no objective,riding the slope of my roof

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-10" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Weather" ]

4dbd8410f26b3e52

Book of Memory

Rebecca Hazelton

In my seeing there was a blank and he filled that blank with words, there were words for darkness which made it lift, there were words for cover which ripped them off, there were legs that crossed and hearts that crossed, promises red and read, and the pluck of banjo had a name for that twang, and the way he calle...

[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S3-4" ]

[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

9cfd8e9c5608ecfc

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or...

[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]

[ "S1-7", "S1-8", "S2-2" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Love/Classic Love", "Nature/Summer" ]

bd1884afcebd7910

The Garden Body: A Florilegium

Sylvia Legris

1 A pepper of bees opens the pupils. An ensemble of aromatics Chorus aphrodisia, mariner’s root, bright sky and night star, heavenly rainbow. Amethyst, azure, blue flower-de-luce. Flowering ring. • White archangelic the bee nettle, the dead nettle. A hide of nettle cloth, of finely-nerved sedge. Take heed the e...

[ "S1", "S2", "S6", "S9", "S10", "S11" ]

[ "S1-1", "S2-8", "S9-2", "S10-8", "S11-3" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Activities/Gardening & Farming" ]

52d463cb0fa430b8

Song

Adonis

from “Elegy for the First Century” Bells on our eyelashes and the death throes of words, and I among fields of speech, a knight on a horse made of dirt. My lungs are my poetry, my eyes a book, and I, under the skin of words, on the beaming banks of foam, a poet who sang and died leaving this singed elegy befo...

[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

[ "S6-4", "S10-2", "S10-6" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

83c881fb2fd42bc7

Song: “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more”

William Shakespeare

(from Much Ado About Nothing) Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, but let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny, nonny. Sing no more ditties, sing ...

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[ "S1-8", "S1-9", "S8-1" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Classic Love", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]

a9d5f3a051190142

Crows in a Strong Wind

Cornelius Eady

Off go the crows from the roof. The crows can’t hold on. They might as well Be perched on an oil slick. Such an awkward dance, These gentlemen In their spottled-black coats. Such a tipsy dance, As if they didn’t know where they were. Such a humorous dance, As they try to set things right, As the wind reduces...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-5" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Animals" ]

f7ff6d53ae0adbad

Buying Camels in Dresden

Wong May

Like all great riversThe Elbe is familiar at first sight.The barges spic & span as the front parlorsOf model homes in Saxony —The steam paddle-wheelers & other vessels,No less impeccable — all runWith a near soporific efficiency.You lean out & ...

[ "S3", "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S3-1", "S3-2", "S9-7" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

323329b9816972bf

Study/Trees

Leonard Gontarek

Leaves flare up, kitchen matches in the permanent trees. Black flash of pike on Mirror Lake, dropping like a roll of nickels. I don’t want nudes in paintings, I don’t want Beauty through the heart, small harpoon that opens when pulled out. I want to break another eggroll with you in moonlight. Ugly maples, when ...

[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]

[ "S1-7", "S2-8" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]

28f1a5fb1c6cb824

"Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare."

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondag...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[]

e39398e1e36afc69

Sunflowers

José Antonio Rodríguez

No pitying/“Ah” for this one —Alan Shapiro No, nor a fierce hurrahfor what it does without choice,for following the lightfor the same reason the light follows it.Just a thing rough to the touch, a facelike a thousand ticks turning their backs,suckling at something you can’t see,and a body like a tag off the earthso th...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-8" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]

8057e610c64c337d

Handy Guide

Dean Young

Avoid adjectives of scale.Dandelion broth instead of duck soup.Don’t even think you’ve seen a meadow, ever.The minor adjustments in our equationsstill indicate the universe is insane,when it laughs a silk dress comes out its mouthbut we never put it on. Put it on.Cry often and while asleep.If it’s raw, forge it in fire...

[ "S6" ]

[]

[ "Living" ]

[]

a946f306218fcbbf

The Plate

Anthony Hecht

Now he has silver in him. When sometimeDeath shall boil down unnecessary fatTo reach the nub of our identity, When in the run of crimeThe skull is rifled for the gold in teeth,And chemistry has eaten from the spineSuperfluous life and vigor, why then heWill show a richness to be wondered at, And...

[ "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S3-11", "S6-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

f5ed517d45baa4e0

God's World

Edna St. Vincent Millay

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, World, I cannot get thee close enough! Long have I known a ...

[ "S2", "S5" ]

[ "S5-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Religion" ]

[ "Religion/God & the Divine" ]

c6d5f934c733153d

January in Detroit or Search for Tomorrow Starring Ken and Ann

Ken Mikolowski

I think it is interesting though not exactly amusing how we go from day to day with no money. How do we do it, friends ask, suspecting we really have some stash stacked away somewhere. But we certainly do not and we also do not know how we do it either. You sure are lucky, some of our friends say. I am none...

[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S3-1", "S4-1", "S8-5", "S9-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

8aa25d032d0762b4

Losses

Wesley McNair

It must be difficult for God, listening to our voices come up through his floor of cloud to tell Him what’s been taken away: Lord, I’ve lost my dog, my period, my hair, all my money. What can He say, given we’re so incomplete we can’t stop being surprised by our condition, while He is completeness itself? Or is ...

[ "S5", "S6" ]

[ "S5-4", "S6-1", "S6-5" ]

[ "Religion", "Living" ]

[ "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Aging", "Living/Mourning" ]

12fd9f14c45f35fc

Chocolate

Rita Dove

Velvet fruit, exquisite square I hold up to sniff between finger and thumb - how you numb me with your rich attentions! If I don't eat you quickly, you'll melt in my palm. Pleasure seeker, if i let you you'd liquefy everywhere. Knotted smoke, dark punch of earth and night and leaf, for a taste of you any wo...

[ "S1", "S8", "S9" ]

[ "S9-1" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships", "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

912a3a430ffb4eb1

Stefan Zweig, 1881–1942

Gerard Malanga

Stefan Zweig, come back, come back. Do not be afraid. Do not look the other way, but on all sides. Come take the road with me into those dark woods where eerie sounds of nature coalesce, where fledglings kiss you on the head and talk to you. Come fly with me, come be my friend in those darkest hours, in those da...

[ "S2", "S6", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S2-8", "S9-7", "S10-8" ]

[ "Nature", "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

3fadded5cfbed0f9

Desert

Josephine Miles

When with the skin you do acknowledge drought, The dry in the voice, the lightness of feet, the fine Flake of the heat at every level line; When with the hand you learn to touch without Surprise the spine for the leaf, the prickled petal, The stone scorched in the shine, and the wood brittle; Then where the pipe ...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-7" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

965b7ed40c571b66

Neighbors Smoke on an Apartment Porch Owned by a Mental Health Agency

Sheryl Luna

Dazed with rambling gossip, their looming net of mistakes, their love of rumor, they all dream arousal. They are far from indifferent. Their language bellows need. A gull darts over and behind bare buildings, shaggy forests, mountains, city streets. Trees lose leaves, and one man insists the leaves aren’t dying...

[ "S6", "S8", "S9" ]

[ "S8-3", "S9-4" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]

[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]