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
d1955c766d98b38f	Swimming Ool	Kenn Nesbitt	Swimming in the swimming pool is where I like to “B,” wearing underwater goggles so that I can “C.” Yesterday, before I swam, I drank a cup of “T.” Now the pool’s a “swimming ool” because I took a “P.”	[ "S6", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S9-5", "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]
b3c2d106092bae68	Evenings of Certain Lives	Gottfried Benn	I You don’t need always to be scrubbing the tiles, Hendrickje, my eye drinks itself, drinks itself to death— but other drink is in short supply— the little Buddha there, Chinese grove god in exchange for a ladleful of Hulstkamp, please! Never painted anything in frost-white or ice-skater blue or that Irish g...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S10-4" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]
e8f2625b1cbd96ca	Faith	David Baker	It was midday before we noticed it was morning. The boy cousins brought us a tray—soup and cheese, warm soda, and a soft cloth and candy for her fever. They wouldn’t come in, the tray weighing between them. They stood like woodwork inside the door frame. By afternoon the old procession—silence at the lip of a doz...	[ "S5", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S5-3", "S6-6", "S8-3" ]	[ "Religion", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
bb3ba6c86e8e7c43	Red Parade	David Trinidad	Depressed because my book wasn’t nominated for a gay award, I lie on my couch watching—not listening to— the O.J. trial. Byron, who senses something’s wrong, hides under the bed until Ira comes home, carrying a bouquet of beautifully wrapped tulips. I press the mute button. “This is your prize,” he says. “...	[ "S3", "S10" ]	[ "S3-7", "S10-6" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]
30533a49de2e610a	William My Man	Mary Hickman	I A cave with arms at the mouth. Our hero is blind: everything he hears he sees. Hear! Gold light sifts to his ear. A roar. The seas beaten—his duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix, destined for heat, they blush. II William's cabbage heart shook. He dragged himself from the dirt. If he could rest hi...	[ "S3", "S10" ]	[ "S3-1", "S10-2" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
629e828dd863951f	With a Book	Ambrose Bierce	Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning— Sense lacking. Ah, nothing, more obscure than Browning, Save blacking.	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-6", "S10-8" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books" ]
92ea45d56ba88de8	Girl in a Library	Gail Mazur	“ . . . But my mind, gone out in tenderness, Shrinks from its object . . .” —Randall Jarrell I want to find my way back to her, to help her, to grab her hand, pull her up from the wooden floor of the stacks where she’s reading accounts of the hatchet murders of Lizzie Borden’s harsh parents as if she could lear...	[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S6-3", "S10-8" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Living/Coming of Age" ]
02a36a3d6443c19e	Safe in their Alabaster Chambers (124)	Emily Dickinson	Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - Untouched by Morning - and untouched by noon - Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection, Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone - Grand go the Years, In the Crescent above them - Worlds scoop their Arcs - and Firmaments - row - Diadems - drop - And Doges surrender - Soundless ...	[ "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S6-4" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]
732d3117bf24c829	At a Certain Age	Deborah Cummins	He sits beside his wife who takes the wheel. Clutching coupons, he wanders the aisles of Stop & Save. There’s no place he must be, no clock to punch. Sure, there are bass in the lake, a balsa model in the garage, the par-three back nine. But it’s not the same. Time the enemy then, the enemy now. As he ...	[ "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S3-4", "S8-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
16d0d3ea57688362	Marcus Aurelius	Bianca Stone	Sometimes I wake up in the night with a terrible headache, my mouth blackened; a ghost looking for valuables in the debris, I turn on a battery-powered light, clipped to a book, I write things down in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius who said the finest bottle of wine is just grape juice, passing through the liver,...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy" ]
68f242eb0a71d89e	Cuckoldom	BJ Ward	Such conundrums of English. I blame my ex-wife. She rearranged my dictionary, or re- taught an old story: in this book, if you look for alimony, it follows acrimony (nothing between). However, contrition still borders contrivance (if it can be seen). Untruth in her troth sallowed the language, sullied a certain conjuga...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S1-6", "S3-4", "S6-1", "S8-1", "S8-7" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
99b081cda12a8ed2	Together	Maxine Kumin	The water closing over us and the going down is all. Gills are given. We convert in a town of broken hulls and green doubloons. O you dead pirates hear us! There is no salvage. All you know is the color of warm caramel. All is salt. See how our eyes have migrated to the uphill side? Now we are new round ...	[ "S2", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S6-1", "S8-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
05a227f6ef299eef	A woman is never still	Afshan Shafi	At one time, if my nails had been painted this shade of rose-foam in Kabul they would have rammed out the frosted shell like the tarp off a bud’s wet belly, they would have gouged out each shining beast, viscera still shiny, each glittering pore still insane with breath The pain is meant to shame me back ...	[ "S3", "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S3-4", "S5-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Religion/Islam" ]
99a506d3797fcc08	Sonnet 106: When in the chronicle of wasted time	William Shakespeare	When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express'd Even such a beauty as you ...	[ "S6", "S7" ]	[]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[]
5a6c372076e65d3a	Marriage	Mary Elizabeth Coleridge	No more alone sleeping, no more alone waking, Thy dreams divided, thy prayers in twain; Thy merry sisters tonight forsaking, Never shall we see, maiden, again. Never shall we see thee, thine eyes glancing. Flashing with laughter and wild in glee, Under the mistletoe kissing and dancing, Wantonly free. There sha...	[ "S1" ]	[ "S1-6" ]	[ "Love" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated" ]
57bcff865d746752	Describe Turner to MLK	Tod Marshall	I The weight of my son at the emergency room for an eye injury, sack of flour, sack of salt, dusty bag of bones collapsed ...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S6-7", "S10-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Living/Parenthood" ]
8742e6c6a41e7ce0	ABC	Kathryn Maris	Identification is a highly important factor in the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients are enabled in their symptoms to represent not merely their own experiences, but the experiences of a great number of other persons, and can suffer, as it were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the parts ...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S1-6", "S3-4", "S6-6", "S8-1", "S10-9" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Sciences", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
b53975567b7b270f	In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 44	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	How fares it with the happy dead? For here the man is more and more; But he forgets the days before God shut the doorways of his head. The days have vanish'd, tone and tint, And yet perhaps the hoarding sense Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A little flash, a mystic hint; And...	[ "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S5-3", "S6-4" ]	[ "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
5a7670390b69a008	The Corner	Rae Armantrout	Like a child, mind wants to play, but even the butterflies are on the clock. Still, attention is happy to comport with the swallowtail as it jerkily rounds the corner. Like a child, mind follows, imitates. First and last it loves sequence. I’ve counted up to one this season.	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-8" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Youth" ]
49fd450d8bd607d5	The Wind Chimes	Shirley Buettner	Two wind chimes, one brass and prone to anger, one with the throat of an angel, swing from my porch eave, sing with the storm. Last year I lived five months under that shrill choir, boxing your house, crowding books into crates, from some pages your own voice crying. Some days the chimes raged. Some days they hung stil...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-5" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Mourning" ]
602903b42f5cd1dd	My Erotic Double	John Ashbery	He says he doesn’t feel like working today. It’s just as well. Here in the shade Behind the house, protected from street noises, One can go over all kinds of old feeling, Throw some away, keep others. The wordplay Between us gets very intense when there are Fewer feel...	[ "S1", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S10-2" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]
f666db2bcacd97db	The Work	Tom Sleigh	for my father 1. Today Today, this moment, speechlessly in pain, He fights the terror of being poured out, The fall into darkness unquenchably long So that even as he hurtles he keeps holding Back like a dam the flood overtops—but nothing now Can stop that surge, already he swirls To the source of Voices, the m...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-4", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
e4579fbd05210d4f	Ode I. 11	Horace	Leucon, no one’s allowed to know his fate, Not you, not me: don’t ask, don’t hunt for answers In tea leaves or palms. Be patient with whatever comes. This could be our last winter, it could be many More, pounding the Tuscan Sea on these rocks: Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines And forget about hope. Time goes r...	[ "S5", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S5-8", "S6-4" ]	[ "Religion", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
c9aca00788e52775	Elegy	Lyn Hejinian	I am writing now in preconceptions Those of sex and ropes Many frantic cruelties occur to the flesh of the imagination And the imagination does have flesh to destroy And the flesh has imagination to sever The mouth is just a body filled with imagination Can you imagine its contents The dripping into...	[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S10" ]	[]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[]
52e81f1fbee58aa0	The Self-Unseeing	Thomas Hardy	Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Childlike, I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a gleam; Yet ...	[ "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S8-5" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Home Life" ]
096680895ba4a340	For the Man with the Erection Lasting More than Four Hours	John Hodgen	He’s supposed to call his doctor, but for now he’s the May King with his own maypole. He’s hallelujah. He’s glory hole. The world has more women than he can shake a stick at. The world is his brickbat, no conscience to prick at, all of us Germans he can	[ "S3", "S10" ]	[ "S3-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]
e441662f3f75c87d	“The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish”	Joshua Weiner	is not a man being swallowed by a fish with eyes like eight-point throwing stars it’s a man being swallowed by a war a man being taken into the mouth of a woman or being swallowed by his work it’s a man traveling far inside a book a man being swallowed up in smoke he swallows the smoke, that blends around him li...	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
2e57431c597e263e	The Solitary Land	Adonis	I inhabit these fugitive words, I live, my face my face’s lone companion, And my face is my path, In your name, my land That stands tall, enchanted and solitary; In your name, death, my friend. Translated from the Arabic	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S6-4", "S10-2" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
7833c83bd82646bd	The Heart Shows No Signs	Ru Freeman	The heart, the surgeon says, does not reveal the small rifts, the hairline cracks which split the hairline cracks they conceal cops and robbers in a stretch of skin flaunting star-scars with show of blood bone the ledges of what it holds tight in checkmate moves: bend this and break fight first and bleed to earn...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S6-5", "S10-10" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance", "Living/Mourning" ]
4e7c0ebd33cf2a33	The Door:	Jean Valentine	When I first heard you on the phone your voice had to be that '40s wartime voice for it to get under my skin like it did, after seven years asleep. You’re at the beginning of something, you said,and I’m at the end of something; but you didn’t go away, twice-born, three times, coming around, rough cello. ...	[ "S1" ]	[ "S1-3" ]	[ "Love" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss" ]
e1be3f62ae152abb	from Stone: 103 The Twilight of Freedom	Osip Mandelstam	Let us praise the twilight of freedom, brothers, the great year of twilight! A thick forest of nets has been let down into the seething waters of night. O sun, judge, people, desolate are the years into which you are rising! Let us praise the momentous burden that the people’s leader assumes, in tears. Let us p...	[ "S4" ]	[]	[ "History & Politics" ]	[]
0f6488dbc61c2e06	Jackson Hotel	Lynda Hull	Sometimes after hours of wine I can almost see the night gliding in low off the harbor down the long avenues of shop windows past mannequins, perfect in their gestures. I leave some water steaming on the gas ring and sometimes I can slip from my body, almost find the single word to prevent eveni...	[ "S3" ]	[ "S3-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
76737ab5abc68b59	The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak	Galway Kinnell	The man splitting wood in the daybreak looks strong, as though, if one weakened, one could turn to him and he would help. Gus Newland was strong. When he split wood he struck hard, flashing the bright steel through the air so hard the hard maple leapt apart, as it’s feared marriages will do in countries reluctan...	[ "S2", "S6", "S7", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S2-8", "S6-7", "S8-1", "S8-3", "S8-7", "S10-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
1e650d01cf9c39cc	from The Black Maria	Aracelis Girmay	after Neil deGrasse Tyson, black astrophysicist & director of the Hayden Planetarium, born in 1958, New York City. In his youth, deGrasse Tyson was confronted by police on more than one occasion when he was on his way to study stars. “I’ve known that I’ve wanted to do astrophysics sinc...	[ "S2", "S3" ]	[ "S2-9", "S3-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
4839bf7ec2590bf7	Consider the Hands that Write this Letter	Aracelis Girmay	after Marina Wilson Consider the hands that write this letter. Left palm pressed flat against paper, as we have done before, over my heart, in peace or reverence to the sea, some beautiful thing I saw once, felt once: snow falling like rice flung from the giants' wedding, or strangest of strange birds. & consi...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S8-3", "S8-4" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
e5456c10d7af52e0	The Eagle	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-5" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Animals" ]
d5eba159054532e9	Jim Harrison, 1937–2016	Gerard Malanga	I would imagine underneath those warming bear hugs was a kinda kind of soul as your many poems attest. Those summer breezes. Those many hazy sunsets nature’s voices echoing afar. A life continually fulfilled bordering on the empty and those inexplicable tragedies, those bad timings unreconciled, then reconciled w...	[ "S2", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S2-8", "S10-6" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]
f4315f6fee524cce	Scrambled	Bruce Lansky	I climbed up the door and I opened the stairs. I said my pajamas and buttoned my prayers. I turned off the covers and pulled up the light. I’m all scrambled up since she kissed me last night.	[ "S8", "S10" ]	[]	[ "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[]
badedfcb18dbf1f6	Napoli	Julian Stannard	The boat was beating across the bay,we had our backs to Vesuvius,the wind smacked our faces.Naples was an enormous packet of cigarettesyou could smoke till you conked out:the cigarettes were never going to run outand nor was the coffee, the drugs,the prostitutes, the locked churches,the scooters, the rice cakes, the ev...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S9" ]	[ "S3-1", "S9-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Activities" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
c93d6f855550fdf0	Some Months After My Father’s Death	Sheryl St. Germain	I am watching the movie Twelve Angry Men because there is a character in it who reminds me of him. He is the one who wants to go to the baseball game instead of decide on a man’s life, he is the weak one, the one afraid to reveal what he really feels, the one for whom everything is a joke. He is not Henry Fonda,...	[ "S3", "S6", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S3-6", "S3-7", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-3", "S9-3", "S10-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]
aeee02ed944ad61a	Less Than, More Than	David Rivard	Where am I going today if I'm going anywhere at all without my soul, that bird with its unreadable, unheard name having wandered off again, convinced that it is more than just a word— do we travel far from each other today?— me in my pre-owned Mazda with my radio full of wasps' nest news, my Peshawar & my Rupe...	[ "S9" ]	[ "S9-7" ]	[ "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
677fe3fdcc7b12a7	Forbidden City	Gail Mazur	Asleep until noon, I'm dreaming we've been granted another year. You're here with me, healthy. Then, half-awake, the half-truth— this is our last day. Life's leaking away again, and this time, we know it. Dear body, I told you, pleading,Don't Leave! but I understand you can't say anything. Who are we? Are we fi...	[ "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S6-5" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Living/Mourning" ]
0a604109eb246597	Sonnet 94: They that have power to hurt and will do none	William Shakespeare	They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow: They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but...	[ "S3", "S11" ]	[ "S11-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism" ]
4d47f8f81f10256f	At the Threshold of the Book	Edmond Jabès	Mark the first page of the book with a red marker. For, in the beginning, the wound is invisible. - Reb Alcé "What is going on behind this door?" "A book is shedding its leaves." "What is the story of the book?" "Becoming aware of a scream." "I saw rabbis go in." "They are privileged readers...	[ "S5", "S10" ]	[ "S5-6", "S10-5", "S10-8" ]	[ "Religion", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Religion/Judaism" ]
4832cd7c0f95c132	The West Country	Alice Cary	Have you been in our wild west country? then You have often had to pass Its cabins lying like birds’ nests in The wild green prairie grass. Have you seen the women forget their wheels As they sat at the door to spin— Have you seen the darning fall away From their fingers worn and thin, As they asked you news of...	[ "S3", "S9" ]	[ "S9-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
5dc013ed06ba03ba	The Abuelita Poem	Paul Martínez Pompa	I. SKIN & CORN Her brown skin glistens as the sun pours through the kitchen window like gold leche. After grinding the nixtamal, a word so beautifully ethnic it must not only be italicized but underlined to let you, the reader, know you’ve encountered something beautifully ethnic, she kneads with the hands of c...	[ "S3", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S3-7", "S3-8", "S8-3", "S9-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
b595af9f4f8406e5	The Sleep of the Tuba-Player	Ana Božičević	The tuba wakes before the man. It’s a content animal: having no word, for the moment, suits it fine. It looks at him with a dun and smooth interiority, as a glass of rum might, or a worn number on an apartment building: his hands, crossed on the chest, rise and fall with breathing. In the dream, he’s ringing the ...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S3-11", "S6-1" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Aging" ]
ba89bdc6a79ac9bc	As the Team's Head Brass	Edward Thomas	As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed an angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square Of charlock. Every time the horses turned Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned Upon the handl...	[ "S2", "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S2-5", "S3-9", "S3-11", "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
7176584dca5b2182	Atlantic Oil	Cesare Pavese	The drunk mechanic is happy to be in the ditch. From the tavern, five minutes through the dark field and you’re home. But first, there’s the cool grass to enjoy, and the mechanic will sleep here till dawn. A few feet away, the red and black sign that rises from the field: if you’re too close, you can’t read it, i...	[ "S9" ]	[ "S9-4" ]	[ "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
9083844c67fdf2ec	Last Photograph of My Parents	Ruben Quesada	San José, Costa Rica Tortillas clap against floured palms, steaming bowls of avena, frijoles black as the rumbling sky,arroz con pollo simmers. Against the kitchen window, small clouds rise. Papá dances to the electric beat of the marimba, his cheek bristly against Mamá’s neck; his thick fingers sift through he...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-4", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
10cebf55463e213f	They Call the Mountain Carlos	Ray Gonzalez	They call the mountain Carlos because it is brown, though its purple slopes at dusk suggest other names. Those who name it have to brand the earth with something they know— a name, a face, even the heat that says "I know Carlos and he is the mountain. I am going to cover his eyes in light." They call its peak C...	[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S9" ]	[ "S2-7", "S3-8", "S9-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
834284105fc419f0	Creation Myth	Lisa Wells	Born again on a Monday under a broken zodiac. My father the woodman, a surgeon among snags, could read the living trail of blades rebounding in the field, the mopped-matte passage through the dew. He woke a brush pile with fire throwing shadows on the child, I was thrown over. Father, it was a pleasure to meet ...	[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S8" ]	[ "S2-7", "S4-1", "S8-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
984bb0a24259e811	Sonnet 66: Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry	William Shakespeare	Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry, As, to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd, And strength by limping sway disabl...	[ "S1", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S1-6", "S6-4" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
34f77a52735da3b1	Pericles	Donald Revell	What are my friends? Mouths, not eyes forBitterest underflesh of the farewell.I was a man and suffered like a girl.I spoke underneath to where the lights arePretty, pretty, pretty whence they came to tellOne God gets another. My friends areMouths for God, tearing me. In such a worldBroken only daughter opens to splendo...	[ "S3", "S4", "S5", "S6", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S3-11", "S5-4", "S6-7", "S8-4", "S9-7", "S10-6" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Religion", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
4bae9c605b466dc2	The Everlasting Voices	William Butler Yeats	O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more; Have you not heard that our hearts are old, That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? O sweet everlasting Voices, be stil...	[ "S2", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S2-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
ec4b0dba27d93c05	I Wave Good-bye When Butter Flies	Jack Prelutsky	I wave good-bye when butter flies and cheer a boxing match, I've often watched my pillow fight, I've sewn a cabbage patch, I like to dance at basket balls or lead a rubber band, I've marvelled at a spelling bee, I've helped a peanut stand. It's possible a pencil points, but does a lemon drop? Does coffee brea...	[ "S9" ]	[ "S9-1" ]	[ "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
8d8f6b0b9abf1598	From Space to Time	Carolyn M. Rodgers	on a day when we were dark and not so full of light we met what did we find? nothing. everything, when we closed our eyes which anyway had never been open. once, we thought we loved each other who can reverse time? we tried. we stepped out of space into some new step of distance and f...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[]
5853e28e79c1cb7c	Ghetto Funeral	Charles Reznikoff	Followed by his lodge, shabby men stumbling over the cobblestones, and his children, faces red and ugly with tears, eyes and eyelids red, in the black coffin in the black hearse the old man. No longer secretly grieving that his children are not strong enough to go the way he wanted to go and was not...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-4" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]
123f175409de5895	The Desert of Atacama V	Raúl Zurita	Speak of the whistle of Atacama the wind erases like snow the color of that plain i. The Desert of Atacama soared over infinities of deserts to be there ii. Like the wind feel it pass whistling through the leaves of the trees iii. Look at it become transparent faraway and ju...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-7" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
6ff2be78e3a781fd	Drury-lane Prologue Spoken by Mr. Garrick at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury-Lane, 1747	Samuel Johnson	When Learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespear rose; Each change of many-colour’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain: His pow’rful strokes presiding Truth impress’d, And ...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-10" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance" ]
986b95b087ae3dfb	A Prayer for My Daughter	William Butler Yeats	Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind, Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed; And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gl...	[ "S3", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S3-4", "S6-2", "S6-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Birth & Infancy", "Living/Parenthood" ]
039d8943a7c257a6	Ars Poetica?	Czeslaw Milosz	I have always aspired to a more spacious form that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose and would let us understand each other without exposing the author or reader to sublime agonies. In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent: a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,...	[ "S10", "S11" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
e6e5306d1c37ac61	The Lord's Prayer	Anthony Carelli	You can't fake it. You know when I fail to achieve the expected: palm the becoming- comatose bullfrog, legs collapsing as they may, and chuck it (we used to say) high as you can. Let it fly stone-like to the skylight in the low dome of fog—another requirement of the gam...	[ "S2", "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S2-5", "S5-2", "S5-8", "S6-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Youth" ]
9c428a753aad9d9c	Chino	Brandon Som	The olla knocked with steam. The masa cooked. She said her eyes are china. The vowel switched on an aura, a shine that sheens the threshold. The vowel was spell: an i that might we, an i that echoes how we’re seen and see. ...	[ "S3", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S3-8", "S8-3", "S10-2" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
5ab0716028993864	Tombo	W. S. Di Piero	In Safeway yesterday, a young man sat on the floor, pulled off his shoes, granted audience to us, his fellow seekers, and picked his naked feet. He smiled, our brother, at the story he told of deliverance at the hand of Master Tombo, lord and creator, whose round energylives in us...	[ "S5", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S5-8", "S10-5" ]	[ "Religion", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
8dd65871d19ab693	Uppity	Eileen Myles	Roads around mountainscause we can’t drivethroughThat’s Poetryto Me.	[ "S2", "S10" ]	[ "S2-7", "S10-6" ]	[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
5b15725297879a35	Salt	Huang Fan	Grain by grain, salt’s frozen tears Help me count history’s disasters I can’t blame salt for telling foodYou’re full of wounds Salt misses the freedom of the ocean Remembering waves, salt jumps into a soup But it finds there only my reflected face It hides by making itself too soft to chew Sometimes, salt follow...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S3-6", "S9-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
c941d47252387e5e	Sisyphus and the Ants	Jennifer S. Flescher	The story tells us Sisyphus is being punished. Over and over he has to push that boulder up and up. The mountain and God glaring. And you, you have your avalanche of moods. Pills the size of stars to nearly quell cascade and tumult. And still you step gravity amplified by incline, each hazard in the way of the...	[ "S6", "S7", "S11" ]	[ "S11-3" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology" ]
0a80d90ced5bcf8b	Seventh Song	Sir Philip Sidney	Whose sense in so evil consort, their stepdame Nature lays, That ravishing delight in them most sweet tunes do not raise; Or if they do delight therein, yet are so cloyed with wit, As with sententious lips to set a title vain on it: O let them hear these sacred tunes, and learn in wonder’s schools, To be (in things pas...	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[ "S1-4", "S1-7" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Romantic Love" ]
3f4e7aa4a9e6d71d	I’m Reading Your Mind	Jorie Graham	here. Have been for centuries. No, longer. Everything already has been. It’s not a reasonable place, this continuum between us, and yet here again I put the olive trees in, turn the whole hill-sweeping grove down, its mile-long headfuls of leaves upswept so the whole valley shivers its windy silvers, watery ... A s...	[ "S2", "S5", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S2-5", "S5-3", "S5-4", "S5-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
ccfbe960045193c5	Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line	George Starbuck	for Helen Vendler O for a muse of fire, a sack of dough, Or both! O promissory notes of woe! One time in Santa Fe N.M. Ol’ Winfield Townley Scott and I ... But whoa. One can exert oneself, ff, Or architect a heaven like Rimbaud, Or if that seems, how shall I say, de trop, One can at least write sonnets, a propo...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
b5110f1d98fc85fc	Eternity	Tom Clark	The god of war assured King Arsounas, “Do not be fooled by words. No life is taken. Know that no one was ever born, nor does anyone die.” In the violent mini-eternity of the warrior, combat is conducted according to a ritual formal as song: no one is ever born, no one can ever die. The left-handed rockabilly guitarist ...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S3-11" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
1c6aebe0457138c7	Koheleth	Louis Untermeyer	I waited and worked To win myself leisure, Till loneliness irked And I turned to raw pleasure. I drank and I gamed, I feasted and wasted, Till, sick and ashamed, The food stood untasted. I searched in the Book For rooted convictions, Till the badgered brain shook With its own contradictions. Then, done with...	[ "S5" ]	[]	[ "Religion" ]	[]
be793e11fe58e300	During Wind and Rain	Thomas Hardy	They sing their dearest songs— He, she, all of them—yea, Treble and tenor and bass, And one to play; With the candles mooning each face. . . . Ah, no; the years O! How the sick leaves reel down in throngs! They clear the creeping moss— Elders and juniors—aye, ...	[ "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S2-10" ]	[ "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Weather" ]
1bc95ced39e72c57	Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still	William Shakespeare	My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease,Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approveDesire is death, which physic did exce...	[ "S1", "S6" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-9", "S6-6" ]	[ "Love", "Living" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Living/Health & Illness" ]
bcfac020073d3ab5	Yr Not Exotic, but Once Ya Wanted to Be	Tarfia Faizullah	Whenever folks discuss finding themselves, ya get kinda giggly. Maybe b/c ya found yrself considering yr Armenian love who preferred ya in both corset and bindi, and it was for her ya begrudgingly waxed yr jungle-scabbard ... Ya find yrself in the fret of reclamation via musks all motherland-misty (coconut...	[ "S1", "S3", "S4", "S10" ]	[ "S1-6", "S3-4", "S3-8", "S10-6" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
bb73ecce86a43621	Sonnet 110: Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there	William Shakespeare	Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there And made myself a motley to the view, Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new. Most true it is that I have look'd on truth Askance and strangely: but, by all above, These blenches gave my heart another youth, And worse essays ...	[ "S1", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S1-6", "S10-10" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance" ]
84192973c7df600e	Love in the Weather’s Bells	Jay Wright	Snow hurries the strawberries from the bush. Star-wet water rides you into summer, into my autumn. Your cactus hands are at my heart again. Lady, I court my dream of you in lilies and in rain. I vest myself in your oldest memory and in my oldest need. And in my passion you are the deepest blue of the ol...	[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S1-4", "S1-7", "S2-10" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Romantic Love", "Nature/Weather" ]
bc629f23617ae6f6	Globus Hystericus	Timothy Donnelly	1 A pity the selfsame vehicle that spirits me away from factories of tedium should likewise serve to drag me backwards into panic, or that panic should erect massive factories of its own, their virulent pollutants havocking loved waterways, frothing all the reed- fringed margins acid pink and gathering in the she...	[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[]
adc58af45ce71745	A Twenty-fourth Poem about Horses	John Peck	Night deepening, frost leans on the stables of thoroughbreds, west wind splitting their hooves. —LI HO, “Twenty-three Poems about Horses” Steed out of my dusk and a dusk, now, for the species, veins deltawise down your silky inner thigh, veins trickling from one eye down the roan cliffside of a nose vaulted and c...	[ "S3", "S4", "S8", "S11" ]	[ "S3-11", "S8-8", "S11-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]
ac02dc496cc00c69	I Have Waited for the Siren	Tina Boyer Brown	On the way home, Klansmen handed out pamphlets on the corner. At the convenience store, taxidermied alligator heads framed red red lips, black black skin, white wild white wide eyes, and teeth grinning (gritting). Mammy, Sambo, savages and jockeys shaped cookie jars, figurines, gravy boats, piggy banks, and salt a...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S3-8", "S6-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Mourning" ]
9065422229ad9731	Cod	Cheryl Savageau	It is the fish that bring them first. Cod in such numbers as to seem endless. Cod to fill the nets and bellies of hungry Europeans with the tender white flesh. Cod, it seems to them, without end. They fill the ships, salting the fish down in barrels, til the hull is full, and head back home. This wet cod-fish...	[ "S2", "S9" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S9-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
313c4f38e16dc952	Chrysalis	Arthur Sze	Corpses push up through thawing permafrost as I scrape salmon skin off a pan at the sink; on the porch, motes in slanting yellow light undulate in air. Is Venus at dusk as luminous as Venus at dawn? Yesterday I was about to seal a borax capsule angled up from the bottom of a decaying exterior jamb when I glimpsed...	[ "S2", "S3" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
9a244a91a91d760a	Monster [It's possible I misconstrued you]	Brook Emery	It’s possible I misconstrued you, laid too much emphasis on the uniqueness of a birth, failed to acknowledge circumstance could corrupt, sustain; I indulged myself in accusations against an absolute. I don’t believe what I then believed. You are not responsible for Leibniz or the Lisbon quake, for the twenty-six-e...	[ "S5" ]	[ "S5-4", "S5-8" ]	[ "Religion" ]	[ "Religion/God & the Divine", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
8c731d2380785650	Careless Perfection	Daniel Halpern	According to Lin Yutang, both Po Chuyi and Su Tungpo "desperately admired" Tao Yuanming, a poet of nature who wrote a single love poem, a poem thought by Chinese dilettantes to be the one "blemish in a white jade." Can a poet be faulted for calling a womancarelessly perfect in beauty? He chose to long for her by...	[ "S1", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S1-6", "S10-6" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
c258eadc02b7ae39	Dividend of the Social Opt Out	Jennifer Moxley	How lovely it is not to go. To suddenly take ill. Not seriously ill, just a little under the weather. To feel slightly peaked, indisposed. Plagued by a vague ache, or a slight inexplicable chill. Perhaps such pleasures are denied to those who never feel obliged. If there are such. How pleasant to convey your regr...	[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S8-4", "S10-8" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
b1e5b4e0d59e9595	Wilderness	Carl Sandburg	There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of ...	[ "S2", "S3" ]	[ "S2-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Nature/Animals" ]
14c76d6b3687bf83	Silent Film	Kurt Brown	Doors opened and shut, the director shouted orders through a bullhorn, or babbled just out of the frame. A carpenter hammered flats nearby for the next production. All of this, and more, while the actors blocked it out, already living in that small square of light where silence ...	[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S2-7", "S3-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]
3fd5cbda88ddf7d5	The Parlement of Fowls	Geoffrey Chaucer	(excerpt) Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe, That hast this wintres wedres overshake, And driven away the longe nyghtes blake! Saynt Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lofte, Thus syngen smale foules for thy sake:Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,That hast this wintres wedres overshake. Wel han they cause...	[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S1-7", "S2-1", "S2-4" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Nature/Spring", "Nature/Winter" ]
b1555c805d88f7a0	Midwinter	John Unterecker	At dusk, a great flare of winter lightning photographed the bay: Waves were broken scrolls. Beyond Donegal, white mountains hung in a narrow bas-relief frozen on sky. Later, there was sleet: trees down on the Drumholm road; near Ti...	[ "S2", "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S2-4", "S2-7", "S3-9", "S8-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Winter", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
7b064e3f4b6b6324	The Emptiness of Thought	James K. Zimmerman	this morning I felt my life if you were dead the expansiveness of the bed the birds still singing the remnants of the smell of coffee in the morning the emptiness of thought the deafening silence of my heart	[ "S1" ]	[ "S1-3" ]	[ "Love" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss" ]
2c44f284e2eea9a9	A History Without Suffering	E. A. Markham	In this poem there is no suffering. It spans hundreds of years and records no deaths, connecting when it can, those moments where people are healthy and happy, content to be alive. A Chapter, maybe a Volume, shorn of violence consists of an adult reading aimlessly. This line is the length of a full life smuggle...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S3-1", "S10-6", "S10-8" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
a8fc8d0b056c31fc	from “The Octoroon”	Albery Allson Whitman	18These creatures of the languid Orient,— Rare pearls of caste, in their voluptuous swoonAnd gilded ease, by Eunuchs watched and pent, And doomed to hear the lute’s perpetual tune,Were passion’s toys—to lust an ornament; But not such was our thrush-voiced Octoroon,—The Southland beauty who was wont to he...	[ "S1", "S3", "S4" ]	[ "S1-4", "S3-4", "S3-8" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]	[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
27fd475671345443	Lenten Song	Phillis Levin	That the dead are real to usCannot be denied, That the living are more realWhen they are deadTerrifies, that the dead can riseAs the living do is possibleIs possible to surmise, But all the stars cannot come nearAll we meet in an eye.Flee from me, fear, as sootFlies in a breeze, do not burn Or settle in my sight, I’ve ...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S6-4", "S10-2" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
932a8ae339037613	Burning Down Suburbia	Sjohnna McCray	—an Ode to Bob Ross When I was younger, I watched the world blend on PBS. The painter with the Jewfro hypnotized me. With a thumb hooked through the palette, he painted forward from the base coat like a god might use a blueprint. Behind the image is always the word: light. On top ca...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-4" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]
735c692818b91284	Transparent Things, God-Sized Hole	Dana Roeser	All transparent things need thunder shirts. The little ghost hanging from an eave, on Underwood Street, a piece of lavender-tinted netting stretched onto a metal frame. The Boston terriers and Chihuahuas patiently wait out storms with their eyes...	[ "S2", "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S2-9", "S2-10", "S5-2", "S5-8", "S6-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Youth" ]
b520f016723e6790	A Franc Sonic	Laura Moriarty	for Jerry Estrin Snow covers The hills one by one Our neighborhood Characters become San Francisco 1874 Words later language A photograph At home when Light writes 1974 Or 1979 We move whereThe Lives of My Books Pages accumulate Not legible as themselves Historical time 1989 Startled leaves us Unafraid ...	[ "S2", "S10" ]	[ "S2-4", "S10-7", "S10-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Nature/Winter" ]
21dcac643a6f46ab	Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival	Yusef Komunyakaa	my story is how deep the heart runs to hide & laugh with your hands over your blank mouth face behind the mask talking in tongues something tearing feathers from a crow that screams from the furnace the black candle in a skull sweet pain of meat let’s pour the river’s rainbow into our stone water...	[ "S1", "S3", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S3-11", "S10-3" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
a64f4705b7772cc0	Confessions of a Recycled Shopping Bag	John Yau	I used to be a plastic bottle I used to be scads of masticated wattle I used to be epic spittle, aka septic piddle I used to be a pleasant colleague I used to be a radiant ingredient I used to be a purple polyethylene pony I used to be a phony upload project I used to be a stony blue inhalant I used to be a fam...	[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]	[ "S3-7", "S4-1", "S10-2" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
09b01e8ad575a63a	The Thrift Shop Dresses	Frannie Lindsay	I slid the white louvers shut so I could stand in your closet a little while among the throng of flowered dresses you hadn’t worn in years, and touch the creases on each of their sleeves that smelled of forgivenessand even though you would still be alive a few more days I knew they were ready to let themselves be packe...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-1", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-5" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Aging", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

d1955c766d98b38f

Swimming Ool

Kenn Nesbitt

Swimming in the swimming pool is where I like to “B,” wearing underwater goggles so that I can “C.” Yesterday, before I swam, I drank a cup of “T.” Now the pool’s a “swimming ool” because I took a “P.”

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

[ "S9-5", "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]

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Evenings of Certain Lives

Gottfried Benn

I You don’t need always to be scrubbing the tiles, Hendrickje, my eye drinks itself, drinks itself to death— but other drink is in short supply— the little Buddha there, Chinese grove god in exchange for a ladleful of Hulstkamp, please! Never painted anything in frost-white or ice-skater blue or that Irish g...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S10-4" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]

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Faith

David Baker

It was midday before we noticed it was morning. The boy cousins brought us a tray—soup and cheese, warm soda, and a soft cloth and candy for her fever. They wouldn’t come in, the tray weighing between them. They stood like woodwork inside the door frame. By afternoon the old procession—silence at the lip of a doz...

[ "S5", "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S5-3", "S6-6", "S8-3" ]

[ "Religion", "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Red Parade

David Trinidad

Depressed because my book wasn’t nominated for a gay award, I lie on my couch watching—not listening to— the O.J. trial. Byron, who senses something’s wrong, hides under the bed until Ira comes home, carrying a bouquet of beautifully wrapped tulips. I press the mute button. “This is your prize,” he says. “...

[ "S3", "S10" ]

[ "S3-7", "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]

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William My Man

Mary Hickman

I A cave with arms at the mouth. Our hero is blind: everything he hears he sees. Hear! Gold light sifts to his ear. A roar. The seas beaten—his duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix, destined for heat, they blush. II William's cabbage heart shook. He dragged himself from the dirt. If he could rest hi...

[ "S3", "S10" ]

[ "S3-1", "S10-2" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]

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With a Book

Ambrose Bierce

Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning— Sense lacking. Ah, nothing, more obscure than Browning, Save blacking.

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-6", "S10-8" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books" ]

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Girl in a Library

Gail Mazur

“ . . . But my mind, gone out in tenderness, Shrinks from its object . . .” —Randall Jarrell I want to find my way back to her, to help her, to grab her hand, pull her up from the wooden floor of the stacks where she’s reading accounts of the hatchet murders of Lizzie Borden’s harsh parents as if she could lear...

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

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

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Living/Coming of Age" ]

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Safe in their Alabaster Chambers (124)

Emily Dickinson

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - Untouched by Morning - and untouched by noon - Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection, Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone - Grand go the Years, In the Crescent above them - Worlds scoop their Arcs - and Firmaments - row - Diadems - drop - And Doges surrender - Soundless ...

[ "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S6-4" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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At a Certain Age

Deborah Cummins

He sits beside his wife who takes the wheel. Clutching coupons, he wanders the aisles of Stop & Save. There’s no place he must be, no clock to punch. Sure, there are bass in the lake, a balsa model in the garage, the par-three back nine. But it’s not the same. Time the enemy then, the enemy now. As he ...

[ "S3", "S8" ]

[ "S3-4", "S8-5" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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Marcus Aurelius

Bianca Stone

Sometimes I wake up in the night with a terrible headache, my mouth blackened; a ghost looking for valuables in the debris, I turn on a battery-powered light, clipped to a book, I write things down in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius who said the finest bottle of wine is just grape juice, passing through the liver,...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S10-5" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy" ]

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Cuckoldom

BJ Ward

Such conundrums of English. I blame my ex-wife. She rearranged my dictionary, or re- taught an old story: in this book, if you look for alimony, it follows acrimony (nothing between). However, contrition still borders contrivance (if it can be seen). Untruth in her troth sallowed the language, sullied a certain conjuga...

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

[ "S1-6", "S3-4", "S6-1", "S8-1", "S8-7" ]

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

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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Together

Maxine Kumin

The water closing over us and the going down is all. Gills are given. We convert in a town of broken hulls and green doubloons. O you dead pirates hear us! There is no salvage. All you know is the color of warm caramel. All is salt. See how our eyes have migrated to the uphill side? Now we are new round ...

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

[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S6-1", "S8-7" ]

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

[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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A woman is never still

Afshan Shafi

At one time, if my nails had been painted this shade of rose-foam in Kabul they would have rammed out the frosted shell like the tarp off a bud’s wet belly, they would have gouged out each shining beast, viscera still shiny, each glittering pore still insane with breath The pain is meant to shame me back ...

[ "S3", "S5", "S6" ]

[ "S3-4", "S5-5" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Religion/Islam" ]

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Sonnet 106: When in the chronicle of wasted time

William Shakespeare

When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express'd Even such a beauty as you ...

[ "S6", "S7" ]

[]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[]

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Marriage

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

No more alone sleeping, no more alone waking, Thy dreams divided, thy prayers in twain; Thy merry sisters tonight forsaking, Never shall we see, maiden, again. Never shall we see thee, thine eyes glancing. Flashing with laughter and wild in glee, Under the mistletoe kissing and dancing, Wantonly free. There sha...

[ "S1" ]

[ "S1-6" ]

[ "Love" ]

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated" ]

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Describe Turner to MLK

Tod Marshall

I The weight of my son at the emergency room for an eye injury, sack of flour, sack of salt, dusty bag of bones collapsed ...

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

[ "S6-7", "S10-4" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Living/Parenthood" ]

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ABC

Kathryn Maris

Identification is a highly important factor in the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients are enabled in their symptoms to represent not merely their own experiences, but the experiences of a great number of other persons, and can suffer, as it were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the parts ...

[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S1-6", "S3-4", "S6-6", "S8-1", "S10-9" ]

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

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Sciences", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]

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In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 44

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

How fares it with the happy dead? For here the man is more and more; But he forgets the days before God shut the doorways of his head. The days have vanish'd, tone and tint, And yet perhaps the hoarding sense Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A little flash, a mystic hint; And...

[ "S5", "S6" ]

[ "S5-3", "S6-4" ]

[ "Religion", "Living" ]

[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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The Corner

Rae Armantrout

Like a child, mind wants to play, but even the butterflies are on the clock. Still, attention is happy to comport with the swallowtail as it jerkily rounds the corner. Like a child, mind follows, imitates. First and last it loves sequence. I’ve counted up to one this season.

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-8" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Youth" ]

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The Wind Chimes

Shirley Buettner

Two wind chimes, one brass and prone to anger, one with the throat of an angel, swing from my porch eave, sing with the storm. Last year I lived five months under that shrill choir, boxing your house, crowding books into crates, from some pages your own voice crying. Some days the chimes raged. Some days they hung stil...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-5" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Mourning" ]

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My Erotic Double

John Ashbery

He says he doesn’t feel like working today. It’s just as well. Here in the shade Behind the house, protected from street noises, One can go over all kinds of old feeling, Throw some away, keep others. The wordplay Between us gets very intense when there are Fewer feel...

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

[ "S10-2" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]

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The Work

Tom Sleigh

for my father 1. Today Today, this moment, speechlessly in pain, He fights the terror of being poured out, The fall into darkness unquenchably long So that even as he hurtles he keeps holding Back like a dam the flood overtops—but nothing now Can stop that surge, already he swirls To the source of Voices, the m...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

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

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

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

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Ode I. 11

Horace

Leucon, no one’s allowed to know his fate, Not you, not me: don’t ask, don’t hunt for answers In tea leaves or palms. Be patient with whatever comes. This could be our last winter, it could be many More, pounding the Tuscan Sea on these rocks: Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines And forget about hope. Time goes r...

[ "S5", "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S5-8", "S6-4" ]

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

[ "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Elegy

Lyn Hejinian

I am writing now in preconceptions Those of sex and ropes Many frantic cruelties occur to the flesh of the imagination And the imagination does have flesh to destroy And the flesh has imagination to sever The mouth is just a body filled with imagination Can you imagine its contents The dripping into...

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

[]

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

[]

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The Self-Unseeing

Thomas Hardy

Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Childlike, I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a gleam; Yet ...

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

[ "S8-5" ]

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

[ "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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For the Man with the Erection Lasting More than Four Hours

John Hodgen

He’s supposed to call his doctor, but for now he’s the May King with his own maypole. He’s hallelujah. He’s glory hole. The world has more women than he can shake a stick at. The world is his brickbat, no conscience to prick at, all of us Germans he can

[ "S3", "S10" ]

[ "S3-7" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]

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“The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish”

Joshua Weiner

is not a man being swallowed by a fish with eyes like eight-point throwing stars it’s a man being swallowed by a war a man being taken into the mouth of a woman or being swallowed by his work it’s a man traveling far inside a book a man being swallowed up in smoke he swallows the smoke, that blends around him li...

[ "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S3-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

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The Solitary Land

Adonis

I inhabit these fugitive words, I live, my face my face’s lone companion, And my face is my path, In your name, my land That stands tall, enchanted and solitary; In your name, death, my friend. Translated from the Arabic

[ "S6", "S10" ]

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

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

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

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The Heart Shows No Signs

Ru Freeman

The heart, the surgeon says, does not reveal the small rifts, the hairline cracks which split the hairline cracks they conceal cops and robbers in a stretch of skin flaunting star-scars with show of blood bone the ledges of what it holds tight in checkmate moves: bend this and break fight first and bleed to earn...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S6-5", "S10-10" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance", "Living/Mourning" ]

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The Door:

Jean Valentine

When I first heard you on the phone your voice had to be that '40s wartime voice for it to get under my skin like it did, after seven years asleep. You’re at the beginning of something, you said,and I’m at the end of something; but you didn’t go away, twice-born, three times, coming around, rough cello. ...

[ "S1" ]

[ "S1-3" ]

[ "Love" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss" ]

e1be3f62ae152abb

from Stone: 103 The Twilight of Freedom

Osip Mandelstam

Let us praise the twilight of freedom, brothers, the great year of twilight! A thick forest of nets has been let down into the seething waters of night. O sun, judge, people, desolate are the years into which you are rising! Let us praise the momentous burden that the people’s leader assumes, in tears. Let us p...

[ "S4" ]

[]

[ "History & Politics" ]

[]

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Jackson Hotel

Lynda Hull

Sometimes after hours of wine I can almost see the night gliding in low off the harbor down the long avenues of shop windows past mannequins, perfect in their gestures. I leave some water steaming on the gas ring and sometimes I can slip from my body, almost find the single word to prevent eveni...

[ "S3" ]

[ "S3-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]

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The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak

Galway Kinnell

The man splitting wood in the daybreak looks strong, as though, if one weakened, one could turn to him and he would help. Gus Newland was strong. When he split wood he struck hard, flashing the bright steel through the air so hard the hard maple leapt apart, as it’s feared marriages will do in countries reluctan...

[ "S2", "S6", "S7", "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S2-8", "S6-7", "S8-1", "S8-3", "S8-7", "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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from The Black Maria

Aracelis Girmay

after Neil deGrasse Tyson, black astrophysicist & director of the Hayden Planetarium, born in 1958, New York City. In his youth, deGrasse Tyson was confronted by police on more than one occasion when he was on his way to study stars. “I’ve known that I’ve wanted to do astrophysics sinc...

[ "S2", "S3" ]

[ "S2-9", "S3-8" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]

4839bf7ec2590bf7

Consider the Hands that Write this Letter

Aracelis Girmay

after Marina Wilson Consider the hands that write this letter. Left palm pressed flat against paper, as we have done before, over my heart, in peace or reverence to the sea, some beautiful thing I saw once, felt once: snow falling like rice flung from the giants' wedding, or strangest of strange birds. & consi...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

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

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

e5456c10d7af52e0

The Eagle

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-5" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Animals" ]

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Jim Harrison, 1937–2016

Gerard Malanga

I would imagine underneath those warming bear hugs was a kinda kind of soul as your many poems attest. Those summer breezes. Those many hazy sunsets nature’s voices echoing afar. A life continually fulfilled bordering on the empty and those inexplicable tragedies, those bad timings unreconciled, then reconciled w...

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

[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S2-8", "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]

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Scrambled

Bruce Lansky

I climbed up the door and I opened the stairs. I said my pajamas and buttoned my prayers. I turned off the covers and pulled up the light. I’m all scrambled up since she kissed me last night.

[ "S8", "S10" ]

[]

[ "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[]

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Napoli

Julian Stannard

The boat was beating across the bay,we had our backs to Vesuvius,the wind smacked our faces.Naples was an enormous packet of cigarettesyou could smoke till you conked out:the cigarettes were never going to run outand nor was the coffee, the drugs,the prostitutes, the locked churches,the scooters, the rice cakes, the ev...

[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S9" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Activities" ]

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

c93d6f855550fdf0

Some Months After My Father’s Death

Sheryl St. Germain

I am watching the movie Twelve Angry Men because there is a character in it who reminds me of him. He is the one who wants to go to the baseball game instead of decide on a man’s life, he is the weak one, the one afraid to reveal what he really feels, the one for whom everything is a joke. He is not Henry Fonda,...

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

[ "S3-6", "S3-7", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-3", "S9-3", "S10-7" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]

aeee02ed944ad61a

Less Than, More Than

David Rivard

Where am I going today if I'm going anywhere at all without my soul, that bird with its unreadable, unheard name having wandered off again, convinced that it is more than just a word— do we travel far from each other today?— me in my pre-owned Mazda with my radio full of wasps' nest news, my Peshawar & my Rupe...

[ "S9" ]

[ "S9-7" ]

[ "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Forbidden City

Gail Mazur

Asleep until noon, I'm dreaming we've been granted another year. You're here with me, healthy. Then, half-awake, the half-truth— this is our last day. Life's leaking away again, and this time, we know it. Dear body, I told you, pleading,Don't Leave! but I understand you can't say anything. Who are we? Are we fi...

[ "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S6-5" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[ "Living/Mourning" ]

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Sonnet 94: They that have power to hurt and will do none

William Shakespeare

They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow: They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but...

[ "S3", "S11" ]

[ "S11-4" ]

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

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism" ]

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At the Threshold of the Book

Edmond Jabès

Mark the first page of the book with a red marker. For, in the beginning, the wound is invisible. - Reb Alcé "What is going on behind this door?" "A book is shedding its leaves." "What is the story of the book?" "Becoming aware of a scream." "I saw rabbis go in." "They are privileged readers...

[ "S5", "S10" ]

[ "S5-6", "S10-5", "S10-8" ]

[ "Religion", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Religion/Judaism" ]

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The West Country

Alice Cary

Have you been in our wild west country? then You have often had to pass Its cabins lying like birds’ nests in The wild green prairie grass. Have you seen the women forget their wheels As they sat at the door to spin— Have you seen the darning fall away From their fingers worn and thin, As they asked you news of...

[ "S3", "S9" ]

[ "S9-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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The Abuelita Poem

Paul Martínez Pompa

I. SKIN & CORN Her brown skin glistens as the sun pours through the kitchen window like gold leche. After grinding the nixtamal, a word so beautifully ethnic it must not only be italicized but underlined to let you, the reader, know you’ve encountered something beautifully ethnic, she kneads with the hands of c...

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

[ "S3-7", "S3-8", "S8-3", "S9-1" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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The Sleep of the Tuba-Player

Ana Božičević

The tuba wakes before the man. It’s a content animal: having no word, for the moment, suits it fine. It looks at him with a dun and smooth interiority, as a glass of rum might, or a worn number on an apartment building: his hands, crossed on the chest, rise and fall with breathing. In the dream, he’s ringing the ...

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

[ "S3-11", "S6-1" ]

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

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

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As the Team's Head Brass

Edward Thomas

As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed an angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square Of charlock. Every time the horses turned Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned Upon the handl...

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

[ "S2-5", "S3-9", "S3-11", "S6-4" ]

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

[ "Nature/Animals", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Atlantic Oil

Cesare Pavese

The drunk mechanic is happy to be in the ditch. From the tavern, five minutes through the dark field and you’re home. But first, there’s the cool grass to enjoy, and the mechanic will sleep here till dawn. A few feet away, the red and black sign that rises from the field: if you’re too close, you can’t read it, i...

[ "S9" ]

[ "S9-4" ]

[ "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Last Photograph of My Parents

Ruben Quesada

San José, Costa Rica Tortillas clap against floured palms, steaming bowls of avena, frijoles black as the rumbling sky,arroz con pollo simmers. Against the kitchen window, small clouds rise. Papá dances to the electric beat of the marimba, his cheek bristly against Mamá’s neck; his thick fingers sift through he...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

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

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

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

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They Call the Mountain Carlos

Ray Gonzalez

They call the mountain Carlos because it is brown, though its purple slopes at dusk suggest other names. Those who name it have to brand the earth with something they know— a name, a face, even the heat that says "I know Carlos and he is the mountain. I am going to cover his eyes in light." They call its peak C...

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

[ "S2-7", "S3-8", "S9-7" ]

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

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Creation Myth

Lisa Wells

Born again on a Monday under a broken zodiac. My father the woodman, a surgeon among snags, could read the living trail of blades rebounding in the field, the mopped-matte passage through the dew. He woke a brush pile with fire throwing shadows on the child, I was thrown over. Father, it was a pleasure to meet ...

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

[ "S2-7", "S4-1", "S8-3" ]

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

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Sonnet 66: Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry

William Shakespeare

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry, As, to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd, And strength by limping sway disabl...

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

[ "S1-6", "S6-4" ]

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

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Pericles

Donald Revell

What are my friends? Mouths, not eyes forBitterest underflesh of the farewell.I was a man and suffered like a girl.I spoke underneath to where the lights arePretty, pretty, pretty whence they came to tellOne God gets another. My friends areMouths for God, tearing me. In such a worldBroken only daughter opens to splendo...

[ "S3", "S4", "S5", "S6", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S3-11", "S5-4", "S6-7", "S8-4", "S9-7", "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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The Everlasting Voices

William Butler Yeats

O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more; Have you not heard that our hearts are old, That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? O sweet everlasting Voices, be stil...

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

[ "S2-7" ]

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

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

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I Wave Good-bye When Butter Flies

Jack Prelutsky

I wave good-bye when butter flies and cheer a boxing match, I've often watched my pillow fight, I've sewn a cabbage patch, I like to dance at basket balls or lead a rubber band, I've marvelled at a spelling bee, I've helped a peanut stand. It's possible a pencil points, but does a lemon drop? Does coffee brea...

[ "S9" ]

[ "S9-1" ]

[ "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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From Space to Time

Carolyn M. Rodgers

on a day when we were dark and not so full of light we met what did we find? nothing. everything, when we closed our eyes which anyway had never been open. once, we thought we loved each other who can reverse time? we tried. we stepped out of space into some new step of distance and f...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[]

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Ghetto Funeral

Charles Reznikoff

Followed by his lodge, shabby men stumbling over the cobblestones, and his children, faces red and ugly with tears, eyes and eyelids red, in the black coffin in the black hearse the old man. No longer secretly grieving that his children are not strong enough to go the way he wanted to go and was not...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-4" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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The Desert of Atacama V

Raúl Zurita

Speak of the whistle of Atacama the wind erases like snow the color of that plain i. The Desert of Atacama soared over infinities of deserts to be there ii. Like the wind feel it pass whistling through the leaves of the trees iii. Look at it become transparent faraway and ju...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-7" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

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Drury-lane Prologue Spoken by Mr. Garrick at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury-Lane, 1747

Samuel Johnson

When Learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespear rose; Each change of many-colour’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain: His pow’rful strokes presiding Truth impress’d, And ...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-10" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance" ]

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A Prayer for My Daughter

William Butler Yeats

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind, Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed; And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gl...

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

[ "S3-4", "S6-2", "S6-7" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Birth & Infancy", "Living/Parenthood" ]

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Ars Poetica?

Czeslaw Milosz

I have always aspired to a more spacious form that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose and would let us understand each other without exposing the author or reader to sublime agonies. In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent: a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,...

[ "S10", "S11" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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The Lord's Prayer

Anthony Carelli

You can't fake it. You know when I fail to achieve the expected: palm the becoming- comatose bullfrog, legs collapsing as they may, and chuck it (we used to say) high as you can. Let it fly stone-like to the skylight in the low dome of fog—another requirement of the gam...

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

[ "S2-5", "S5-2", "S5-8", "S6-8" ]

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

[ "Nature/Animals", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Youth" ]

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Chino

Brandon Som

The olla knocked with steam. The masa cooked. She said her eyes are china. The vowel switched on an aura, a shine that sheens the threshold. The vowel was spell: an i that might we, an i that echoes how we’re seen and see. ...

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

[ "S3-8", "S8-3", "S10-2" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Tombo

W. S. Di Piero

In Safeway yesterday, a young man sat on the floor, pulled off his shoes, granted audience to us, his fellow seekers, and picked his naked feet. He smiled, our brother, at the story he told of deliverance at the hand of Master Tombo, lord and creator, whose round energylives in us...

[ "S5", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

[ "S5-8", "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]

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Uppity

Eileen Myles

Roads around mountainscause we can’t drivethroughThat’s Poetryto Me.

[ "S2", "S10" ]

[ "S2-7", "S10-6" ]

[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

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Salt

Huang Fan

Grain by grain, salt’s frozen tears Help me count history’s disasters I can’t blame salt for telling foodYou’re full of wounds Salt misses the freedom of the ocean Remembering waves, salt jumps into a soup But it finds there only my reflected face It hides by making itself too soft to chew Sometimes, salt follow...

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

[ "S3-6", "S9-1" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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Sisyphus and the Ants

Jennifer S. Flescher

The story tells us Sisyphus is being punished. Over and over he has to push that boulder up and up. The mountain and God glaring. And you, you have your avalanche of moods. Pills the size of stars to nearly quell cascade and tumult. And still you step gravity amplified by incline, each hazard in the way of the...

[ "S6", "S7", "S11" ]

[ "S11-3" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology" ]

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Seventh Song

Sir Philip Sidney

Whose sense in so evil consort, their stepdame Nature lays, That ravishing delight in them most sweet tunes do not raise; Or if they do delight therein, yet are so cloyed with wit, As with sententious lips to set a title vain on it: O let them hear these sacred tunes, and learn in wonder’s schools, To be (in things pas...

[ "S1", "S8" ]

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

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

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

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I’m Reading Your Mind

Jorie Graham

here. Have been for centuries. No, longer. Everything already has been. It’s not a reasonable place, this continuum between us, and yet here again I put the olive trees in, turn the whole hill-sweeping grove down, its mile-long headfuls of leaves upswept so the whole valley shivers its windy silvers, watery ... A s...

[ "S2", "S5", "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S2-5", "S5-3", "S5-4", "S5-8" ]

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

[ "Nature/Animals", "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]

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Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line

George Starbuck

for Helen Vendler O for a muse of fire, a sack of dough, Or both! O promissory notes of woe! One time in Santa Fe N.M. Ol’ Winfield Townley Scott and I ... But whoa. One can exert oneself, ff, Or architect a heaven like Rimbaud, Or if that seems, how shall I say, de trop, One can at least write sonnets, a propo...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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Eternity

Tom Clark

The god of war assured King Arsounas, “Do not be fooled by words. No life is taken. Know that no one was ever born, nor does anyone die.” In the violent mini-eternity of the warrior, combat is conducted according to a ritual formal as song: no one is ever born, no one can ever die. The left-handed rockabilly guitarist ...

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

[ "S3-11" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]

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Koheleth

Louis Untermeyer

I waited and worked To win myself leisure, Till loneliness irked And I turned to raw pleasure. I drank and I gamed, I feasted and wasted, Till, sick and ashamed, The food stood untasted. I searched in the Book For rooted convictions, Till the badgered brain shook With its own contradictions. Then, done with...

[ "S5" ]

[]

[ "Religion" ]

[]

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During Wind and Rain

Thomas Hardy

They sing their dearest songs— He, she, all of them—yea, Treble and tenor and bass, And one to play; With the candles mooning each face. . . . Ah, no; the years O! How the sick leaves reel down in throngs! They clear the creeping moss— Elders and juniors—aye, ...

[ "S2", "S8" ]

[ "S2-10" ]

[ "Nature", "Relationships" ]

[ "Nature/Weather" ]

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Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still

William Shakespeare

My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease,Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approveDesire is death, which physic did exce...

[ "S1", "S6" ]

[ "S1-1", "S1-9", "S6-6" ]

[ "Love", "Living" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Living/Health & Illness" ]

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Yr Not Exotic, but Once Ya Wanted to Be

Tarfia Faizullah

Whenever folks discuss finding themselves, ya get kinda giggly. Maybe b/c ya found yrself considering yr Armenian love who preferred ya in both corset and bindi, and it was for her ya begrudgingly waxed yr jungle-scabbard ... Ya find yrself in the fret of reclamation via musks all motherland-misty (coconut...

[ "S1", "S3", "S4", "S10" ]

[ "S1-6", "S3-4", "S3-8", "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]

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Sonnet 110: Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there

William Shakespeare

Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there And made myself a motley to the view, Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new. Most true it is that I have look'd on truth Askance and strangely: but, by all above, These blenches gave my heart another youth, And worse essays ...

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

[ "S1-6", "S10-10" ]

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

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance" ]

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Love in the Weather’s Bells

Jay Wright

Snow hurries the strawberries from the bush. Star-wet water rides you into summer, into my autumn. Your cactus hands are at my heart again. Lady, I court my dream of you in lilies and in rain. I vest myself in your oldest memory and in my oldest need. And in my passion you are the deepest blue of the ol...

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

[ "S1-4", "S1-7", "S2-10" ]

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

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

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Globus Hystericus

Timothy Donnelly

1 A pity the selfsame vehicle that spirits me away from factories of tedium should likewise serve to drag me backwards into panic, or that panic should erect massive factories of its own, their virulent pollutants havocking loved waterways, frothing all the reed- fringed margins acid pink and gathering in the she...

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

[]

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

[]

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A Twenty-fourth Poem about Horses

John Peck

Night deepening, frost leans on the stables of thoroughbreds, west wind splitting their hooves. —LI HO, “Twenty-three Poems about Horses” Steed out of my dusk and a dusk, now, for the species, veins deltawise down your silky inner thigh, veins trickling from one eye down the roan cliffside of a nose vaulted and c...

[ "S3", "S4", "S8", "S11" ]

[ "S3-11", "S8-8", "S11-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]

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I Have Waited for the Siren

Tina Boyer Brown

On the way home, Klansmen handed out pamphlets on the corner. At the convenience store, taxidermied alligator heads framed red red lips, black black skin, white wild white wide eyes, and teeth grinning (gritting). Mammy, Sambo, savages and jockeys shaped cookie jars, figurines, gravy boats, piggy banks, and salt a...

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

[ "S3-8", "S6-5" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Mourning" ]

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Cod

Cheryl Savageau

It is the fish that bring them first. Cod in such numbers as to seem endless. Cod to fill the nets and bellies of hungry Europeans with the tender white flesh. Cod, it seems to them, without end. They fill the ships, salting the fish down in barrels, til the hull is full, and head back home. This wet cod-fish...

[ "S2", "S9" ]

[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S9-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Activities" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Chrysalis

Arthur Sze

Corpses push up through thawing permafrost as I scrape salmon skin off a pan at the sink; on the porch, motes in slanting yellow light undulate in air. Is Venus at dusk as luminous as Venus at dawn? Yesterday I was about to seal a borax capsule angled up from the bottom of a decaying exterior jamb when I glimpsed...

[ "S2", "S3" ]

[ "S2-5", "S2-7" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries" ]

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

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Monster [It's possible I misconstrued you]

Brook Emery

It’s possible I misconstrued you, laid too much emphasis on the uniqueness of a birth, failed to acknowledge circumstance could corrupt, sustain; I indulged myself in accusations against an absolute. I don’t believe what I then believed. You are not responsible for Leibniz or the Lisbon quake, for the twenty-six-e...

[ "S5" ]

[ "S5-4", "S5-8" ]

[ "Religion" ]

[ "Religion/God & the Divine", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]

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Careless Perfection

Daniel Halpern

According to Lin Yutang, both Po Chuyi and Su Tungpo "desperately admired" Tao Yuanming, a poet of nature who wrote a single love poem, a poem thought by Chinese dilettantes to be the one "blemish in a white jade." Can a poet be faulted for calling a womancarelessly perfect in beauty? He chose to long for her by...

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

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

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

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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Dividend of the Social Opt Out

Jennifer Moxley

How lovely it is not to go. To suddenly take ill. Not seriously ill, just a little under the weather. To feel slightly peaked, indisposed. Plagued by a vague ache, or a slight inexplicable chill. Perhaps such pleasures are denied to those who never feel obliged. If there are such. How pleasant to convey your regr...

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

[ "S8-4", "S10-8" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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Wilderness

Carl Sandburg

There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of ...

[ "S2", "S3" ]

[ "S2-5" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Nature/Animals" ]

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Silent Film

Kurt Brown

Doors opened and shut, the director shouted orders through a bullhorn, or babbled just out of the frame. A carpenter hammered flats nearby for the next production. All of this, and more, while the actors blocked it out, already living in that small square of light where silence ...

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

[ "S2-7", "S3-7" ]

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

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]

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The Parlement of Fowls

Geoffrey Chaucer

(excerpt) Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe, That hast this wintres wedres overshake, And driven away the longe nyghtes blake! Saynt Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lofte, Thus syngen smale foules for thy sake:Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,That hast this wintres wedres overshake. Wel han they cause...

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

[ "S1-7", "S2-1", "S2-4" ]

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

[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Nature/Spring", "Nature/Winter" ]

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Midwinter

John Unterecker

At dusk, a great flare of winter lightning photographed the bay: Waves were broken scrolls. Beyond Donegal, white mountains hung in a narrow bas-relief frozen on sky. Later, there was sleet: trees down on the Drumholm road; near Ti...

[ "S2", "S3", "S8" ]

[ "S2-4", "S2-7", "S3-9", "S8-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Nature/Winter", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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The Emptiness of Thought

James K. Zimmerman

this morning I felt my life if you were dead the expansiveness of the bed the birds still singing the remnants of the smell of coffee in the morning the emptiness of thought the deafening silence of my heart

[ "S1" ]

[ "S1-3" ]

[ "Love" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss" ]

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A History Without Suffering

E. A. Markham

In this poem there is no suffering. It spans hundreds of years and records no deaths, connecting when it can, those moments where people are healthy and happy, content to be alive. A Chapter, maybe a Volume, shorn of violence consists of an adult reading aimlessly. This line is the length of a full life smuggle...

[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

[ "S3-1", "S10-6", "S10-8" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]

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from “The Octoroon”

Albery Allson Whitman

18These creatures of the languid Orient,— Rare pearls of caste, in their voluptuous swoonAnd gilded ease, by Eunuchs watched and pent, And doomed to hear the lute’s perpetual tune,Were passion’s toys—to lust an ornament; But not such was our thrush-voiced Octoroon,—The Southland beauty who was wont to he...

[ "S1", "S3", "S4" ]

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

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

[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]

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Lenten Song

Phillis Levin

That the dead are real to usCannot be denied, That the living are more realWhen they are deadTerrifies, that the dead can riseAs the living do is possibleIs possible to surmise, But all the stars cannot come nearAll we meet in an eye.Flee from me, fear, as sootFlies in a breeze, do not burn Or settle in my sight, I’ve ...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

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

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

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

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Burning Down Suburbia

Sjohnna McCray

—an Ode to Bob Ross When I was younger, I watched the world blend on PBS. The painter with the Jewfro hypnotized me. With a thumb hooked through the palette, he painted forward from the base coat like a god might use a blueprint. Behind the image is always the word: light. On top ca...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-4" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]

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Transparent Things, God-Sized Hole

Dana Roeser

All transparent things need thunder shirts. The little ghost hanging from an eave, on Underwood Street, a piece of lavender-tinted netting stretched onto a metal frame. The Boston terriers and Chihuahuas patiently wait out storms with their eyes...

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

[ "S2-9", "S2-10", "S5-2", "S5-8", "S6-8" ]

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

[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Youth" ]

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A Franc Sonic

Laura Moriarty

for Jerry Estrin Snow covers The hills one by one Our neighborhood Characters become San Francisco 1874 Words later language A photograph At home when Light writes 1974 Or 1979 We move whereThe Lives of My Books Pages accumulate Not legible as themselves Historical time 1989 Startled leaves us Unafraid ...

[ "S2", "S10" ]

[ "S2-4", "S10-7", "S10-8" ]

[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Nature/Winter" ]

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Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival

Yusef Komunyakaa

my story is how deep the heart runs to hide & laugh with your hands over your blank mouth face behind the mask talking in tongues something tearing feathers from a crow that screams from the furnace the black candle in a skull sweet pain of meat let’s pour the river’s rainbow into our stone water...

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

[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S3-11", "S10-3" ]

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

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]

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Confessions of a Recycled Shopping Bag

John Yau

I used to be a plastic bottle I used to be scads of masticated wattle I used to be epic spittle, aka septic piddle I used to be a pleasant colleague I used to be a radiant ingredient I used to be a purple polyethylene pony I used to be a phony upload project I used to be a stony blue inhalant I used to be a fam...

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

[ "S3-7", "S4-1", "S10-2" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]

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The Thrift Shop Dresses

Frannie Lindsay

I slid the white louvers shut so I could stand in your closet a little while among the throng of flowered dresses you hadn’t worn in years, and touch the creases on each of their sleeves that smelled of forgivenessand even though you would still be alive a few more days I knew they were ready to let themselves be packe...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S6-1", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-5" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Aging", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Home Life" ]