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
54b8ac62306ff39d	Rooms	Brian Henry	There are rooms that know you, rooms you know & can name, rooms that rise & stutter into view if you stare long enough. Rooms where nothing happened but in your head, where the world went on apart from you, you trying to rise to it. Rooms with walls of white blocks, one window, the only sound the bang bang bang...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S10-1" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design" ]
78531e4ee98021d9	Four Months Old	Carrie Fountain	All the baby knows is the flop of her limbs and the milky blue vein of sleep and the parking lot of her animal fear, the cars left there overnight, windshields dark and thick with dew. The rest is completely unknown, the complete darkness of her white room, where she sleeps on a clean sheet printed with ba...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-2" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Birth & Infancy" ]
6c66059a7e7fe966	On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses	James Galvin	On starless, windless nights like this I imagine I can hear the wedding dresses Weeping in their closets, Luminescent with hopeless longing, Like hollow angels. They know they will never be worn again. Who wants them now, After their one heroic day in the limelight? Yet they glow with desire In the darkness o...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S8-1", "S8-7" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
586aa25a20d90f46	Trust	Thomas R. Smith	It’s like so many other things in life to which you must say no or yes. So you take your car to the new mechanic. Sometimes the best thing to do is trust. The package left with the disreputable-looking clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit, the envelope passed by doze...	[ "S3" ]	[]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[]
16e2e1fa76f0e48d	Shift	Jamaal May	Acting on an anonymous tip, a shift supervisor at a runaway shelter strip-searched six teenagers. Mrs. Haver was taping shut the mouths of talkative students by the time she neared retirement, and Mr. Vickers, a skilled electrician in his day, didn’t adapt when fuses became circuit breakers, a fact that didn’t st...	[ "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S9-4" ]	[ "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
7f448037695a3dd4	Vandergast and the Girl	Louis Simpson	Vandergast to his neighbors— the grinding of a garage door and hiss of gravel in the driveway. He worked for the insurance company whose talisman is a phoenix rising in flames ... non omnis moriar. From his desk he had a view of the street— translucent raincoats, and umbrellas, fluorescent plate-glass windows. ...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S1-3", "S1-6", "S3-4", "S6-1", "S8-1", "S8-7", "S9-4" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
7dae3d4245ab3d91	Why Being “On Fire” Is for Everyone	Kristin Naca	Man on Fire, 1969, by Luis Jiménez Because the facial features burn fastest. Because the sun sets in Tibet before it ever rises in the West. Because Tsering Tashi’s mother told him to dress in the thickest,  finest, llama wool chuba. For I find no flattering explanation for the murder of everyone. Flames consume t...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]	[ "S3-8", "S3-11", "S6-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
9a3c40583fa39edd	Four Questions Regarding the Dreams of Animals	Susan Stewart	1. Is it true that they dream? It is true, for the spaces of night surround them with shape and purpose, like a warm hollow below the shoulders, or between the curve of thigh and belly. The land itself can lie like this. Hence our understanding of giants. The wind and the grass cry out to the arms ...	[ "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S2-5", "S8-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]
11ed9a7e9fca6030	A Question	Xochiquetzal Candelaria	The woman in the building across from me hauls onto the fire escape a yucca plant and squeezes it between a crate of herbs and a sapling fern tree. She looks a lot like me from twenty feet away. A forelock lies sweaty against her cheek as if she’s forgotten to fix herself. I put my thumbs and forefingers to my ...	[ "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S3-1", "S8-3", "S8-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
88f572a0d21d2c93	Let Nothing Lie Dormant	David Dominguez	At the farmer’s market in Rosarito, Mexico, a man touched my arm. He sat on a stool at a wooden table, and in the center, a blue pitcher of water beaded under the sun. Hunkered over his lap, he worked with a gouge on a block of walnut, and he blew at the dust, and the dust swirled in the breeze. Done stripping...	[ "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S9-4", "S10-1" ]	[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
1f79efa600be7293	Five Indiscretions,	Alberto Ríos	or The Unfortunate Story of the Unmarried Flora Carrillo And the Man Who Loved Her Before He Died his Famous Death, From Whose Single Liaison a Daughter Was Born And the Advice, Rather the Explanation, Both of Them Left for Her, And the Story Also Of What She Became, and That She Was Happy 1. Three did not count...	[ "S1", "S3", "S5", "S8" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S3-4", "S8-3" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
330d2ae61741a5df	Dinner at George & Katie Schneeman’s	Ted Berrigan	She was pretty swacked by the time she Put the spaghetti & meatballs into the orgy pasta bowl—There was mixed salt & pepper in the “Tittie-tweak” pasta bowl—We drank some dago red from glazed girlie demi-tasse cups—after which we engaged in heterosexual intercourse, mutual masturbation, fe...	[ "S1", "S9" ]	[ "S1-1", "S9-1" ]	[ "Love", "Activities" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
912fc87c414e03ba	Enemies	Wendell Berry	If you are not to become a monster, you must care what they think. If you care what they think, how will you not hate them, and so become a monster of the opposite kind? From where then is love to come—love for your enemy that is the way of liberty? From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go free of you, and you of t...	[ "S8" ]	[ "S8-4" ]	[ "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Friendship" ]
f0a31780484a1cfe	Necropolitan	Scott Cairns	Not your ordinary ice cream, though the glaze of these skeletal figures affects the disposition of those grinning candies one finds in Mexico, say, at the start of November, though here, each face is troublingly familiar, exhibits the style adopted just as one declines any further style—nectar one sips just as he...	[ "S2", "S6", "S11" ]	[ "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]
d8eba09a5f401a58	Square de la Place Dupleix	Pascale Petit	After Les Murray  Inside the sandpit you are playing for your life. Your bucket and spade that smiled all day long, like family in your satchel, now work hard. Your material is sand. It weaves a universe where you are huge, the cellar behind you, eclipsed by twelve chestnut trees and their pigeon gods. On and on ...	[ "S6", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S6-8", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S9-5" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]
eb06ae4c3ac91301	D.O.A.	Tim Dlugos	“You knew who I was when I walked in the door. You thought that I was dead. Well, I am dead. A man can walk and talk and even breathe and still be dead.” Edmond O’Brien is perspiring and chewing up the scenery in my favorite film noir, D.O.A. I can’t stop watching, can’t stop relating. When I walked down Colu...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S3-4", "S6-6", "S8-6", "S10-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/LGBTQ+" ]
a51b3cc7fad2e5eb	Love Songs	Mina Loy	I Spawn of fantasies Sifting the appraisable Pig Cupid his rosy snout Rooting erotic garbage "Once upon a time" Pulls a weed white star-topped Among wild oats sown in mucous membrane I would an eye in a Bengal light Eternity in a sky-rocket Constellations in an ocean Whose rivers run no fresher Than a trick...	[ "S1", "S2" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-6" ]	[ "Love", "Nature" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated" ]
e84d7476ff877195	San Diego and Matisse	Clarence Major	1. INSIDE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A TREE Beautiful women in smoky blue culottes lying around on fluffy pink pillows beneath windows onto charming views, sea views, seasonal leaves and trees. Inside is outside and outside inside. Smell of saltwater swimming in the room. 2. OUTSIDE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A ROCKIN...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-7" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
1dc876de89d13f5e	Four Glimpses of Night	Frank Marshall Davis	I Eagerly Like a woman hurrying to her lover Night comes to the room of the world And lies, yielding and content Against the cool round face Of the moon. II Night is a curious child, wandering Between earth and sky, creeping In windows and doors, daubing The entire neighborhood With purple paint. Day Is ...	[ "S2", "S6", "S7" ]	[]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[]
743e3a5b10b01e94	Nurse Marble	Johannes Göransson	Knowledge is Power. That is what the billboard says and I agree. I am an adult, therefore I understand the threat of passengers. The threat to Our Children, who don't understand the threat of these bird-like, twitchy people. They pose two kinds of threat. To begin with, there is the one we all know about, the predator...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-6" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Health & Illness" ]
1614e9d22bf984be	The Look	Sara Teasdale	Strephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, Robin's lost in play, But the kiss in Colin's eyes Haunts me night and day.	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[ "S1-3", "S1-4", "S1-8", "S1-9" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Classic Love", "Love/Unrequited Love" ]
a4a7bd032876cdf1	from The Book of the Dead: The Book of the Dead	Muriel Rukeyser	These roads will take you into your own country. Seasons and maps coming where this road comes into a landscape mirrored in these men. Past all your influences, your home river, constellations of cities, mottoes of childhood, parents and easy cures, war, all evasion’s wishes. What one word must never be said? De...	[ "S2", "S9" ]	[ "S2-6", "S2-7", "S9-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
beeb9043046b345c	The Mariner’s Progress	Ishion Hutchinson	1 “With never a whisper on the main,” so the snow falls, glaring through the festschrift of acacia leaves at sunrise and seeping a dye of immortelle on mild fleece, shrinking back eternity to flurries stalking summer cairns. Somewhere, harpies in cruisers blare beneath prairie clouds. An iceberg flashes, turns ...	[ "S1", "S2", "S9" ]	[ "S1-1", "S2-5", "S2-6", "S9-7" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Activities" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
9ed8e6abfb388fe9	Elegies	Kathleen Ossip	amy winehouse All song is formal, and youMaybe felt this and decidedYou’d be formal too. (The eyeliner, the beehive: formal.)When a desire to escape becomes formal,It’s dangerous. Then escape requiresNullity, rather than a walk in the park or a movie.Eventually, nullity gets harder andHarder to achieve. After surgery, ...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S6-4", "S6-5", "S10-1", "S10-3", "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]
b4577a8741dd3eec	Yom Kippur, Taos, New Mexico	Robin Becker	I’ve expanded like the swollen door in summer to fit my own dimension. Your loneliness is a letter I read and put away, a daily reminder in the cry of the magpie that I am still capable of inflicting pain at this distance. Like a painting, our talk is dense with description, ...	[ "S2", "S5", "S8" ]	[ "S2-7", "S5-6", "S8-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Religion/Judaism", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
f05497ea7ae3a1c6	I Imagine My Father’s Death	Bryan D. Dietrich	I imagine my father’s death. It is bigger than a breadbox. It is bigger than a Ford Escort, than a Zeppelin, black and vast and slow moving, oozing over an Oklahoma arena. It is bigger than any arena, than Oklahoma. My father’s death is bigger than a planet, bigger than the gravity wells worlds make, that stars stir up...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-4" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]
0b0a9f0093cbaa94	The Window, at the Moment of Flame	Alicia Ostriker	And all this while I have been playing with toys A toy power station a toy automobile a house of blocks And all this while far off in other lands Thousands and thousands, millions and millions— You know—you see the pictures Women carrying their bony infants Men sobbing over graves Buildings sculpted by explosion...	[ "S3" ]	[ "S3-2", "S3-11" ]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor" ]
933aa9c72a143af8	The Runaway	Robert Frost	Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall, We stopped by a mountain pasture to say, ‘Whose colt?’ A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall, The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt. We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-4", "S2-5", "S2-10" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Winter", "Nature/Animals" ]
f60beadb52632e47	Four Poems for Robin	Gary Snyder	Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest I slept under rhododendron All night blossoms fell Shivering on a sheet of cardboard Feet stuck in my pack Hands deep in my pockets Barely able to sleep. I remembered when we were in school Sleeping together in a big warm bed We were the youngest lo...	[ "S1", "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-4", "S1-5", "S1-6", "S1-9", "S2-1", "S2-3", "S8-1" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/New Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Nature/Spring", "Nature/Fall", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
bd53dbdb82d20955	Immigrant Blues	Li-Young Lee	People have been trying to kill me since I was born, a man tells his son, trying to explain the wisdom of learning a second tongue. It’s an old story from the previous century about my father and me. The same old story from yesterday morning about me and my son. It’s called “Survival Strategies and the Melancho...	[ "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S8-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
bb23a5102780fc4f	That One Time I Stayed Up All Night Making Excuses to Talk to Danger	Tarfia Faizullah	Maybe it was my old friend Fascination who first let me know that Danger was right across the hall, or maybe it was the unrealized absence of pollen, or, was it the nearness, Danger, of your hair’s blatant softness, just toweled. Or, I wanted to stop thinking — and, I wanted to ask,Do you think God understands ...	[ "S1", "S6" ]	[ "S1-1" ]	[ "Love", "Living" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]
1d973d9aa21894ba	Mind ? Body	Gregory Djanikian	How do they survive, riven as they are, the one undoing the other's desire? Tell the body to outrun the mind, and the mind smirks, whispering too loudly this way this way, blocking all the exits. And the body, luxurious sensualist by pool side or in bed, doesn't it hear the mind's impatient machin...	[ "S2", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S10-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy" ]
479ea6ba31276724	Photo of a Man on Sunset Drive: 1914, 2008	Richard Blanco	Groundbreaking Ceremony, City of South Miami, Sunset Drive Improvements And so it began: the earth torn, split open by a dirt road cutting through palmettos and wild tamarind trees defending the land against the sun. Beside the road, a shack leaning into the wind, on the wooden porch, crates of avocados and limes, whi...	[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S2-7", "S3-9", "S8-3", "S9-4", "S10-1", "S10-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
10f287948b499dd7	Notes on My Present: A Contrapuntal	Natalie Scenters-Zapico	With statements by President Donald Trump I write my body, as border betweenWe have some bad hombres here this rock & the absence of water.& we’re going to get them out. I cut myself with a scimitar,When Mexico sends its people, as political documentation.they’re not sending their best. How do you write about the ...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]	[ "S3-4", "S3-8", "S3-11" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
245d1e69febf5653	Scrabble with Matthews	David Wojahn	Jerboa on a triple: I was in for it, my zither on a double looking feeble as a "promising" first book. Oedipal & reckless, my scheme would fail: keep him a couple drinks ahead, & perhaps the muse would smile upon me with some ses or some blanks. January, Vermont: snowflakes teased the windows of the Burlington a...	[ "S2", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S2-4", "S8-4", "S9-7", "S10-6" ]	[ "Nature", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Winter", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
1ff1c59c58ad367d	Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge	William Wordsworth	Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned—Albeit labouring for a scanty bandOf white-robed Scholars only—this immenseAnd glorious Work of fine intelligence!Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the loreOf nicely-calculated less or more;So deemed the man who fashioned f...	[ "S5", "S9" ]	[ "S5-2", "S9-6" ]	[ "Religion", "Activities" ]	[ "Religion/Christianity", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]
0aba9950d642ee7c	Brief reflection on accuracy	Miroslav Holub	Fish always accurately know where to move and when, and likewise birds have an accurate built-in time sense and orientation. Humanity, however, lacking such instincts resorts to scientific research. Its nature is illustrated by the following occurrence. A certain soldier had to...	[ "S2", "S3", "S9" ]	[ "S2-5", "S3-11", "S9-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
c1e768bc6996ca1b	If I Sleep While My Baby Sleeps	Alice B. Fogel	I will hear his sleep in and through my own, my sleep will be bathed in his as if we slept in one same fluid My sleep floats within a listening so deep that the separating spaces of air become as pliant and full as snowfall, its singing silence as profound My ears and his throat — the sensation of anticipated...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-7", "S8-5" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
1cf0c46d23f6de2c	After Quevedo	John Matthias	In memory of Octavio Paz not even lost in death the memory of why we burned, and therefore still a fire consuming all obsequious delay, now polvo, dust, of a desire but still alive and aching, not even lost to you within our common urn, urgent as an ash still burning alma, soul, still and moving to...	[ "S1", "S6" ]	[ "S1-1", "S6-4" ]	[ "Love", "Living" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
a8b633c72175884b	Thirty Years Later I Meet Your Seventeen-Year-Old Daughter the Poet	Sandra M. Gilbert	in memory of R.I.S. 1. Would I know her anywhere, this child who never knew you except in photographs? She has your high clear polished forehead, but “No, my sister has his dimple, the cleft in his chin ...” Tight curly hair (like yours) drawn back, and your face, thinned, refined, to ...	[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S6-4", "S8-4", "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
231659b1ef370650	Want	Joan Larkin	She wants a house full of cups and the ghosts of last century’s lesbians; I want a spotless apartment, a fast computer. She wants a woodstove, three cords of ash, an axe; I want a clean gas flame. She wants a row of jars: oats, coriander, thick green oil; I want nothing to store. She wants pomanders, linens, ...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S3-9", "S8-6", "S8-7" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Relationships/LGBTQ+", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
9609cce3967b54d7	What Became	Wesley McNair	What became of the dear strands of hair pressed against the perspiration of your lover's brow after lovemaking as you gazed into the world of those eyes, now only yours? What became of any afternoon that was so vivid you forgot the present was up to its old trick of pretending it would be there always? Wha...	[ "S1", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S1-6", "S1-7" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Romantic Love" ]
d0366a857df6fcdc	An Exercise in Love	Diane di Prima	for Jackson Allen My friend wears my scarf at his waist I give him moonstones He gives me shell & seaweeds He comes from a distant city & I meet him We will plant eggplants & celery together He weaves me cloth Many have brought the gifts I use for his pleasure ...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S1-7", "S3-4", "S8-7" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
e758a5230f214020	Sorrow Home	Margaret Walker	My roots are deep in southern life; deeper than John Brown or Nat Turner or Robert Lee. I was sired and weaned in a tropic world. The palm tree and banana leaf, mango and coconut, breadfruit and rubber trees know me. Warm skies and gulf blue streams are in my blood. I belong with the smell of fresh pine, with the trai...	[ "S3", "S4", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S3-8", "S8-3", "S9-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
6012e3a0594c7568	The Worship of Nature	John Greenleaf Whittier	The harp at Nature’s advent strung Has never ceased to play; The song the stars of morning sung Has never died away. And prayer is made, and praise is given, By all things near and far; The ocean looketh up to heaven, And mirrors every star. Its waves are kneeling on the strand, As kneels ...	[ "S2", "S5" ]	[ "S2-7", "S5-7", "S5-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Religion/Other Religions", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
db132654a09829b2	God Bless America	John Fuller	When they confess that they have lost the penial bone and outer space is Once again a numinous void, when they’re kept out of Other Places, And Dr Fieser falls asleep at last and dreams of unburnt faces, When gold medals are won by the ton for forgetting about the different races, God Bless America. When in the L...	[ "S3", "S4" ]	[]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]	[]
d8fffc99826c7360	Prairie Octopus, Awake	Nicky Beer	The night’s turned everything to junipers shagged & spooked with cerulean chalk-fruit, weird berries whiffing of Martians in rut. I forget this isn’t my universe sometimes. Sometimes I think I was falling most of my life to land here, a lone skirl in the immaculate hush. In my world I waltzed with my ink-self, m...	[ "S2" ]	[]	[ "Nature" ]	[]
1f13b697932f383e	from Deaf Republic: 5. And They Drag The Living Body In The Sunlit Piazza	Ilya Kaminsky	I watch loud animal bones in their faces & I can smell the earth.Our boys want a public killing in a sunlit piazzaThey drag a young policeman, a sign in his arms swaying	[ "S3" ]	[ "S3-6", "S3-11" ]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice" ]
5c6817f03564f998	Something	Mona Arshi	something scrambled out of me at least I thought it was out of me it could have been into me very fast very sly dirty breath’d assassin spiders ants earthworms I witnessed being dissected by my brothers and crane flies I tried but never managed to capture whole such fey stupid wings and l...	[ "S2", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S2-5", "S6-4", "S8-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
3aa6beec1305164b	He was touched or he touched or	Marianne Boruch	He was touched or he touched or she did and was, or they were and would. Or the room could, its three doors, two windows or the house on a slant touching, touched by the drift down street, cars pressing quick or slowing. All along the town touched a river, the river the filth falling through it. What wa...	[ "S2", "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S2-7", "S3-1", "S3-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
071ae257cc8e6d8a	Knowledge	Louise Bogan	Now that I know How passion warms little Of flesh in the mould, And treasure is brittle,— I’ll lie here and learn How, over their ground, Trees make a long shadow And a light sound.	[ "S1", "S2", "S9" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-3", "S2-8", "S9-6" ]	[ "Love", "Nature", "Activities" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]
17fe38bad1e0a0c2	What He Thought	Heather McHugh	for Fabbio Doplicher We were supposed to do a job in Italy and, full of our feeling for ourselves (our sense of being Poets from America) we went from Rome to Fano, met the mayor, mulled a couple matters over (what's a cheap date, they asked us; what's flat drink). Among Italian literati we could recognize ou...	[ "S3", "S4", "S5", "S10" ]	[ "S3-11", "S5-4", "S10-6" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Religion", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]
312fb1e721dd5c0d	Sundown	Léonie Adams	This is the time lean woods shall spend A steeped-up twilight, and the pale evening drink, And the perilous roe, the leaper to the west brink, Trembling and bright to the caverned cloud descend. Now shall you see pent oak gone gusty and frantic, Stooped with dry weeping, ruinously unloosing The sparse disheveled ...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-7", "S2-8" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]
77e7e2a0e0f70d58	I Used to Think	Trumbull Stickney	I used to think The mind essential in the body, even As stood the body essential in the mind: Two inseparable things, by nature equal And similar, and in creation’s song Halving the total scale: it is not so. Unlike and cross like driftwood sticks they come Churned in the giddy trough: a chunk of pine, A slab of rosewo...	[ "S2", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S10-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy" ]
500bfb9bcadd3f3e	Halston	Randall Mann	Roy Halston Frowick, 1932–1990 He kept his middle name, the pick of the lot, he thought, and mispronounced himself: Hall-stun. At Bergdorf’s he acquired an accent and referred to himself in the third person, every bird he flayed wrapped in Ultrasuede. He lit a True with a True, smeared his hirsute muse with sequin...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S3-1", "S3-4", "S6-4", "S6-6", "S8-6", "S9-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/LGBTQ+", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
b7516c30d95db664	Dawn Chorus	Sasha Dugdale	March 29, 2010 Every morning since the time changedI have woken to the dawn chorusAnd even before it sounded, I dreamed of itLoud, unbelievably loud, shameless, raucousAnd once I rose and twitched the curtains apartExpecting the birds to be pressing in frightAgainst the pane like passengersBut the garden was empty and...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-5" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Animals" ]
f791bcf3212cc179	rudie can't fail in south padre	Quraysh Ali Lansana	there was a rude boy on my jean jacket. black suit, shades and hat, skanking where orange street met birmingham. two-tone ska a second skin, a way to believe, though unsure why. days on this island with wasted republican frat boys and sorority girls, pompous u.s citizens, northern americanos with trust funds. only whit...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S3-8", "S6-8", "S8-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
780940522c8895fc	The Love Letters of Helen Pitts Douglass	Michael S. Harper	When I stood behind his desk chair and when he sat, on rare occasions, on the porch, “sage of Anacostia,” they called him, I smelled his mane glorious, and as a hand saddle the aroma of hair took me to neckline and below. In Egypt, long after Napoleon had shot off the face of the Sphinx, I thought of this man,...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S1-6", "S3-8", "S8-7" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
b737318e5bccedfc	Sonnet #10	Hayden Carruth	You rose from our embrace and the small light spread like an aureole around you. The long parabola of neck and shoulder, flank and thigh I saw permute itself through unfolding and unlimited minuteness in the movement of your tall tread, the spine-root swaying, the Picasso-like éclat of scissoring slender legs. I ...	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[ "S1-7" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Romantic Love" ]
fb3fd33ca45e7e4e	Arise, Go Down	Li-Young Lee	It wasn’t the bright hems of the Lord’s skirts that brushed my face and I opened my eyes to see from a cleft in rock His backside; it’s a wasp perched on my left cheek. I keep my eyes closed and stand perfectly still in the garden till it leaves me alone, not to contemplate how this century ends and the next beg...	[ "S5", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S8-3" ]	[ "Religion", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
0f6bff06dd5018c8	Paradise Lost: Book 10 (1674 version)	John Milton	MEanwhile the hainous and despightfull act Of Satan done in Paradise, and how Hee in the Serpent, had perverted Eve, Her Husband shee, to taste the fatall fruit, Was known in Heav'n; for what can scape the Eye Of God All-seeing, or deceave his Heart Omniscient, who in all things wise and just, Hinder'd not Satan to att...	[ "S5" ]	[ "S5-2", "S5-4" ]	[ "Religion" ]	[ "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]
7ac5600bc568f2c9	The Words Under the Words	Naomi Shihab Nye	for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes, the damp shine of a goat’s new skin. When I was sick they followed me, I woke from the long fever to find them covering my head like cool prayers. My grandmother’s days are made of bread, a round pat-pat and the slow baking. She waits...	[ "S5", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S5-3", "S5-5", "S6-1", "S8-3" ]	[ "Religion", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/Islam", "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
804da950ff789a5d	"American Football"	Richard Katrovas	That I would even use the phrase suggests A false yet useful worldliness, a scope Far greater than my caste would indicate. The phrase signals, “I’ve lived abroad! I’ve watched The Premier League in European pubs!” In fact I hate the game; its ethos rests On boring strategies and rules that cope, Merely, with co...	[ "S9" ]	[ "S9-5" ]	[ "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]
c491f39b875ab7dc	Damselfly, Trout, Heron	John Engels	The damselfly folds its wings over its body when at rest. Captured, it should not be killed in cyanide, but allowed to die slowly: then the colors, especially the reds and blues, will last. In the hand it crushes easily into a rosy slime. Its powers of flight are weak. The trout feeds on the living damselfly....	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
e037cce833a3cd8e	Send Forth the High Falcon	Léonie Adams	Send forth the high falcon flying after the mind Till it come toppling down from its cold cloud: The beak of the falcon to pierce it till it fall Where the simple heart is bowed. O in wild innocence it rides The rare ungovernable element, But once it sways to terror and descent, The marches of the wind are its a...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-5" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Animals" ]
78d96a07276a2a32	"The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish"	Edna St. Vincent Millay	The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish Upon the coals, exuding odorous smoke She knelt and blew, in a surging desolate wish For comfort; and the sleeping ashes woke And scattered to the hearth, but no thin fire Broke suddenly, the wood was wet with rain. Then, softly stepping forth from her desire, (Be...	[ "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S8-5", "S9-3" ]	[ "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]
2e84aebc9bf145fd	The Party	Jason Shinder	And that’s how it is; everyone standing up from the big silence of the table with their glasses of certainty and plates of forgiveness and walking into the purple kitchen; everyone leaning away from the gas stove Marie blows on at the very edge of the breaking blue-orange-lunging- forward flames to warm another pot...	[ "S3", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S8-4", "S9-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]
9b0601a65c2e1e02	American Smooth	Rita Dove	We were dancing—it must have been a foxtrot or a waltz, something romantic but requiring restraint, rise and fall, precise execution as we moved into the next song without stopping, two chests heaving above a seven-league stride—such perfect agony, one learns to smile through, ecstatic mimicry being the sin...	[ "S1", "S6", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S9-3", "S10-10" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]
60cd22cf5cbec37d	The Yak	Hilaire Belloc	As a friend to the children commend me the Yak. You will find it exactly the thing: It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back, Or lead it about with a string. The Tartar who dwells on the plains of Thibet (A desolate region of snow) Has for centuries made it a nursery pet, And surely the Tart...	[ "S8" ]	[ "S8-8" ]	[ "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]
df9922009341a80f	Oxford	Fanny Howe	Homeless and never sadder,dragging bags, spending money,leaning over luggage,suddenly saying, “Without you, God,I can’t continue.” Who was that?And then I lift it and walk to find one book.Up Iffley Turn to the Hawkwell and Tree Innsand down over a lockinto an extended filthy riverthrough the Thames Valleyand over a me...	[ "S3", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S3-1", "S10-6", "S10-8" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
c9191f6e7b47cfb8	Stalin's Library Card	David Wojahn	A recent piece in PRAVDA gives the library books checked out by Stalin between April and December, 1926. Much has been made of their oddity... Robert Conquest I THE ESSENCE OF HYPNOSIS (Paris: LeGrande, 1902)	[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S6-6", "S10-8" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Living/Health & Illness" ]
1a443d543e122532	“In the Evening We Shall Be Examined on Love”	Thomas Centolella	—St. John of the Cross And it won’t be multiple choice, though some of us would prefer it that way. Neither will it be essay, which tempts us to run on when we should be sticking to the point, if not together. In the evening there shall be implications our fear will change to complications. No cheating, we’ll be...	[ "S1" ]	[]	[ "Love" ]	[]
eb3d2bcab6d5dbf0	The Double-Bed Dream Gallows	Richard Brautigan	Driving through hot brushy country in the late autumn, I saw a hawk crucified on a barbed-wire fence. I guess as a kind of advertisement to other hawks, saying from the pages of a leading women’s magazine, “She’s beautiful, but burn all the maps to your body. I’m not here of my own choosing.”	[ "S2", "S9" ]	[ "S2-5", "S9-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
78ee06ecf20503f5	Gone, Gone Again	Edward Thomas	Gone, gone again,May, June, July,And August gone,Again gone by,Not memorableSave that I saw them go,As past the empty quaysThe rivers flow.And now again,In the harvest rain,The Blenheim orangesFall grubby from the trees,As when I was young—And when the lost one was here—And when the war beganTo turn young men to dung.L...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S3-11", "S6-4", "S10-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
7ea18e41ae94f376	London, 1802	William Wordsworth	Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:England hath need of thee: she is a fenOf stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,Have forfeited their ancient English dowerOf inward happiness. We are selfish men;Oh! raise us up, return to us again;And give us manners, virtue, f...	[ "S3", "S11" ]	[ "S3-1", "S11-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
be41a0e5c2e10fbe	The Lost Leader	Robert Browning	Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat— Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our copper had gone for his service! ...	[ "S3", "S4", "S10", "S11" ]	[ "S10-6", "S11-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism" ]
93fbe4e376f8e1e9	San Biagio, at Montepulciano	Yves Bonnefoy	Columns, arches, vaults: how he knew The ways you promise what you lack; And that your bodies, like your souls, Always slip from our grasping hands. Space is such a lure . . . Swift to disappoint, As they raise and topple clouds, the sky's Architects still offer more than ours, Who only build a scaffolding of dr...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-1" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design" ]
a03af26535e58d3f	Mother Mind	Julia Ward Howe	I never made a poem, dear friend— I never sat me down, and said, This cunning brain and patient hand Shall fashion something to be read. Men often came to me, and prayed I should indite a fitting verse For fast, or festival, or in Some stately pageant to rehearse. (As if, than Balaam more endowed, I of myself could ble...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
e41707e95fb9d8ed	. . . shift at oars	Stacy Szymaszek	water relives reservoir boat bottom draft displaced ° lineal thought backward body no one knows the brains I am now tree an oar origin joints ruptured soak in deep ink ° wallpaper remnant flower float chandelier brief case hundred words logged erode my Arabic congestion of res...	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[]
40c64bf1f799917d	Why Poetry Cannot Be Skimmed	Jessica Jopp	In response to a student who told me he just “skims” the poetry right before class The barn was in the Netherlands,in a field where fierce night windcaught the straw as if to fusethe winter stars to their coldness.A farmer, woken by the sound, knowinghis animals would be agitated,walked to the barn and by lanternbrush...	[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
82ffaf6d6d06717e	1994	Lucille Clifton	i was leaving my fifty-eighth year when a thumb of ice stamped itself hard near my heart you have your own story you know about the fears the tears the scar of disbelief you know that the saddest lies are the ones we tell ourselves you know how dangerous it is to be born with breasts you know how dangerous it...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S3-4", "S3-8", "S6-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Aging" ]
36f7eb27f6be6855	The Map of the World Confused with Its Territory	Susan Stewart	In a drawer I found a map of the world, folded into eighths and then once again and each country bore the wrong name because the map of the world is an orphanage. The edges of the earth had a margin as frayed as the hem of the falling night and a crease moved down toward the center of the earth, halving the iden...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-7" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
12584e8c0980de7f	Drawing for Absolute Beginners	Monica Youn	Take any desired height, or place points for top of head and heels. Divide into eights. . . . 8. Head tilted back between the headboard slats. Eyes glass boxes filling up with light. Later, drained to a blue-gray, the color of good government. 7. Thus, we see that commodification is a function of local...	[ "S1", "S3", "S10" ]	[ "S10-4" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]
9ed3a1da8dfb4bf4	from My Life: A name trimmed with colored ribbons	Lyn Hejinian	A name trimmed They are seated in the shadowswith colored husking corn, shelling peas. Housesribbons of wood set in the ground. I try to find the spot at which the pattern on ...	[ "S2", "S10" ]	[ "S10-1" ]	[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design" ]
31b2ec30e892b838	Womanhood	Juliet Kono	When I was three, a tsunami hit town. “Daddy, Daddy, save me, don’t let me drown.” He saved me and my common-type dolls. When I was sixteen, another tsunami hit town. I cried to my daddy, “Daddy, Daddy, please save me, don’t let me drown!” But he let go of my hand! I still dance to what broke on my life.	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-5", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
9025d7cec9249fda	Last Night	Hester Knibbe	Saved two children last night. They lay under thin black ice one gone blue, the other grey. I laid them out on grass that snapped under my step wrung their bodies warm and dry gave them the gust of my breath. Then I looked out at the morning that lay lukewarm on the water put on a tank top arranged some grass...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-7" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Parenthood" ]
a75c9b083478db23	Song in Barbarous Fumarole of the Japanese Crested Ibis	Will Alexander	The wings pierce as if they were eternity. —Shuzo Takiguchi The Japanese Crested Ibis is now extinct. “To claim as arcane vapour ruination by intrigue by kindled leprosy morays so that I take up in my glottis these moral hallucinogens which actively dim which nourish themselves on behalf of active heavenly terr...	[ "S2", "S10" ]	[ "S2-5", "S10-2" ]	[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Nature/Animals" ]
3a88fcc69db65a8e	Collectable Blacks	Adrian Matejka	This is the g-dropping vernacular I am stuck in. This is the polyphone where my head is an agrarian gang sign pointing like a percussion mallet to a corn maze in one of the smaller Indiana suburbs where there aren’t supposed to be black folks. Be cool & try to grin it off. Be cool & try to le...	[ "S3" ]	[ "S3-1", "S3-6" ]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice" ]
097f1bbacbe9f85c	Dead Orchard	Frank Stanford	Raymond Radiguet Like seven birds sleeping on the plateau Overlooking the shipwreck of love, mystery Of the drunken visitors wandering off With your wife, men who talk with a bad accent, The condemned the abandoned, one day of silence, Two days of silence, dreams shattered and protected, The more the blossoms th...	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[]
0e5778226e606f96	Her Life Runs Like a Red Silk Flag	Bruce Weigl	Because this evening Miss Hoang Yen sat down with me in the small tiled room of her family house I am unable to sleep. We shared a glass of cold and sweet water. On a blue plate her mother brought us cake and smiled her betel-black teeth at me but I did not feel strange in the house my country had tried to bomb...	[ "S3", "S8" ]	[ "S3-4", "S3-11" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
9efbe006b1750959	A Bed above the Abyss: Amnesiac Notebook	Andrew Allport	i. Awake Each entry consisting of the statements I am awake or I am conscious entered every few minutes: 2:10 p.m.: this time properly awake. 2:14 p.m.: this time finally awake. 2:35 p.m.: this time completely awake. At 9:40 p.m. I awoke for the first time, despite my previous claims. Th...	[ "S2", "S9" ]	[ "S2-7", "S9-5", "S9-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
393f09c2141aaac0	Lines for a Prologue	Archibald MacLeish	These alternate nights and days, these seasons Somehow fail to convince me. It seems I have the sense of infinity! (In your dreams, O crew of Columbus, O listeners over the sea For the surf that breaks upon Nothing—) Once I was waked by the nightingales in the garden. I thought, What time is it? I thought, Time...	[ "S2", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S2-6" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water" ]
cd5f41ca155b2e91	October	May Swenson	1 A smudge for the horizon that, on a clear day, shows the hard edge of hills and buildings on the other coast. Anchored boats all head one way: north, where the wind comes from. You can see the storm inflating out of the west. A dark hole in gray cloud twirls, widens, while white rips multiply on the water ...	[ "S2", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S2-3", "S2-5", "S2-10", "S8-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Fall", "Nature/Animals", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
5f8bdc1f16b01748	Grass	Carl Sandburg	Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: ...	[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S3-11", "S10-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
c5d85b74348abf5b	Die Verschwundenen/The Vanished	Hans Magnus Enzensberger	For Nelly Sachs It wasn't the earth that swallowed them. Was it the air? Numerous as the sand, they did not become sand, but came to naught instead. They've been forgotten in droves. Often, and hand in hand, like minutes. More than us, but without memorials. Not registered, not cipherable from dust, but vanishe...	[ "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S6-4" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]
034c618e084db9ab	And the Ghosts	Graham Foust	they own everything	[ "S11" ]	[ "S11-2" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural" ]
76decfee09728cea	Capriccio of the Imaginary Prison	Richard Garcia	After Piranesi The faded remains of ancient advertising — captives on parade in native costume. Now the whangam, that imaginary animal led by Wharfinger, keeper of the wharf. And you, my puce, sitting between the paws of the mechanical lion, his brittle heart of glass. The regiments of holiday shoppers, in for...	[ "S3", "S10" ]	[ "S3-6", "S10-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice" ]
8a8d6c8632bbe88f	from Field Notes	Brooklyn Copeland	The smallness of thiscolloquial cannotmuffle the full morning orchestra—amphibious greensclotting the trickleof thaw. The tinnyfin flip and eyeflake flash—small schools thatgive shimmer in the dullskulk of wind.)(cry one pure perennial I can’tdoubt)(something by which to) ...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-8" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]
61c478ebd62dcf5b	Passing Through	Ai	“Earth is the birth of the blues,” sang Yellow Bertha, as she chopped cotton beside Mama Rose. It was as hot as any other summer day, when she decided to run away. Folks say she made a fortune running a whorehouse in New Orleans, but others say she’s buried somewhere out west, her grave unmarked, though you can...	[ "S8" ]	[ "S8-3" ]	[ "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
c6efb8a1d6dc17df	Epithalamion	Edmund Spenser	Ye learned sisters which have oftentimes Beene to me ayding, others to adorne: Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes, That even the greatest did not greatly scorne To heare theyr names sung in your simple layes, But joyed in theyr prayse. And when ye list your owne mishaps to mourne, Which death, or love, or f...	[ "S6", "S8", "S11" ]	[ "S8-7" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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Rooms

Brian Henry

There are rooms that know you, rooms you know & can name, rooms that rise & stutter into view if you stare long enough. Rooms where nothing happened but in your head, where the world went on apart from you, you trying to rise to it. Rooms with walls of white blocks, one window, the only sound the bang bang bang...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S10-1" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design" ]

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Four Months Old

Carrie Fountain

All the baby knows is the flop of her limbs and the milky blue vein of sleep and the parking lot of her animal fear, the cars left there overnight, windshields dark and thick with dew. The rest is completely unknown, the complete darkness of her white room, where she sleeps on a clean sheet printed with ba...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-2" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Birth & Infancy" ]

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On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses

James Galvin

On starless, windless nights like this I imagine I can hear the wedding dresses Weeping in their closets, Luminescent with hopeless longing, Like hollow angels. They know they will never be worn again. Who wants them now, After their one heroic day in the limelight? Yet they glow with desire In the darkness o...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S8-1", "S8-7" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

586aa25a20d90f46

Trust

Thomas R. Smith

It’s like so many other things in life to which you must say no or yes. So you take your car to the new mechanic. Sometimes the best thing to do is trust. The package left with the disreputable-looking clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit, the envelope passed by doze...

[ "S3" ]

[]

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[]

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Shift

Jamaal May

Acting on an anonymous tip, a shift supervisor at a runaway shelter strip-searched six teenagers. Mrs. Haver was taping shut the mouths of talkative students by the time she neared retirement, and Mr. Vickers, a skilled electrician in his day, didn’t adapt when fuses became circuit breakers, a fact that didn’t st...

[ "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S9-4" ]

[ "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Vandergast and the Girl

Louis Simpson

Vandergast to his neighbors— the grinding of a garage door and hiss of gravel in the driveway. He worked for the insurance company whose talisman is a phoenix rising in flames ... non omnis moriar. From his desk he had a view of the street— translucent raincoats, and umbrellas, fluorescent plate-glass windows. ...

[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8", "S9" ]

[ "S1-3", "S1-6", "S3-4", "S6-1", "S8-1", "S8-7", "S9-4" ]

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

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

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Why Being “On Fire” Is for Everyone

Kristin Naca

Man on Fire, 1969, by Luis Jiménez Because the facial features burn fastest. Because the sun sets in Tibet before it ever rises in the West. Because Tsering Tashi’s mother told him to dress in the thickest,  finest, llama wool chuba. For I find no flattering explanation for the murder of everyone. Flames consume t...

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

[ "S3-8", "S3-11", "S6-4" ]

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

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

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Four Questions Regarding the Dreams of Animals

Susan Stewart

1. Is it true that they dream? It is true, for the spaces of night surround them with shape and purpose, like a warm hollow below the shoulders, or between the curve of thigh and belly. The land itself can lie like this. Hence our understanding of giants. The wind and the grass cry out to the arms ...

[ "S2", "S8" ]

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

[ "Nature", "Relationships" ]

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

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A Question

Xochiquetzal Candelaria

The woman in the building across from me hauls onto the fire escape a yucca plant and squeezes it between a crate of herbs and a sapling fern tree. She looks a lot like me from twenty feet away. A forelock lies sweaty against her cheek as if she’s forgotten to fix herself. I put my thumbs and forefingers to my ...

[ "S3", "S8" ]

[ "S3-1", "S8-3", "S8-5" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

88f572a0d21d2c93

Let Nothing Lie Dormant

David Dominguez

At the farmer’s market in Rosarito, Mexico, a man touched my arm. He sat on a stool at a wooden table, and in the center, a blue pitcher of water beaded under the sun. Hunkered over his lap, he worked with a gouge on a block of walnut, and he blew at the dust, and the dust swirled in the breeze. Done stripping...

[ "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S9-4", "S10-1" ]

[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Five Indiscretions,

Alberto Ríos

or The Unfortunate Story of the Unmarried Flora Carrillo And the Man Who Loved Her Before He Died his Famous Death, From Whose Single Liaison a Daughter Was Born And the Advice, Rather the Explanation, Both of Them Left for Her, And the Story Also Of What She Became, and That She Was Happy 1. Three did not count...

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

[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S3-4", "S8-3" ]

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

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Dinner at George & Katie Schneeman’s

Ted Berrigan

She was pretty swacked by the time she Put the spaghetti & meatballs into the orgy pasta bowl—There was mixed salt & pepper in the “Tittie-tweak” pasta bowl—We drank some dago red from glazed girlie demi-tasse cups—after which we engaged in heterosexual intercourse, mutual masturbation, fe...

[ "S1", "S9" ]

[ "S1-1", "S9-1" ]

[ "Love", "Activities" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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Enemies

Wendell Berry

If you are not to become a monster, you must care what they think. If you care what they think, how will you not hate them, and so become a monster of the opposite kind? From where then is love to come—love for your enemy that is the way of liberty? From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go free of you, and you of t...

[ "S8" ]

[ "S8-4" ]

[ "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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Necropolitan

Scott Cairns

Not your ordinary ice cream, though the glaze of these skeletal figures affects the disposition of those grinning candies one finds in Mexico, say, at the start of November, though here, each face is troublingly familiar, exhibits the style adopted just as one declines any further style—nectar one sips just as he...

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

[ "S6-4" ]

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

[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Square de la Place Dupleix

Pascale Petit

After Les Murray  Inside the sandpit you are playing for your life. Your bucket and spade that smiled all day long, like family in your satchel, now work hard. Your material is sand. It weaves a universe where you are huge, the cellar behind you, eclipsed by twelve chestnut trees and their pigeon gods. On and on ...

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

[ "S6-8", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S9-5" ]

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

[ "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]

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D.O.A.

Tim Dlugos

“You knew who I was when I walked in the door. You thought that I was dead. Well, I am dead. A man can walk and talk and even breathe and still be dead.” Edmond O’Brien is perspiring and chewing up the scenery in my favorite film noir, D.O.A. I can’t stop watching, can’t stop relating. When I walked down Colu...

[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S8", "S10" ]

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

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/LGBTQ+" ]

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Love Songs

Mina Loy

I Spawn of fantasies Sifting the appraisable Pig Cupid his rosy snout Rooting erotic garbage "Once upon a time" Pulls a weed white star-topped Among wild oats sown in mucous membrane I would an eye in a Bengal light Eternity in a sky-rocket Constellations in an ocean Whose rivers run no fresher Than a trick...

[ "S1", "S2" ]

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

[ "Love", "Nature" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated" ]

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San Diego and Matisse

Clarence Major

1. INSIDE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A TREE Beautiful women in smoky blue culottes lying around on fluffy pink pillows beneath windows onto charming views, sea views, seasonal leaves and trees. Inside is outside and outside inside. Smell of saltwater swimming in the room. 2. OUTSIDE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A ROCKIN...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-7" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

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Four Glimpses of Night

Frank Marshall Davis

I Eagerly Like a woman hurrying to her lover Night comes to the room of the world And lies, yielding and content Against the cool round face Of the moon. II Night is a curious child, wandering Between earth and sky, creeping In windows and doors, daubing The entire neighborhood With purple paint. Day Is ...

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

[]

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

[]

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Nurse Marble

Johannes Göransson

Knowledge is Power. That is what the billboard says and I agree. I am an adult, therefore I understand the threat of passengers. The threat to Our Children, who don't understand the threat of these bird-like, twitchy people. They pose two kinds of threat. To begin with, there is the one we all know about, the predator...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-6" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Health & Illness" ]

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The Look

Sara Teasdale

Strephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, Robin's lost in play, But the kiss in Colin's eyes Haunts me night and day.

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[ "S1-3", "S1-4", "S1-8", "S1-9" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Classic Love", "Love/Unrequited Love" ]

a4a7bd032876cdf1

from The Book of the Dead: The Book of the Dead

Muriel Rukeyser

These roads will take you into your own country. Seasons and maps coming where this road comes into a landscape mirrored in these men. Past all your influences, your home river, constellations of cities, mottoes of childhood, parents and easy cures, war, all evasion’s wishes. What one word must never be said? De...

[ "S2", "S9" ]

[ "S2-6", "S2-7", "S9-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Activities" ]

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

beeb9043046b345c

The Mariner’s Progress

Ishion Hutchinson

1 “With never a whisper on the main,” so the snow falls, glaring through the festschrift of acacia leaves at sunrise and seeping a dye of immortelle on mild fleece, shrinking back eternity to flurries stalking summer cairns. Somewhere, harpies in cruisers blare beneath prairie clouds. An iceberg flashes, turns ...

[ "S1", "S2", "S9" ]

[ "S1-1", "S2-5", "S2-6", "S9-7" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Activities" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Elegies

Kathleen Ossip

amy winehouse All song is formal, and youMaybe felt this and decidedYou’d be formal too. (The eyeliner, the beehive: formal.)When a desire to escape becomes formal,It’s dangerous. Then escape requiresNullity, rather than a walk in the park or a movie.Eventually, nullity gets harder andHarder to achieve. After surgery, ...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

[ "S6-4", "S6-5", "S10-1", "S10-3", "S10-6" ]

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]

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Yom Kippur, Taos, New Mexico

Robin Becker

I’ve expanded like the swollen door in summer to fit my own dimension. Your loneliness is a letter I read and put away, a daily reminder in the cry of the magpie that I am still capable of inflicting pain at this distance. Like a painting, our talk is dense with description, ...

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

[ "S2-7", "S5-6", "S8-3" ]

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

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Religion/Judaism", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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I Imagine My Father’s Death

Bryan D. Dietrich

I imagine my father’s death. It is bigger than a breadbox. It is bigger than a Ford Escort, than a Zeppelin, black and vast and slow moving, oozing over an Oklahoma arena. It is bigger than any arena, than Oklahoma. My father’s death is bigger than a planet, bigger than the gravity wells worlds make, that stars stir up...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-4" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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The Window, at the Moment of Flame

Alicia Ostriker

And all this while I have been playing with toys A toy power station a toy automobile a house of blocks And all this while far off in other lands Thousands and thousands, millions and millions— You know—you see the pictures Women carrying their bony infants Men sobbing over graves Buildings sculpted by explosion...

[ "S3" ]

[ "S3-2", "S3-11" ]

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor" ]

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The Runaway

Robert Frost

Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall, We stopped by a mountain pasture to say, ‘Whose colt?’ A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall, The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt. We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-4", "S2-5", "S2-10" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Winter", "Nature/Animals" ]

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Four Poems for Robin

Gary Snyder

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest I slept under rhododendron All night blossoms fell Shivering on a sheet of cardboard Feet stuck in my pack Hands deep in my pockets Barely able to sleep. I remembered when we were in school Sleeping together in a big warm bed We were the youngest lo...

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

[ "S1-1", "S1-4", "S1-5", "S1-6", "S1-9", "S2-1", "S2-3", "S8-1" ]

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

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/New Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Nature/Spring", "Nature/Fall", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]

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Immigrant Blues

Li-Young Lee

People have been trying to kill me since I was born, a man tells his son, trying to explain the wisdom of learning a second tongue. It’s an old story from the previous century about my father and me. The same old story from yesterday morning about me and my son. It’s called “Survival Strategies and the Melancho...

[ "S3", "S8" ]

[ "S8-3" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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That One Time I Stayed Up All Night Making Excuses to Talk to Danger

Tarfia Faizullah

Maybe it was my old friend Fascination who first let me know that Danger was right across the hall, or maybe it was the unrealized absence of pollen, or, was it the nearness, Danger, of your hair’s blatant softness, just toweled. Or, I wanted to stop thinking — and, I wanted to ask,Do you think God understands ...

[ "S1", "S6" ]

[ "S1-1" ]

[ "Love", "Living" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]

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Mind ? Body

Gregory Djanikian

How do they survive, riven as they are, the one undoing the other's desire? Tell the body to outrun the mind, and the mind smirks, whispering too loudly this way this way, blocking all the exits. And the body, luxurious sensualist by pool side or in bed, doesn't it hear the mind's impatient machin...

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

[ "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy" ]

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Photo of a Man on Sunset Drive: 1914, 2008

Richard Blanco

Groundbreaking Ceremony, City of South Miami, Sunset Drive Improvements And so it began: the earth torn, split open by a dirt road cutting through palmettos and wild tamarind trees defending the land against the sun. Beside the road, a shack leaning into the wind, on the wooden porch, crates of avocados and limes, whi...

[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S6", "S7", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S2-7", "S3-9", "S8-3", "S9-4", "S10-1", "S10-7" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design", "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Notes on My Present: A Contrapuntal

Natalie Scenters-Zapico

With statements by President Donald Trump I write my body, as border betweenWe have some bad hombres here this rock & the absence of water.& we’re going to get them out. I cut myself with a scimitar,When Mexico sends its people, as political documentation.they’re not sending their best. How do you write about the ...

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

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

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

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]

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Scrabble with Matthews

David Wojahn

Jerboa on a triple: I was in for it, my zither on a double looking feeble as a "promising" first book. Oedipal & reckless, my scheme would fail: keep him a couple drinks ahead, & perhaps the muse would smile upon me with some ses or some blanks. January, Vermont: snowflakes teased the windows of the Burlington a...

[ "S2", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S2-4", "S8-4", "S9-7", "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Winter", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge

William Wordsworth

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned—Albeit labouring for a scanty bandOf white-robed Scholars only—this immenseAnd glorious Work of fine intelligence!Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the loreOf nicely-calculated less or more;So deemed the man who fashioned f...

[ "S5", "S9" ]

[ "S5-2", "S9-6" ]

[ "Religion", "Activities" ]

[ "Religion/Christianity", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]

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Brief reflection on accuracy

Miroslav Holub

Fish always accurately know where to move and when, and likewise birds have an accurate built-in time sense and orientation. Humanity, however, lacking such instincts resorts to scientific research. Its nature is illustrated by the following occurrence. A certain soldier had to...

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

[ "S2-5", "S3-11", "S9-4" ]

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

[ "Nature/Animals", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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If I Sleep While My Baby Sleeps

Alice B. Fogel

I will hear his sleep in and through my own, my sleep will be bathed in his as if we slept in one same fluid My sleep floats within a listening so deep that the separating spaces of air become as pliant and full as snowfall, its singing silence as profound My ears and his throat — the sensation of anticipated...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S6-7", "S8-5" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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After Quevedo

John Matthias

In memory of Octavio Paz not even lost in death the memory of why we burned, and therefore still a fire consuming all obsequious delay, now polvo, dust, of a desire but still alive and aching, not even lost to you within our common urn, urgent as an ash still burning alma, soul, still and moving to...

[ "S1", "S6" ]

[ "S1-1", "S6-4" ]

[ "Love", "Living" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Thirty Years Later I Meet Your Seventeen-Year-Old Daughter the Poet

Sandra M. Gilbert

in memory of R.I.S. 1. Would I know her anywhere, this child who never knew you except in photographs? She has your high clear polished forehead, but “No, my sister has his dimple, the cleft in his chin ...” Tight curly hair (like yours) drawn back, and your face, thinned, refined, to ...

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

[ "S6-4", "S8-4", "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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Want

Joan Larkin

She wants a house full of cups and the ghosts of last century’s lesbians; I want a spotless apartment, a fast computer. She wants a woodstove, three cords of ash, an axe; I want a clean gas flame. She wants a row of jars: oats, coriander, thick green oil; I want nothing to store. She wants pomanders, linens, ...

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

[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S3-9", "S8-6", "S8-7" ]

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

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Relationships/LGBTQ+", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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What Became

Wesley McNair

What became of the dear strands of hair pressed against the perspiration of your lover's brow after lovemaking as you gazed into the world of those eyes, now only yours? What became of any afternoon that was so vivid you forgot the present was up to its old trick of pretending it would be there always? Wha...

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

[ "S1-6", "S1-7" ]

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

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Romantic Love" ]

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An Exercise in Love

Diane di Prima

for Jackson Allen My friend wears my scarf at his waist I give him moonstones He gives me shell & seaweeds He comes from a distant city & I meet him We will plant eggplants & celery together He weaves me cloth Many have brought the gifts I use for his pleasure ...

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

[ "S1-7", "S3-4", "S8-7" ]

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

[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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Sorrow Home

Margaret Walker

My roots are deep in southern life; deeper than John Brown or Nat Turner or Robert Lee. I was sired and weaned in a tropic world. The palm tree and banana leaf, mango and coconut, breadfruit and rubber trees know me. Warm skies and gulf blue streams are in my blood. I belong with the smell of fresh pine, with the trai...

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

[ "S3-8", "S8-3", "S9-4" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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The Worship of Nature

John Greenleaf Whittier

The harp at Nature’s advent strung Has never ceased to play; The song the stars of morning sung Has never died away. And prayer is made, and praise is given, By all things near and far; The ocean looketh up to heaven, And mirrors every star. Its waves are kneeling on the strand, As kneels ...

[ "S2", "S5" ]

[ "S2-7", "S5-7", "S5-8" ]

[ "Nature", "Religion" ]

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Religion/Other Religions", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]

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God Bless America

John Fuller

When they confess that they have lost the penial bone and outer space is Once again a numinous void, when they’re kept out of Other Places, And Dr Fieser falls asleep at last and dreams of unburnt faces, When gold medals are won by the ton for forgetting about the different races, God Bless America. When in the L...

[ "S3", "S4" ]

[]

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

[]

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Prairie Octopus, Awake

Nicky Beer

The night’s turned everything to junipers shagged & spooked with cerulean chalk-fruit, weird berries whiffing of Martians in rut. I forget this isn’t my universe sometimes. Sometimes I think I was falling most of my life to land here, a lone skirl in the immaculate hush. In my world I waltzed with my ink-self, m...

[ "S2" ]

[]

[ "Nature" ]

[]

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from Deaf Republic: 5. And They Drag The Living Body In The Sunlit Piazza

Ilya Kaminsky

I watch loud animal bones in their faces & I can smell the earth.Our boys want a public killing in a sunlit piazzaThey drag a young policeman, a sign in his arms swaying

[ "S3" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice" ]

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Something

Mona Arshi

something scrambled out of me at least I thought it was out of me it could have been into me very fast very sly dirty breath’d assassin spiders ants earthworms I witnessed being dissected by my brothers and crane flies I tried but never managed to capture whole such fey stupid wings and l...

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

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

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

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

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He was touched or he touched or

Marianne Boruch

He was touched or he touched or she did and was, or they were and would. Or the room could, its three doors, two windows or the house on a slant touching, touched by the drift down street, cars pressing quick or slowing. All along the town touched a river, the river the filth falling through it. What wa...

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

[ "S2-7", "S3-1", "S3-4" ]

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

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

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Knowledge

Louise Bogan

Now that I know How passion warms little Of flesh in the mould, And treasure is brittle,— I’ll lie here and learn How, over their ground, Trees make a long shadow And a light sound.

[ "S1", "S2", "S9" ]

[ "S1-1", "S1-3", "S2-8", "S9-6" ]

[ "Love", "Nature", "Activities" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]

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What He Thought

Heather McHugh

for Fabbio Doplicher We were supposed to do a job in Italy and, full of our feeling for ourselves (our sense of being Poets from America) we went from Rome to Fano, met the mayor, mulled a couple matters over (what's a cheap date, they asked us; what's flat drink). Among Italian literati we could recognize ou...

[ "S3", "S4", "S5", "S10" ]

[ "S3-11", "S5-4", "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]

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Sundown

Léonie Adams

This is the time lean woods shall spend A steeped-up twilight, and the pale evening drink, And the perilous roe, the leaper to the west brink, Trembling and bright to the caverned cloud descend. Now shall you see pent oak gone gusty and frantic, Stooped with dry weeping, ruinously unloosing The sparse disheveled ...

[ "S2" ]

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

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]

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I Used to Think

Trumbull Stickney

I used to think The mind essential in the body, even As stood the body essential in the mind: Two inseparable things, by nature equal And similar, and in creation’s song Halving the total scale: it is not so. Unlike and cross like driftwood sticks they come Churned in the giddy trough: a chunk of pine, A slab of rosewo...

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

[ "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy" ]

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Halston

Randall Mann

Roy Halston Frowick, 1932–1990 He kept his middle name, the pick of the lot, he thought, and mispronounced himself: Hall-stun. At Bergdorf’s he acquired an accent and referred to himself in the third person, every bird he flayed wrapped in Ultrasuede. He lit a True with a True, smeared his hirsute muse with sequin...

[ "S3", "S6", "S7", "S8", "S9" ]

[ "S3-1", "S3-4", "S6-4", "S6-6", "S8-6", "S9-4" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/LGBTQ+", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Dawn Chorus

Sasha Dugdale

March 29, 2010 Every morning since the time changedI have woken to the dawn chorusAnd even before it sounded, I dreamed of itLoud, unbelievably loud, shameless, raucousAnd once I rose and twitched the curtains apartExpecting the birds to be pressing in frightAgainst the pane like passengersBut the garden was empty and...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-5" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Animals" ]

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rudie can't fail in south padre

Quraysh Ali Lansana

there was a rude boy on my jean jacket. black suit, shades and hat, skanking where orange street met birmingham. two-tone ska a second skin, a way to believe, though unsure why. days on this island with wasted republican frat boys and sorority girls, pompous u.s citizens, northern americanos with trust funds. only whit...

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

[ "S3-8", "S6-8", "S8-4" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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The Love Letters of Helen Pitts Douglass

Michael S. Harper

When I stood behind his desk chair and when he sat, on rare occasions, on the porch, “sage of Anacostia,” they called him, I smelled his mane glorious, and as a hand saddle the aroma of hair took me to neckline and below. In Egypt, long after Napoleon had shot off the face of the Sphinx, I thought of this man,...

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

[ "S1-6", "S3-8", "S8-7" ]

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

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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Sonnet #10

Hayden Carruth

You rose from our embrace and the small light spread like an aureole around you. The long parabola of neck and shoulder, flank and thigh I saw permute itself through unfolding and unlimited minuteness in the movement of your tall tread, the spine-root swaying, the Picasso-like éclat of scissoring slender legs. I ...

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[ "S1-7" ]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Romantic Love" ]

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Arise, Go Down

Li-Young Lee

It wasn’t the bright hems of the Lord’s skirts that brushed my face and I opened my eyes to see from a cleft in rock His backside; it’s a wasp perched on my left cheek. I keep my eyes closed and stand perfectly still in the garden till it leaves me alone, not to contemplate how this century ends and the next beg...

[ "S5", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]

[ "S8-3" ]

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

[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Paradise Lost: Book 10 (1674 version)

John Milton

MEanwhile the hainous and despightfull act Of Satan done in Paradise, and how Hee in the Serpent, had perverted Eve, Her Husband shee, to taste the fatall fruit, Was known in Heav'n; for what can scape the Eye Of God All-seeing, or deceave his Heart Omniscient, who in all things wise and just, Hinder'd not Satan to att...

[ "S5" ]

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

[ "Religion" ]

[ "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]

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The Words Under the Words

Naomi Shihab Nye

for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes, the damp shine of a goat’s new skin. When I was sick they followed me, I woke from the long fever to find them covering my head like cool prayers. My grandmother’s days are made of bread, a round pat-pat and the slow baking. She waits...

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

[ "S5-3", "S5-5", "S6-1", "S8-3" ]

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

[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/Islam", "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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"American Football"

Richard Katrovas

That I would even use the phrase suggests A false yet useful worldliness, a scope Far greater than my caste would indicate. The phrase signals, “I’ve lived abroad! I’ve watched The Premier League in European pubs!” In fact I hate the game; its ethos rests On boring strategies and rules that cope, Merely, with co...

[ "S9" ]

[ "S9-5" ]

[ "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]

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Damselfly, Trout, Heron

John Engels

The damselfly folds its wings over its body when at rest. Captured, it should not be killed in cyanide, but allowed to die slowly: then the colors, especially the reds and blues, will last. In the hand it crushes easily into a rosy slime. Its powers of flight are weak. The trout feeds on the living damselfly....

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S6-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Send Forth the High Falcon

Léonie Adams

Send forth the high falcon flying after the mind Till it come toppling down from its cold cloud: The beak of the falcon to pierce it till it fall Where the simple heart is bowed. O in wild innocence it rides The rare ungovernable element, But once it sways to terror and descent, The marches of the wind are its a...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-5" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Animals" ]

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"The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish"

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish Upon the coals, exuding odorous smoke She knelt and blew, in a surging desolate wish For comfort; and the sleeping ashes woke And scattered to the hearth, but no thin fire Broke suddenly, the wood was wet with rain. Then, softly stepping forth from her desire, (Be...

[ "S8", "S9" ]

[ "S8-5", "S9-3" ]

[ "Relationships", "Activities" ]

[ "Relationships/Home Life", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]

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The Party

Jason Shinder

And that’s how it is; everyone standing up from the big silence of the table with their glasses of certainty and plates of forgiveness and walking into the purple kitchen; everyone leaning away from the gas stove Marie blows on at the very edge of the breaking blue-orange-lunging- forward flames to warm another pot...

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

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

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

[ "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]

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American Smooth

Rita Dove

We were dancing—it must have been a foxtrot or a waltz, something romantic but requiring restraint, rise and fall, precise execution as we moved into the next song without stopping, two chests heaving above a seven-league stride—such perfect agony, one learns to smile through, ecstatic mimicry being the sin...

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

[ "S9-3", "S10-10" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance", "Activities/Indoor Activities" ]

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The Yak

Hilaire Belloc

As a friend to the children commend me the Yak. You will find it exactly the thing: It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back, Or lead it about with a string. The Tartar who dwells on the plains of Thibet (A desolate region of snow) Has for centuries made it a nursery pet, And surely the Tart...

[ "S8" ]

[ "S8-8" ]

[ "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]

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Oxford

Fanny Howe

Homeless and never sadder,dragging bags, spending money,leaning over luggage,suddenly saying, “Without you, God,I can’t continue.” Who was that?And then I lift it and walk to find one book.Up Iffley Turn to the Hawkwell and Tree Innsand down over a lockinto an extended filthy riverthrough the Thames Valleyand over a me...

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

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

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

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

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Stalin's Library Card

David Wojahn

A recent piece in PRAVDA gives the library books checked out by Stalin between April and December, 1926. Much has been made of their oddity... Robert Conquest I THE ESSENCE OF HYPNOSIS (Paris: LeGrande, 1902)

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

[ "S6-6", "S10-8" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Living/Health & Illness" ]

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“In the Evening We Shall Be Examined on Love”

Thomas Centolella

—St. John of the Cross And it won’t be multiple choice, though some of us would prefer it that way. Neither will it be essay, which tempts us to run on when we should be sticking to the point, if not together. In the evening there shall be implications our fear will change to complications. No cheating, we’ll be...

[ "S1" ]

[]

[ "Love" ]

[]

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The Double-Bed Dream Gallows

Richard Brautigan

Driving through hot brushy country in the late autumn, I saw a hawk crucified on a barbed-wire fence. I guess as a kind of advertisement to other hawks, saying from the pages of a leading women’s magazine, “She’s beautiful, but burn all the maps to your body. I’m not here of my own choosing.”

[ "S2", "S9" ]

[ "S2-5", "S9-7" ]

[ "Nature", "Activities" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Gone, Gone Again

Edward Thomas

Gone, gone again,May, June, July,And August gone,Again gone by,Not memorableSave that I saw them go,As past the empty quaysThe rivers flow.And now again,In the harvest rain,The Blenheim orangesFall grubby from the trees,As when I was young—And when the lost one was here—And when the war beganTo turn young men to dung.L...

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

[ "S3-11", "S6-4", "S10-5" ]

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

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

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London, 1802

William Wordsworth

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:England hath need of thee: she is a fenOf stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,Have forfeited their ancient English dowerOf inward happiness. We are selfish men;Oh! raise us up, return to us again;And give us manners, virtue, f...

[ "S3", "S11" ]

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

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

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]

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The Lost Leader

Robert Browning

Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat— Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our copper had gone for his service! ...

[ "S3", "S4", "S10", "S11" ]

[ "S10-6", "S11-4" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism" ]

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San Biagio, at Montepulciano

Yves Bonnefoy

Columns, arches, vaults: how he knew The ways you promise what you lack; And that your bodies, like your souls, Always slip from our grasping hands. Space is such a lure . . . Swift to disappoint, As they raise and topple clouds, the sky's Architects still offer more than ours, Who only build a scaffolding of dr...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-1" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design" ]

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Mother Mind

Julia Ward Howe

I never made a poem, dear friend— I never sat me down, and said, This cunning brain and patient hand Shall fashion something to be read. Men often came to me, and prayed I should indite a fitting verse For fast, or festival, or in Some stately pageant to rehearse. (As if, than Balaam more endowed, I of myself could ble...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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. . . shift at oars

Stacy Szymaszek

water relives reservoir boat bottom draft displaced ° lineal thought backward body no one knows the brains I am now tree an oar origin joints ruptured soak in deep ink ° wallpaper remnant flower float chandelier brief case hundred words logged erode my Arabic congestion of res...

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[]

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Why Poetry Cannot Be Skimmed

Jessica Jopp

In response to a student who told me he just “skims” the poetry right before class The barn was in the Netherlands,in a field where fierce night windcaught the straw as if to fusethe winter stars to their coldness.A farmer, woken by the sound, knowinghis animals would be agitated,walked to the barn and by lanternbrush...

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

[ "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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1994

Lucille Clifton

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year when a thumb of ice stamped itself hard near my heart you have your own story you know about the fears the tears the scar of disbelief you know that the saddest lies are the ones we tell ourselves you know how dangerous it is to be born with breasts you know how dangerous it...

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

[ "S3-4", "S3-8", "S6-1" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Aging" ]

36f7eb27f6be6855

The Map of the World Confused with Its Territory

Susan Stewart

In a drawer I found a map of the world, folded into eighths and then once again and each country bore the wrong name because the map of the world is an orphanage. The edges of the earth had a margin as frayed as the hem of the falling night and a crease moved down toward the center of the earth, halving the iden...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-7" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

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Drawing for Absolute Beginners

Monica Youn

Take any desired height, or place points for top of head and heels. Divide into eights. . . . 8. Head tilted back between the headboard slats. Eyes glass boxes filling up with light. Later, drained to a blue-gray, the color of good government. 7. Thus, we see that commodification is a function of local...

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

[ "S10-4" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture" ]

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from My Life: A name trimmed with colored ribbons

Lyn Hejinian

A name trimmed They are seated in the shadowswith colored husking corn, shelling peas. Housesribbons of wood set in the ground. I try to find the spot at which the pattern on ...

[ "S2", "S10" ]

[ "S10-1" ]

[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design" ]

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Womanhood

Juliet Kono

When I was three, a tsunami hit town. “Daddy, Daddy, save me, don’t let me drown.” He saved me and my common-type dolls. When I was sixteen, another tsunami hit town. I cried to my daddy, “Daddy, Daddy, please save me, don’t let me drown!” But he let go of my hand! I still dance to what broke on my life.

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S6-5", "S8-3" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

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

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Last Night

Hester Knibbe

Saved two children last night. They lay under thin black ice one gone blue, the other grey. I laid them out on grass that snapped under my step wrung their bodies warm and dry gave them the gust of my breath. Then I looked out at the morning that lay lukewarm on the water put on a tank top arranged some grass...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-7" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Parenthood" ]

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Song in Barbarous Fumarole of the Japanese Crested Ibis

Will Alexander

The wings pierce as if they were eternity. —Shuzo Takiguchi The Japanese Crested Ibis is now extinct. “To claim as arcane vapour ruination by intrigue by kindled leprosy morays so that I take up in my glottis these moral hallucinogens which actively dim which nourish themselves on behalf of active heavenly terr...

[ "S2", "S10" ]

[ "S2-5", "S10-2" ]

[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Nature/Animals" ]

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Collectable Blacks

Adrian Matejka

This is the g-dropping vernacular I am stuck in. This is the polyphone where my head is an agrarian gang sign pointing like a percussion mallet to a corn maze in one of the smaller Indiana suburbs where there aren’t supposed to be black folks. Be cool & try to grin it off. Be cool & try to le...

[ "S3" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice" ]

097f1bbacbe9f85c

Dead Orchard

Frank Stanford

Raymond Radiguet Like seven birds sleeping on the plateau Overlooking the shipwreck of love, mystery Of the drunken visitors wandering off With your wife, men who talk with a bad accent, The condemned the abandoned, one day of silence, Two days of silence, dreams shattered and protected, The more the blossoms th...

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[]

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Her Life Runs Like a Red Silk Flag

Bruce Weigl

Because this evening Miss Hoang Yen sat down with me in the small tiled room of her family house I am unable to sleep. We shared a glass of cold and sweet water. On a blue plate her mother brought us cake and smiled her betel-black teeth at me but I did not feel strange in the house my country had tried to bomb...

[ "S3", "S8" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

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A Bed above the Abyss: Amnesiac Notebook

Andrew Allport

i. Awake Each entry consisting of the statements I am awake or I am conscious entered every few minutes: 2:10 p.m.: this time properly awake. 2:14 p.m.: this time finally awake. 2:35 p.m.: this time completely awake. At 9:40 p.m. I awoke for the first time, despite my previous claims. Th...

[ "S2", "S9" ]

[ "S2-7", "S9-5", "S9-7" ]

[ "Nature", "Activities" ]

[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Lines for a Prologue

Archibald MacLeish

These alternate nights and days, these seasons Somehow fail to convince me. It seems I have the sense of infinity! (In your dreams, O crew of Columbus, O listeners over the sea For the surf that breaks upon Nothing—) Once I was waked by the nightingales in the garden. I thought, What time is it? I thought, Time...

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

[ "S2-6" ]

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

[ "Nature/Bodies of Water" ]

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October

May Swenson

1 A smudge for the horizon that, on a clear day, shows the hard edge of hills and buildings on the other coast. Anchored boats all head one way: north, where the wind comes from. You can see the storm inflating out of the west. A dark hole in gray cloud twirls, widens, while white rips multiply on the water ...

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

[ "S2-3", "S2-5", "S2-10", "S8-3" ]

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

[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Fall", "Nature/Animals", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Grass

Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: ...

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

[ "S3-11", "S10-5" ]

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

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

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Die Verschwundenen/The Vanished

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

For Nelly Sachs It wasn't the earth that swallowed them. Was it the air? Numerous as the sand, they did not become sand, but came to naught instead. They've been forgotten in droves. Often, and hand in hand, like minutes. More than us, but without memorials. Not registered, not cipherable from dust, but vanishe...

[ "S6", "S7" ]

[ "S6-4" ]

[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]

[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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And the Ghosts

Graham Foust

they own everything

[ "S11" ]

[ "S11-2" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural" ]

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Capriccio of the Imaginary Prison

Richard Garcia

After Piranesi The faded remains of ancient advertising — captives on parade in native costume. Now the whangam, that imaginary animal led by Wharfinger, keeper of the wharf. And you, my puce, sitting between the paws of the mechanical lion, his brittle heart of glass. The regiments of holiday shoppers, in for...

[ "S3", "S10" ]

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

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice" ]

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from Field Notes

Brooklyn Copeland

The smallness of thiscolloquial cannotmuffle the full morning orchestra—amphibious greensclotting the trickleof thaw. The tinnyfin flip and eyeflake flash—small schools thatgive shimmer in the dullskulk of wind.)(cry one pure perennial I can’tdoubt)(something by which to) ...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-8" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]

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Passing Through

Ai

“Earth is the birth of the blues,” sang Yellow Bertha, as she chopped cotton beside Mama Rose. It was as hot as any other summer day, when she decided to run away. Folks say she made a fortune running a whorehouse in New Orleans, but others say she’s buried somewhere out west, her grave unmarked, though you can...

[ "S8" ]

[ "S8-3" ]

[ "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Epithalamion

Edmund Spenser

Ye learned sisters which have oftentimes Beene to me ayding, others to adorne: Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes, That even the greatest did not greatly scorne To heare theyr names sung in your simple layes, But joyed in theyr prayse. And when ye list your owne mishaps to mourne, Which death, or love, or f...

[ "S6", "S8", "S11" ]

[ "S8-7" ]

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

[ "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]