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
2a4bf246ffb738af	us	Tory Dent	in your arms it was incredibly often enough to be in your arms careful as we had to be at times about the I.V. catheter in my hand, or my wrist, or my forearm which we placed, consciously, like a Gamboni vase, the center of attention, placed, frail identity as if our someday-newborn on your chest— to be ...	[ "S1", "S6", "S7" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-3", "S6-6" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Living/Health & Illness" ]
10d2a32ac7539cc6	Eclogue the Second: HASSAN; or, the Camel-driver.	William Collins	scene, the desert. time, mid-day. In silent horror o’er the desert-waste The driver Hassan with his camels past. One cruse of water on his back he bore, And his light scrip contained a scanty store: A fan of painted feathers in his hand, To guard his shaded face from scorching sand. The sultry sun had gained the midd...	[ "S3", "S4" ]	[ "S3-2", "S4-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
179931938a405c45	Keats	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow	The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep; The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told! The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold To the red rising moon, and loud and deep The nightingale is singing from the steep; It is midsummer, but the air is cold; Can it be death? Alas, beside t...	[ "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S6-4", "S6-5", "S10-6" ]	[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]
59e9576040374b9e	The Giant Water Bug	Douglas Florian	The giant water bug can lug His eggs upon his back. He gives them extra care up there And guards them from attack. The mother glues them to the dad, And on his way they stay. But does he ever get a card Or gift on Father's Day?	[ "S2", "S8" ]	[ "S2-5", "S8-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
9e270c66db5adabe	Shakesperian Readings	Phoebe Cary	Oh, but to fade, and live we know not where, To be a cold obstruction and to groan! This sensible, warm woman to become A prudish clod; and the delighted spirit To live and die alone, or to reside With married sisters, and to have the care Of half a dozen children, not your own; And driven, for no one wants you, Round ...	[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S8-5", "S8-7", "S10-6", "S10-8", "S10-10" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Relationships/Home Life", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
fdf2529ba78061a7	Late at Night in Bed	Gregory Djanikian	My wife tells me she hears a beetle Scurrying across the kitchen floor. She says our daughter is dreaming Too loudly, just listen, her eyelids Are fluttering like butterflies. What about the thunder, I say, What about the dispatches from the police car Parked outside, or me rolling over like a whale? She tells ...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-7", "S8-5", "S8-7" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Home Life", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
4be9af4f06a2324a	[listen mother, he punched the air: I am not your son dying]	D. A. Powell	a stabat mater listen mother, he punched the air: I am not your son dying the day fades and the starlings roost: a body’s a husk a nest of goodbye his wrist colorless and soft was not a stick of chewing gum how tell? well a plastic bracelet with his name for one. & no mint his eyes distinguishable from o...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-6", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
29bb52d67021bf47	Nomadology	Alissa Leigh	In the beginning, a word, move; then a plan and then the reasons, which I do not remember exactly. I remember clearly only the clothes we were given for the journey and the last, silent meal we ate. We left the place as lightly as we had come, so many years before. From a sunlit state of innocence where white sheets we...	[ "S2", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S2-7", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S10-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
8f3d0032b9c7fec7	The Lotos-eaters	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a...	[ "S6", "S7", "S11" ]	[]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[]
79a1dfdd8fb8e325	Midsummer	Louise Glück	On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry, the boys making up games requiring them to tear off the girls’ clothes and the girls cooperating, because they had new bodies since last summer and they wanted to exhibit them, the brave ones leaping off the high rocks — bodies crowding the water. The nights were ...	[ "S2", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S2-2" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Summer" ]
855fa5836aee7ea4	The Medium	Robin Blaser	it is essentially reluctance the language a darkness, a friendship, tying to the real but it is unreal the clarity desired, a wish for true sight, all tangling ‘you’ tried me, the everyday which caught me, turning the house in the wind, a lovecraft the political was not my business I could not look without ...	[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S8-4" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Relationships/Friendship" ]
e33df2bef519efed	Questionnaire	Charles Bernstein	Directions: For each pair of sentences, circle the letter, a or b, that best expresses your viewpoint. Make a selection from each pair. Do not omit any items. 1.a) The body and the material things of the world are the key to any knowledge we can possess. b) Knowledge is only possible by means of the mind...	[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]	[ "S4-1", "S10-2", "S10-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
d83dc806aea8136f	Faberg's Egg	Elizabeth Spires	Switzerland, 1920 Dear Friend, “Called away” from my country, I square the egg and put it in a letter that all may read, gilding each word a little so that touched, it yields to a secret stirring, a small gold bird on a spring suddenly appearing to sing a small song of regret, elation, that overspills all privat...	[ "S3", "S4", "S11" ]	[ "S11-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Fairy-tales & Legends" ]
9234e4544f8fe56f	from At a Vacation Exercise	John Milton	Hail native language, that by sinews weak Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak, And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips, Half unpronounc'd, slide through my infant lips, Driving dumb Silence from the portal door, Where he had mutely sate two years before: Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask, That n...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
28fbf21cbf5759c9	Roundel	Vera Mary Brittain	(“Died of Wounds”) Because you died, I shall not rest again, But wander ever through the lone world wide, Seeking the shadow of a dream grown vain Because you died. I shall spend brief and idle hours beside The many lesser loves that still remain, But find in none my triumph and my pride; ...	[ "S1", "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S1-3", "S3-11", "S6-5" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Mourning" ]
b0caa104970692bc	Tom Tigercat	J. Patrick Lewis	Tom Tigercat is noted for his manners and his wit. He wouldn't think of lion, No, he doesn't cheetah bit. Tom never pretended to be something that he's not. I guess that's why we like him and why he likes ocelot.	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-5" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Animals" ]
b3a43e50fdedea6e	Nocturne	Sara Miller	Last night in bedI mouthed a prayerof my own composition.It sounded offhand, it was carelesslyaddressed, it twisted my meaningentirely, it left an ache,I didn’t know what I was doing.So I took down my yellowed copyof French With Picturesby the late literary critic I.A. Richardsand I put my petitioninto soft French word...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-2", "S10-8" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books" ]
f5d743865b2dbb05	Variation on a Line from Elizabeth Bishop’s “Five Flights Up”	Stanley Plumly	Sometimes it’s the shoes, the tying and untying,the bending of the heart to put them on,take them off, the rush of bloodbetween the head and feet, my face,sometimes, if I could see it, astonished.Other times the stairs, three, four stagesat the most, “flights” we call them,in honor of the wings we’ll never have,the fif...	[ "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S6-1", "S8-3" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
a726fea4ca0431ce	Autumn	Joan Mitchell	The rusty leaves crunch and crackle, Blue haze hangs from the dimmed sky, The fields are matted with sun-tanned stalks — Wind rushes by. The last red berries hang from the thorn-tree, The last red leaves fall to the ground. Bleakness, through the trees and bushes, Comes without sound.	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-3" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Fall" ]
92a336453ae28d78	The Blue Terrance	Terrance Hayes	If you subtract the minor losses, you can return to your childhood too: the blackboard chalked with crosses, the math teacher’s toe ring. You can be the black boy not even the buck- toothed girls took a liking to: this match box, these bones in their funk machine, this thumb worn smooth as the belly of a shovel...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-3" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Coming of Age" ]
6821c7a4b7dfcd7e	Emergency Haying	Hayden Carruth	Coming home with the last load I ride standing on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor in hot exhaust, lank with sweat, my arms strung awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform. Almost 500 bales we’ve put up this afternoon, Marshall and I. And of course I think of another who hung like this on another cross. My ha...	[ "S3", "S5", "S9" ]	[ "S5-2", "S9-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Activities" ]	[ "Religion/Christianity", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
effbd4a533be8263	40 Days	Tom Clark	sleepwalker can never die he is the chemical soldier composite of latex and atropine, hellfire, warthogs, desolation, pride, apaches, lasers, dust devils swirling, screaming fire deaths, machine worship, young blond pilots flashing thumbs up, excited smiles of interviewed military wives, shrapnel- paced...	[ "S3" ]	[ "S3-11" ]	[ "Social Commentaries" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
865af9085e9b4f31	Violins	Rowan Ricardo Phillips	He never saw a violin. But he saw a lifetime of violence. This is not to presume That if he had simply seen A violin he would have seen Less violence. Or that living among Violins, as though they were Boulangeries or toppling stacks Of other glazed goods like young adult Fiction, would have made the violence ...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-5", "S6-6", "S6-8" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Mourning", "Living/Health & Illness", "Living/Youth" ]
1a733f204895ac04	Rarefied	Albert Goldbarth	This sweater is made from only the finest, softest underhairs of the Mongolian camel. “Fancy-schmancy,” my father would have said, whose snazziest sweater was still a declassé synthetic from the sweatshops of Taiwan. My friend Deloris, however, who really owns such clothes, would say “exquisite” or “sublime”—her o...	[ "S3", "S4", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S3-2", "S4-1", "S8-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
906750ff89de3068	Disenchantment Bay	Timothy Murphy	Touch and go. Our Cessna bumped the sand, thumped its tundra tires, lifted as if on wires,banked over ice and rocked its wings to land.We pitched our camp hard by the Hubbard’s face, some sixty fathoms tall, a seven-mile-long wallseven leagues from Yakutat, our base.	[ "S2", "S5" ]	[ "S2-6", "S5-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Religion" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]
61a049086bceb50b	First Anniversary, With Monkeys	Aimee Nezhukumatathil	Periyar Nature Preserve There is no crumbly frozen cake to thaw. Today, we are in the jungle. I mean mosquito. I mean tigers and elephants sludging their way to the lake for a drink and Don’t make sudden moves or snakes startled from an afternoon nap will greet you fang first. I think we are lost. Too hot for an...	[ "S1", "S6", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S1-6", "S8-3", "S8-7", "S9-7" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
78e1143cdb5fffad	Home Fire	Linda Parsons Marion	Whether on the boulevard or gravel backroad, I do not easily raise my hand to those who toss up theirs in anonymous hello, merely to say “I’m passing this way.” Once out of shyness, now reluctance to tip my hand, I admire the shrubbery instead. I’ve learned where the lines are drawn and keep the privet well trimmed. I ...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S8-5" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Home Life" ]
1896d530ebe05a62	What the Oracle Said	Shara McCallum	You will leave your home: nothing will hold you. You will wear dresses of gold; skins of silver, copper, and bronze. The sky above you will shift in meaning each time you think you understand. You will spend a lifetime chipping away layers of flesh. The shadow of your scales will always remain. You will be mark...	[ "S2", "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S2-6", "S6-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Coming of Age" ]
59561343319b3802	American Future	Peter Bethanis	In 1963 the morning probably seemed harmless enough to sign on the dotted line as the insurance man talked to my parents for over an hour around a coffee table about our future. This roof wasn't designed to withstand meteors he told my father, who back then had a brush haircut that made his ears stick out, his mo...	[ "S3", "S4", "S6" ]	[ "S4-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]	[ "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
e87925b64ce0d656	Song [“Only the wanderer”]	Ivor Gurney	Only the wanderer Knows England's graces,Or can anew see clear Familiar faces.And who loves joy as he That dwells in shadows?Do not forget me quite, O Severn meadows.	[ "S2", "S11" ]	[ "S2-7", "S11-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
81f58ba759c2ed2f	Ardors	Carol Frost	The tortoise walks on tiptoe in June, the month of his ardors. Buttery light, distant thunder in the month of my ardors.	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-2", "S2-5", "S2-8", "S2-9" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Summer", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space" ]
0f62afb2c30fecd1	Am I Special	Rebecca Wolff	I can play songs in my head Yes I can perfectly replicate (the) full-on orchestral every note (when the lights / do down / in the city) yet I cannot compose, for example and though when I was young I believed that the fullness meant I could recreate the sounds I heard in my head with my mouth I learned thro...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-3" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Music" ]
69d2b76ea51c3010	The Natural Child	Helen Leigh	Let not the title of my verse offend, Nor let the pride contract her rigid brow; That helpless Innocence demands a friend, Virtue herself will cheerfully allow: And should my pencil prove too weak to paint, The ills attendant on the babe ere born; Whose parents swerved from virtue’s mild restraint, Forgive ...	[ "S3", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-2", "S6-7", "S8-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Birth & Infancy", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
3040ce12a502703e	Taste	Jessica Laser	All my life I’ve asked my master Why I am unable to choose This sweet man or fancy shoes Over this stranger, more difficult lover And these expensive but practical loafers And why I am unable to author A book exhibiting my full potential And have focused instead on inconsequential Letters to strange and difficu...	[ "S1", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S1-6", "S10-6" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
0dd9ef7b840c1761	The Finality of a Poem	Michael Anania	(after Albert Cook) All day, that is forever, they fall, leaves, pine needles, as blindly as hours into hours colliding, and the chill rain—what else do you expect of October?— spilling from one roof to another, like words from lips to lips, your long incertain say in all of this unsure of where the ...	[ "S2", "S6", "S7", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S2-3", "S10-6" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Fall" ]
4f0fdefd889f3d32	Song: “Full fathom five thy father lies”	William Shakespeare	(from The Tempest) Full fathom five thy father lies;	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S2-6", "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
ebe167df8e9ba7a0	The Fork-in-the-Road Indian Poetry Store	Phillip Carroll Morgan	I.i saved my energy as i read, like managing held-breath underwater so i could extend my survey and not miss anything great	[ "S3", "S4", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S3-8", "S8-3", "S10-6" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
b39d81a8a760994c	The Stray	Charles Simic	One day, chasing my tail here and there, I stopped to catch my breath On some corner in New York, While people hurried past me, All determined to get somewhere, Save a few adrift like lost children. What ever became of my youth? I wanted to stop a stranger and ask. "It went into hiding," said an old woman Who'...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S6-1", "S8-8" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]
618a1da6fa8a7ac5	senses of heritage	Ntozake Shange	my grandpa waz a doughboy from carolina the other a garveyite from lakewood i got talked to abt the race & achievement bout color & propriety/ nobody spoke to me about the moon daddy talked abt music & mama bout christians my sisters/ we always talked & talked there waz never quiet trees were status symbols i...	[ "S3", "S4", "S8" ]	[ "S3-8", "S8-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
e51321214503f8a3	My Frog Is a Frog	Jack Prelutsky	My frog is a frog that is hopelessly hoarse, my frog is a frog with a reason, of course, my frog is a frog that cannot croak a note, my frog is a frog with a frog in its throat.	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-5" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Animals" ]
424615e56c6449e7	Shapes	Ruth Stone	In the longer view it doesn’t matter. However, it’s that having lived, it matters. So that every death breaks you apart. You find yourself weeping at the door of your own kitchen, overwhelmed by loss. And you find yourself weeping as you pass the homeless person head in hands resigned on a cement step, the wire...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-5" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Mourning" ]
eae16ef861950ff0	The Flight	Christopher Middleton	Just seen, running, and silver-grayalong the top tube of a fence between myrtles and me,too slinky for a bird and even at this distanceunmistakably a quadruped andnimble, some sort of unspoiled animal, but which?It ran as if awayfrom a threat, peril was everywhere,a footsole crunches it, it is mangledby a tire’s treads...	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S2-5", "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
3a54abe2740d60c7	“When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Martyr”	Cortney Lamar Charleston	is surely a peculiar answer for any teacher to receive when asking a kindergartner, but on second take, what word best describes me, crossbreed of butterfly and Super Fly aesthetics, other than peculiar? I suppose calling me a keen kid would also suffice in explaining my avidity for the kind of death that progress...	[ "S3", "S5", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S3-8", "S5-2", "S5-8", "S6-3", "S9-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Coming of Age", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
463fd764e50c6f67	Imago	Franz Wright	From my cell I was staring at a cloud, a dog decaying in the woods, etc., as I took up the long-awaited sequel to my Confessions. By this time my hand was so far away that it looked like a small hairless spider whose progress I could hardly help but follow, from the corner of one eye, as it went on filling page after p...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-1" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Aging" ]
60061408d134a753	Barry	C. K. Stead	Later, lying on the lawn of the big house someone asked could we remove our jackets. No one had taken chargewe were young officersand I took mine off.And then (or earlier)we were in the battle zone taking cover behind parked carspostboxes, phone boothsand in abandoned trams when my friend took one full in the chest...	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-11", "S6-4", "S6-8" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Youth" ]
aa0b70025af4e4b4	Philosophy and the Sunday Funnies	Rachel Sherwood	The perfect satisfaction of wine, cigarettes, the sun at an afternoon angle passes through flesh as if flesh were a sieve to the direct point the soul of matter.Things fix timealthough the sun moveslazily, creating an imagethat seems like motivethe wine transmutesand becomes bloodcigarettes dissolveto blue thread...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-5" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy" ]
730abf97acaa0a21	The Delta Parade	Susan Stewart	Everything stops. A fat man on his way to Baltimore smokes for three hours in the club car. The porter slips out and calls his wife, he has one dime left and he’s almost yelling. Somewhere south of York, she thinks he said. The funeral procession leaves its lights on and out of this pure stubbornness its batte...	[ "S6", "S7", "S9" ]	[ "S9-7" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
935a55d578691442	Song for Dead Children	Muriel Rukeyser	We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate who required tribute of hot July flowers— for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones not yet braced for conquering. The sharp cries of ghost-boys are keen above the meadows, and little gir...	[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S6-4", "S6-5", "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]
df0a940a1ecefa21	Sugar Dada	J. Allyn Rosser	Go home. It's never what you think it is, The kiss, the diamond, the slamdance pulse in the wrist. Nothing is true, my dear, not even this Rumor of passion you'll doubtless insist On perceiving in my glance. Please just Go. Home is never what you think it is. Meaning lies in meaning's absence. The mist Is always almost...	[ "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S8-5", "S8-7" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Home Life", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
117e2a252305f2f5	Dawn	Ella Higginson	The soft-toned clock upon the stair chimed three— Too sweet for sleep, too early yet to rise. In restful peace I lay with half-closed eyes, Watching the tender hours go dreamily; The tide was flowing in; I heard the sea Shivering along the sands; while yet the skies Were dim, uncertain, as the light that lie...	[ "S2", "S6", "S7" ]	[]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]	[]
616f4a85c723b796	The Star-splitter	Robert Frost	"You know Orion always comes up sideways. Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, And rising on his hands, he looks in on me Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something I should have done by daylight, and indeed, After the ground is frozen, I should have done Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful Of was...	[ "S2", "S3", "S5", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S2-9", "S3-6", "S5-3", "S9-4", "S10-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
975c6d473c3a4dcc	Camera Eulogia	Michelle Mitchell-Foust	Herodotus says the king made a bowl to leave behind the memory of a number. We don’t know the number. We don’t know if it was divisible by two or three. I want, at the moment, the number to indicate a ratio, part of a proportion, because the measurement of the earth depends on this, the balance among things, the ...	[ "S1", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S1-3", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-4", "S10-7" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
e4ccdbca11af6ea6	The Dancer	David Tucker	Class is over, the teacher and the pianist gone, but one dancer in a pale blue leotard stays to practice alone without music, turning grand jetes through the haze of late afternoon. Her eyes are focused on the balancing point no one else sees as she spins in this quiet made of mirrors and light— a blue rose on a nail— ...	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-10" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance" ]
3cd2140e2e0895e0	Frozen In	Annie Finch	Venice, December Ours are the only mouths to taste with this smothering slow touch, and the only steps to sink like bellsounds and cave deep into the marble snow. Women w...	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-4" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Winter" ]
88186553f7c1fb8d	Zeus and Apollo	David Rivard	Written on clapboard or asbestos siding, the cartoony spray-paint signatures of Apollo and Zeus, two home boys out bombing last night in thick fog. Fog near the shade of pearls. Except they didn’t see the mist that way, glad for their thin leather gloves. Wind raw at the wide avenue, so they cut from there to her...	[ "S11" ]	[ "S11-3" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology" ]
11b72e441dd09865	Psychomachia	Joanne Diaz	At the Mind Museum, you can walk to the back,step on several large buttons on the ground,and watch parts of the brain light up: the frontal lobefor decision and memory, the temporal lobefor smell and sound, the occipital for sight. I tryto make my toddler son laugh by hoppingfrom one button to the next, watching each l...	[ "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S6-5", "S6-7", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Mourning", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
84aabffa9adf90e5	Death of an Infant	Lydia Huntley Sigourney	Death found strange beauty on that cherub brow, And dash’d it out. – There was a tint of rose O’er cheek and lip; – he touch’d the veins with ice, And the rose faded. – Forth from those blue eyes There spake a wistful tenderness, – a doubt Whether to grieve or sleep, which Innocence Alone can wear. – With ruthless ha...	[ "S6" ]	[ "S6-2", "S6-4", "S6-5" ]	[ "Living" ]	[ "Living/Birth & Infancy", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]
6429e02eb816b2f2	After Reverdy	Ron Padgett	I would never have wanted to see your sad face again Your cheeks and your windy hair I went all across the country Under this humid woodpecker Day and night Under the sun and the rain Now we are face to face again What does one say to my face Once I rested up against a tree So long I got stuck to it That kin...	[ "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S10-6" ]	[ "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
64fd3f5d9369a8c4	Body	Alissa Valles	Map of terror and pleasure, ardent junk, passionate congress filled with the arguments of chemicals, Echo chamber for the fanatical cries of stubborn generations, all the quaint invisibles death has grown a beard on, labyrinth of desire, playing field of impulse, factory where decay's silent armies clock in, ph...	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[]
059606df46c5d03e	Sitting Down to Breakfast Alone	Christian Wiman	Brachest, she called it, gentling grease over blanching yolks with an expertise honed from three decades of dawns at the Longhorn Diner in Loraine, where even the oldest in the old men's booth swore as if it were scripture truth they'd never had a breakfast better, rapping a glass sharply to get her attention w...	[ "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S6-4", "S9-1" ]	[ "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Living/Death & Dying", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
9b897870f79a2bad	Venus' Boyfriend	Rachel Sherwood	She sat on his lap for hours pressed his face to her large pink breasts her hands moved through his hair like fond snakesshe gave him curls, cleft hooves beneath the flesh marvellous flesh, and smooth shoulders	[ "S1" ]	[ "S1-1" ]	[ "Love" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]
af9d647cc8184b03	If Spirits Walk	Sophie Jewett	“I have heard (but not believed) the spirits of the dead May walk again.” Winter’s Tale If spirits walk, Love, when the night climbs slow The slant footpath where we were wont to go, Be sure that I shall take the self-same way To the hill-crest, and shoreward, down the gray, Sheer, gravelled slope, w...	[ "S1", "S8", "S11" ]	[ "S1-3", "S11-2" ]	[ "Love", "Relationships", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural" ]
9ad594c1386bfd60	Alternating lunes	Philip Good	amaryllis comes in many flavors snow sometimes slants when will politics make improvements? strawberry amaryllis walks right in snarling at snowfall saying flowers don’t abuse women female rabbi demands ancient answers untranslatable tablets found there’s more knowledge in flowers aren’t all rabbis ancient fem...	[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S2-8", "S2-9", "S3-4", "S10-2" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
927f203a19c62330	A White Hunter	Gertrude Stein	A white hunter is nearly crazy.	[ "S10" ]	[ "S10-2" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]
58e1bc077a7cf758	The Homer Mitchell Place	John Engels	The mountains carry snow, the season fails. Jackstraw clapboard shivers on its nails, the freezing air blows maple leaves and dust, a thousand nails bleed laceries of rust, slates crack and slide away, the gutters sprout. I wonder: do a dead man’s bones come out like these old lintels and wasp-riddled beams? I a...	[ "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S8-5" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Home Life" ]
f9ab32261e9b4b34	Probability of the Sparrow	Rodney Gomez	The body wicks away its nest, leaves sediment. In salt the silhouette of a wolf or a sheepshead. Who knows who steals bones if not the connoisseur of bones, and who drops a crank behind the body if not the one who drains the river bed? In unrest, buzzards. Or a flat line. The probability of sparrows a ...	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S2-5", "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
a8fe65f4e3c2175e	"How can I keep my maidenhead"	Robert Burns	How can I keep my maidenhead, My maidenhead, my maidenhead; How can I keep my maidenhead, Among sae mony men, O. The Captain bad a guinea for’t, A guinea for’t, a guinea for’t, The Captain bad a guinea for’t, The Colonel he bad ten, O. But I’ll do as my minnie did, My minnie did, my minnie did, But ...	[ "S1" ]	[ "S1-1" ]	[ "Love" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]
6b3c2f69d4a97086	Who Am I, Without Exile?	Mahmoud Darwish	A stranger on the riverbank, like the river ... water binds me to your name. Nothing brings me back from my faraway to my palm tree: not peace and not war. Nothing makes me enter the gospels. Not a thing ... nothing sparkles from the shore of ebb and flow between the Euphrates and the Nile. Nothing makes me desce...	[ "S3", "S4", "S5", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S8-3", "S9-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Religion", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
c8e40bd386a5fa40	Now	Robert Browning	Out of your whole life give but one moment! All of your life that has gone before, All to come after it, – so you ignore, So you make perfect the present, – condense, In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment, Thought and feeling and soul and sense – Merged in a moment which gives me at last You around me for on...	[ "S1" ]	[ "S1-1", "S1-4" ]	[ "Love" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes" ]
a4451b59bac2e9f1	The Eager Interpreter	Reginald Gibbons	for Gloria Imagining, on a long walk between two Greek towns, those Turkish prisoners the guidebook says were sabred where they crowded together on the stone dock; and then imagining—still walking, anxious to see some worker in the fields or another old couple like the last one (he riding the donkey, she lead...	[ "S3", "S11" ]	[ "S3-11", "S11-3", "S11-4" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
da5fd7437f03c9fd	Folk Education	Paul Foster Johnson	Their singer suffered breakdowns. In their work there was a sense of what it was to live there at that time. One song described the dark around the military vehicles between them and the cocaine waiting in Gramercy. It was about the sepsis that followed love or love repeated as farce, the neck neck neck damaged b...	[ "S3", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S3-7", "S6-3", "S8-4", "S10-3", "S10-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "Living/Coming of Age", "Relationships/Friendship" ]
2f7fa7b607022965	Harvest Song	Jean Toomer	I am a reaper whose muscles set at sun-down. All my oats are cradled.But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger.I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it.I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger.My eyes are caked with dust of oat-fields at harvest-time.I am a blind ...	[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S3-2", "S9-1", "S9-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Activities/Eating & Drinking", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
b0cb5ee1f685a9a6	Les Molles	Geraldine Clarkson	In the end, some are incurable. They use lint to mop up the leaking, or apply cold poultices. Creeping mess can be cleared up with pink paste or trapped in sawdust and swept. Blood can pool from their sitting and standing, but they avoid clots by regular shaking, and the sucking of sherbet. Blue blue for the sky...	[ "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S9-4", "S10-4" ]	[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
6723f811e3582831	Flight	Jenny Bornholdt	It came to pass that I boarded a plane and as I edged past the man in the aisle seat he saidMy name is Dov. I knew you would come.	[ "S2", "S6", "S8", "S9" ]	[ "S2-5", "S6-4", "S8-3", "S9-7" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Living/Death & Dying", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
63fa612dbd444ee4	Hammer	Dean Young	Every Wednesday when I went to the shared office before the class on the comma, etc., there was on the desk, among the notes from students aggrieved and belly-up and memos about lack of funding and the quixotic feasibility memos and labyrinthine parking memos and quizzes pecked by red ink and once orange peels,...	[ "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S9-6" ]	[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]
fa411569aa65d64d	The Girl Grew and Grew, Her Mother Couldn’t Stop It	Daisy Fried	The girl grew and grew, her mother couldn’t stop it; it terrorized. What would the finger-dance do? Kindergarten art a buffet of  markers,gluings of stuffs to seasonally-keyed paper, Elmer’s pools drying clear. A stapling and testing of cylinders versus spheres versus cubesfor kinetic and entropic possibilities, ...	[ "S6", "S7", "S8", "S10" ]	[ "S6-7", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
039c09f9bcc3e6d0	I Hear a River thro’ the Valley Wander	Trumbull Stickney	I hear a river thro’ the valley wander Whose water runs, the song alone remaining. A rainbow stands and summer passes under.	[ "S2" ]	[ "S2-6" ]	[ "Nature" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water" ]
93b2d43942865671	From “Reconstructions”	Brad Trumpfheller	I won’t explain. My aunts spell around the vanity mirror & centerpiece me, my lips plummed, my neck belled mid-flight. After the food’s uncooked, the heirloom par...	[ "S1", "S3", "S5", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]	[ "S1-7", "S3-4", "S3-8", "S5-8", "S8-1", "S8-3", "S8-6" ]	[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]	[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/LGBTQ+" ]
13071c92e5f26744	Notes for an Elegy	William Meredith	The alternative to flying is cowardice, And what is said against it excuses, excuses; Its want was always heavy in those men’s bodies Who foresaw it in some detail; and failing that, The rest were shown through its skyey heats and eases In sleep, awoke uncertain whether their waking cry Had been falling fear only...	[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S11" ]	[ "S2-8", "S3-11", "S6-4", "S11-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Mythology & Folklore" ]	[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
a57dd87f8bb0a4b5	Dreams	Nikki Giovanni	in my younger years before i learned black people aren’t suppose to dream i wanted to be a raelet and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears” or “tal kin bout tal kin bout” or marjorie hendricks and grind all up against the mic and scream “baaaaaby nightandday baaaaaby nightandday” then as i grew and matured i b...	[ "S3", "S6", "S10" ]	[ "S3-8", "S6-3", "S10-3", "S10-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Coming of Age" ]
101802578f7d5512	Abundance	Paul Violi	In Breughel's great picture “Canal Street,”restaurant customers order roast swaninstead of chicken, hurled saladinstead of tossed salad, while shoppersspill through a maze of stalled trucksand scurry around the sidewalk stallsjammed with countless nameless thingsthat housewives sidestepto surround a Japanese manin a br...	[ "S9" ]	[ "S9-1" ]	[ "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
5eb62a8d84e1210d	Venice Beach	Michael Hofmann	Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade. — Andrew Marvell These are all thoughts — of course. At the edge of the ocean with nowhere to go,the nearest land three thousand miles away and under diffe...	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-1" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
99d04617e36f20f0	The Pacific	Jennifer Jean	There were no road rails. I remember no road rails and the death depth off the cliffs we motored along. I remember speed in a parched Chevy clunker that could not have sped, and bench seats, and no buckles, and bare thighs peeling off faux leather at every hairpin. Every elevated canyon mile was a feat but a brea...	[ "S2", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S2-6", "S6-8", "S8-1", "S8-3" ]	[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
0001a73ad3e53af0	Small Woman on Swallow Street	W. S. Merwin	Four feet up, under the bruise-blue Fingered hat-felt, the eyes begin. The sly brim Slips over the sky, street after street, and nobody Knows, to stop it. It will cover The whole world, if there is time. Fifty years’ Start in gray the eyes have; you will never Catch up to where they are, too clever And always wa...	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S6-1", "S6-4" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Living/Aging", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
93f388d9fa6d2ca3	[Exordium: ‘In what way names’]	Myung Mi Kim	In what way names were applied to things. Filtration. Not every word that has been applied, still exists. Through proliferation and differentiation. Airborn. Here, this speck and this speck you missed. Numbers in cell division. Spheres of doubt. The paradigm’s stitchery of unrelated points. What escapes like so much c...	[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]	[ "S10-5", "S10-8" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books" ]
77b29d73dac64f7c	When the Devil Leads Us Home and Yells Surprise	Nikki Wallschlaeger	Is that your house he asked This used to be my house I said But those are not your people So that can’t be your house But it is my house I said I had some people maybe a few Even though those are not your people Even though they don’t look like you I had to live somewhere I said This is the house where I lived...	[ "S5", "S6", "S8" ]	[ "S5-8", "S8-1", "S8-5" ]	[ "Religion", "Living", "Relationships" ]	[ "Religion/The Spiritual", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
a0340234be968feb	Præmaturi	Margaret Postgate Cole	When men are old, and their friends die,They are not so sad,	[ "S3", "S6" ]	[ "S3-11", "S6-5" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]	[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Mourning" ]
4fa07f74490f4b73	En la Calle San Sebastián	Martín Espada	Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1998 Here in a bar on the street of the saint en la calle San Sebastián, a dancer in white with a red red scarf en la calle San Sebastián, calls to the gods who were freed by slaves en la calle San Sebastián, and his bronze face is a lantern of sweat en la calle San Sebastián, and ...	[ "S3", "S4", "S9" ]	[ "S9-7" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Activities" ]	[ "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
5fae0a12f2d96677	The Process of Explication	Dorothea Lasky	I Students, look at this table And now when you see a man six feet tall You can call him a fathom. Likewise, students when yes and you do that and other stuff Likewise too the shoe falls upon the sun And the alphabet is full of blood And when you knock upon a sentence in the Process of explication you are going...	[ "S1", "S6", "S9" ]	[ "S1-1", "S9-4", "S9-6" ]	[ "Love", "Living", "Activities" ]	[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Activities/Jobs & Working", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]
3e0d721d7516292c	Grave robbing	Isabel Rogers	Carnations are best. Or roses, tight, before they go blowsy. Daffodils last. Tulips are no good — go limp soon as you look at ’em. Lilies are OK, but mark us with rust you can’t shift. Mam asks too many questions. We leave the lilies. Doug and me — we’re quick. When the earth is fresh we circle in to harvest....	[ "S2", "S6" ]	[ "S2-8", "S6-3", "S6-8" ]	[ "Nature", "Living" ]	[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Coming of Age", "Living/Youth" ]
a9ef3aadd6e82a90	Oath	Rosemary Tonks	I swear that I would not go back To pole the glass fishpools where the rough breath lies That built the Earth – there, under the heavy trees With their bark that’s full of grocer’s spice,Not for an hour – although my heart Moves, thirstily, to drink the thought – would I Go back to run my boat On the brown rain t...	[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]	[ "S6-1", "S6-3", "S10-5" ]	[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Aging", "Living/Coming of Age" ]
ac9df4c087675c6f	From the Plane	Anne Marie Macari	It is a soft thing, it has been sifted from the sieve of space and seems asleep there under the moths of light. Cluster of dust and fire, from up here you are a stranger and I am dropping through the funnel of air to meet you.	[ "S1", "S8" ]	[]	[ "Love", "Relationships" ]	[]
78fd06a9415839f3	Balm in Gilead	Grace Schulman	“Is there no balm in Gilead?” So cries dour Jeremiah in granite tones. “There is a balm in Gilead,” replies a Negro spiritual. The baritone who chants it, leaning forward on the platform, looks up, not knowing his voice is a rainstorm that rinses air to reveal earth’s surprises. Today, the summer gone, four mona...	[ "S2", "S5" ]	[]	[ "Nature", "Religion" ]	[]
f3bc8ea924c5e9c7	The Rolling Saint	Aimee Nezhukumatathil	Lotan Baba, a holy man from India, rolled on his side for four thousand kilometers across the country in his quest for world peace and eternal salvation. —Reuters He started small: fasting here and there, days, then weeks. Once...	[ "S5" ]	[ "S5-7", "S5-8" ]	[ "Religion" ]	[ "Religion/Other Religions", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
8305feb211c2365e	Danse Russe	William Carlos Williams	If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,— if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: “I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lone...	[ "S8" ]	[ "S8-3", "S8-5" ]	[ "Relationships" ]	[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
dc9dfd6363df5782	Crisis Actor	Harmony Holiday	Ruby, please. A night shift nurse fell asleep at the wheel. The whole earth had a fever and the heated pulse beats faster ’til everything picturesque has her reeling. Just tryna make it real baby, like it is. He condescends. Twitching a trio of flax seeds between the thumb and forefinger in a dirty spiral, these are fu...	[ "S3", "S10" ]	[ "S3-4", "S3-6", "S3-7", "S10-3" ]	[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]
58d5924b13cbd086	Paradise Regain'd: Book 4 (1671 version)	John Milton	PErplex'd and troubl'd at his bad success The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply, Discover'd in his fraud, thrown from his hope, So oft, and the perswasive Rhetoric That sleek't his tongue, and won so much on Eve, So little here, nay lost; but Eve was Eve, This far his over-match, who self deceiv'd And rash, before-h...	[ "S5" ]	[ "S5-2", "S5-4" ]	[ "Religion" ]	[ "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]
b360f6861ce524b7	A Lay of the Links	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle	It’s up and away from our work to-day, For the breeze sweeps over the down; And it’s hey for a game where the gorse blossoms flame, And the bracken is bronzing to brown. With the turf ’neath our tread and the blue overhead, And the song of the lark in the whin; There’s the flag and the green, with the bunke...	[ "S2", "S8", "S9", "S10" ]	[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S8-4", "S9-5" ]	[ "Nature", "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]
623c0a20f06c7209	Homage to Soren Kierkegaard	Dana Gioia	Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. —St. Paul I was already an old man when I was born. Small with a curved back, he dragged his leg when walking the streets of Copenhagen. "Little Kierkegaard,” they called him. Some meant it kindly. The more one suffersthe more one ac...	[ "S5", "S10" ]	[ "S5-2", "S5-3", "S10-5" ]	[ "Religion", "Arts & Sciences" ]	[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/Faith & Doubt" ]
27531da91019b284	The Masked Face	Thomas Hardy	I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: "What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?" "It is Life," said a mask-clad face. I asked: "But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and air be made more clear, Th...	[ "S5", "S6" ]	[ "S5-3", "S6-4" ]	[ "Religion", "Living" ]	[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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us

Tory Dent

in your arms it was incredibly often enough to be in your arms careful as we had to be at times about the I.V. catheter in my hand, or my wrist, or my forearm which we placed, consciously, like a Gamboni vase, the center of attention, placed, frail identity as if our someday-newborn on your chest— to be ...

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

[ "S1-1", "S1-3", "S6-6" ]

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

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

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Eclogue the Second: HASSAN; or, the Camel-driver.

William Collins

scene, the desert. time, mid-day. In silent horror o’er the desert-waste The driver Hassan with his camels past. One cruse of water on his back he bore, And his light scrip contained a scanty store: A fan of painted feathers in his hand, To guard his shaded face from scorching sand. The sultry sun had gained the midd...

[ "S3", "S4" ]

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

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]

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Keats

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep; The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told! The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold To the red rising moon, and loud and deep The nightingale is singing from the steep; It is midsummer, but the air is cold; Can it be death? Alas, beside t...

[ "S6", "S10" ]

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

[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]

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

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The Giant Water Bug

Douglas Florian

The giant water bug can lug His eggs upon his back. He gives them extra care up there And guards them from attack. The mother glues them to the dad, And on his way they stay. But does he ever get a card Or gift on Father's Day?

[ "S2", "S8" ]

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

[ "Nature", "Relationships" ]

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

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Shakesperian Readings

Phoebe Cary

Oh, but to fade, and live we know not where, To be a cold obstruction and to groan! This sensible, warm woman to become A prudish clod; and the delighted spirit To live and die alone, or to reside With married sisters, and to have the care Of half a dozen children, not your own; And driven, for no one wants you, Round ...

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

[ "S8-5", "S8-7", "S10-6", "S10-8", "S10-10" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Relationships/Home Life", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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Late at Night in Bed

Gregory Djanikian

My wife tells me she hears a beetle Scurrying across the kitchen floor. She says our daughter is dreaming Too loudly, just listen, her eyelids Are fluttering like butterflies. What about the thunder, I say, What about the dispatches from the police car Parked outside, or me rolling over like a whale? She tells ...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

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

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Home Life", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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[listen mother, he punched the air: I am not your son dying]

D. A. Powell

a stabat mater listen mother, he punched the air: I am not your son dying the day fades and the starlings roost: a body’s a husk a nest of goodbye his wrist colorless and soft was not a stick of chewing gum how tell? well a plastic bracelet with his name for one. & no mint his eyes distinguishable from o...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

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

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

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

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Nomadology

Alissa Leigh

In the beginning, a word, move; then a plan and then the reasons, which I do not remember exactly. I remember clearly only the clothes we were given for the journey and the last, silent meal we ate. We left the place as lightly as we had come, so many years before. From a sunlit state of innocence where white sheets we...

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

[ "S2-7", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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The Lotos-eaters

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a...

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

[]

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

[]

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Midsummer

Louise Glück

On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry, the boys making up games requiring them to tear off the girls’ clothes and the girls cooperating, because they had new bodies since last summer and they wanted to exhibit them, the brave ones leaping off the high rocks — bodies crowding the water. The nights were ...

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

[ "S2-2" ]

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

[ "Nature/Summer" ]

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The Medium

Robin Blaser

it is essentially reluctance the language a darkness, a friendship, tying to the real but it is unreal the clarity desired, a wish for true sight, all tangling ‘you’ tried me, the everyday which caught me, turning the house in the wind, a lovecraft the political was not my business I could not look without ...

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

[ "S8-4" ]

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

[ "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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Questionnaire

Charles Bernstein

Directions: For each pair of sentences, circle the letter, a or b, that best expresses your viewpoint. Make a selection from each pair. Do not omit any items. 1.a) The body and the material things of the world are the key to any knowledge we can possess. b) Knowledge is only possible by means of the mind...

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

[ "S4-1", "S10-2", "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]

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Faberg's Egg

Elizabeth Spires

Switzerland, 1920 Dear Friend, “Called away” from my country, I square the egg and put it in a letter that all may read, gilding each word a little so that touched, it yields to a secret stirring, a small gold bird on a spring suddenly appearing to sing a small song of regret, elation, that overspills all privat...

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

[ "S11-1" ]

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

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Fairy-tales & Legends" ]

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from At a Vacation Exercise

John Milton

Hail native language, that by sinews weak Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak, And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips, Half unpronounc'd, slide through my infant lips, Driving dumb Silence from the portal door, Where he had mutely sate two years before: Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask, That n...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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Roundel

Vera Mary Brittain

(“Died of Wounds”) Because you died, I shall not rest again, But wander ever through the lone world wide, Seeking the shadow of a dream grown vain Because you died. I shall spend brief and idle hours beside The many lesser loves that still remain, But find in none my triumph and my pride; ...

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

[ "S1-3", "S3-11", "S6-5" ]

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

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

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Tom Tigercat

J. Patrick Lewis

Tom Tigercat is noted for his manners and his wit. He wouldn't think of lion, No, he doesn't cheetah bit. Tom never pretended to be something that he's not. I guess that's why we like him and why he likes ocelot.

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-5" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Animals" ]

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Nocturne

Sara Miller

Last night in bedI mouthed a prayerof my own composition.It sounded offhand, it was carelesslyaddressed, it twisted my meaningentirely, it left an ache,I didn’t know what I was doing.So I took down my yellowed copyof French With Picturesby the late literary critic I.A. Richardsand I put my petitioninto soft French word...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-2", "S10-8" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books" ]

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Variation on a Line from Elizabeth Bishop’s “Five Flights Up”

Stanley Plumly

Sometimes it’s the shoes, the tying and untying,the bending of the heart to put them on,take them off, the rush of bloodbetween the head and feet, my face,sometimes, if I could see it, astonished.Other times the stairs, three, four stagesat the most, “flights” we call them,in honor of the wings we’ll never have,the fif...

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

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

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

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

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Autumn

Joan Mitchell

The rusty leaves crunch and crackle, Blue haze hangs from the dimmed sky, The fields are matted with sun-tanned stalks — Wind rushes by. The last red berries hang from the thorn-tree, The last red leaves fall to the ground. Bleakness, through the trees and bushes, Comes without sound.

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-3" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Fall" ]

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The Blue Terrance

Terrance Hayes

If you subtract the minor losses, you can return to your childhood too: the blackboard chalked with crosses, the math teacher’s toe ring. You can be the black boy not even the buck- toothed girls took a liking to: this match box, these bones in their funk machine, this thumb worn smooth as the belly of a shovel...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-3" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Coming of Age" ]

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Emergency Haying

Hayden Carruth

Coming home with the last load I ride standing on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor in hot exhaust, lank with sweat, my arms strung awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform. Almost 500 bales we’ve put up this afternoon, Marshall and I. And of course I think of another who hung like this on another cross. My ha...

[ "S3", "S5", "S9" ]

[ "S5-2", "S9-4" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Activities" ]

[ "Religion/Christianity", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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40 Days

Tom Clark

sleepwalker can never die he is the chemical soldier composite of latex and atropine, hellfire, warthogs, desolation, pride, apaches, lasers, dust devils swirling, screaming fire deaths, machine worship, young blond pilots flashing thumbs up, excited smiles of interviewed military wives, shrapnel- paced...

[ "S3" ]

[ "S3-11" ]

[ "Social Commentaries" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]

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Violins

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

He never saw a violin. But he saw a lifetime of violence. This is not to presume That if he had simply seen A violin he would have seen Less violence. Or that living among Violins, as though they were Boulangeries or toppling stacks Of other glazed goods like young adult Fiction, would have made the violence ...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-5", "S6-6", "S6-8" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Mourning", "Living/Health & Illness", "Living/Youth" ]

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Rarefied

Albert Goldbarth

This sweater is made from only the finest, softest underhairs of the Mongolian camel. “Fancy-schmancy,” my father would have said, whose snazziest sweater was still a declassé synthetic from the sweatshops of Taiwan. My friend Deloris, however, who really owns such clothes, would say “exquisite” or “sublime”—her o...

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

[ "S3-2", "S4-1", "S8-3" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Disenchantment Bay

Timothy Murphy

Touch and go. Our Cessna bumped the sand, thumped its tundra tires, lifted as if on wires,banked over ice and rocked its wings to land.We pitched our camp hard by the Hubbard’s face, some sixty fathoms tall, a seven-mile-long wallseven leagues from Yakutat, our base.

[ "S2", "S5" ]

[ "S2-6", "S5-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Religion" ]

[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]

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First Anniversary, With Monkeys

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Periyar Nature Preserve There is no crumbly frozen cake to thaw. Today, we are in the jungle. I mean mosquito. I mean tigers and elephants sludging their way to the lake for a drink and Don’t make sudden moves or snakes startled from an afternoon nap will greet you fang first. I think we are lost. Too hot for an...

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

[ "S1-6", "S8-3", "S8-7", "S9-7" ]

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

[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Home Fire

Linda Parsons Marion

Whether on the boulevard or gravel backroad, I do not easily raise my hand to those who toss up theirs in anonymous hello, merely to say “I’m passing this way.” Once out of shyness, now reluctance to tip my hand, I admire the shrubbery instead. I’ve learned where the lines are drawn and keep the privet well trimmed. I ...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S8-5" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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What the Oracle Said

Shara McCallum

You will leave your home: nothing will hold you. You will wear dresses of gold; skins of silver, copper, and bronze. The sky above you will shift in meaning each time you think you understand. You will spend a lifetime chipping away layers of flesh. The shadow of your scales will always remain. You will be mark...

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

[ "S2-6", "S6-3" ]

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

[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Coming of Age" ]

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American Future

Peter Bethanis

In 1963 the morning probably seemed harmless enough to sign on the dotted line as the insurance man talked to my parents for over an hour around a coffee table about our future. This roof wasn't designed to withstand meteors he told my father, who back then had a brush haircut that made his ears stick out, his mo...

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

[ "S4-1" ]

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

[ "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]

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Song [“Only the wanderer”]

Ivor Gurney

Only the wanderer Knows England's graces,Or can anew see clear Familiar faces.And who loves joy as he That dwells in shadows?Do not forget me quite, O Severn meadows.

[ "S2", "S11" ]

[ "S2-7", "S11-4" ]

[ "Nature", "Mythology & Folklore" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]

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Ardors

Carol Frost

The tortoise walks on tiptoe in June, the month of his ardors. Buttery light, distant thunder in the month of my ardors.

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-2", "S2-5", "S2-8", "S2-9" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Summer", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space" ]

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Am I Special

Rebecca Wolff

I can play songs in my head Yes I can perfectly replicate (the) full-on orchestral every note (when the lights / do down / in the city) yet I cannot compose, for example and though when I was young I believed that the fullness meant I could recreate the sounds I heard in my head with my mouth I learned thro...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-3" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Music" ]

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The Natural Child

Helen Leigh

Let not the title of my verse offend, Nor let the pride contract her rigid brow; That helpless Innocence demands a friend, Virtue herself will cheerfully allow: And should my pencil prove too weak to paint, The ills attendant on the babe ere born; Whose parents swerved from virtue’s mild restraint, Forgive ...

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

[ "S6-2", "S6-7", "S8-3" ]

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

[ "Living/Birth & Infancy", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Taste

Jessica Laser

All my life I’ve asked my master Why I am unable to choose This sweet man or fancy shoes Over this stranger, more difficult lover And these expensive but practical loafers And why I am unable to author A book exhibiting my full potential And have focused instead on inconsequential Letters to strange and difficu...

[ "S1", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

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

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

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

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The Finality of a Poem

Michael Anania

(after Albert Cook) All day, that is forever, they fall, leaves, pine needles, as blindly as hours into hours colliding, and the chill rain—what else do you expect of October?— spilling from one roof to another, like words from lips to lips, your long incertain say in all of this unsure of where the ...

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

[ "S2-3", "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Fall" ]

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Song: “Full fathom five thy father lies”

William Shakespeare

(from The Tempest) Full fathom five thy father lies;

[ "S2", "S6" ]

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

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

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

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The Fork-in-the-Road Indian Poetry Store

Phillip Carroll Morgan

I.i saved my energy as i read, like managing held-breath underwater so i could extend my survey and not miss anything great

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

[ "S3-8", "S8-3", "S10-6" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

b39d81a8a760994c

The Stray

Charles Simic

One day, chasing my tail here and there, I stopped to catch my breath On some corner in New York, While people hurried past me, All determined to get somewhere, Save a few adrift like lost children. What ever became of my youth? I wanted to stop a stranger and ask. "It went into hiding," said an old woman Who'...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

[ "S6-1", "S8-8" ]

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Living/Aging", "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]

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senses of heritage

Ntozake Shange

my grandpa waz a doughboy from carolina the other a garveyite from lakewood i got talked to abt the race & achievement bout color & propriety/ nobody spoke to me about the moon daddy talked abt music & mama bout christians my sisters/ we always talked & talked there waz never quiet trees were status symbols i...

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

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

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

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

e51321214503f8a3

My Frog Is a Frog

Jack Prelutsky

My frog is a frog that is hopelessly hoarse, my frog is a frog with a reason, of course, my frog is a frog that cannot croak a note, my frog is a frog with a frog in its throat.

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-5" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Animals" ]

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Shapes

Ruth Stone

In the longer view it doesn’t matter. However, it’s that having lived, it matters. So that every death breaks you apart. You find yourself weeping at the door of your own kitchen, overwhelmed by loss. And you find yourself weeping as you pass the homeless person head in hands resigned on a cement step, the wire...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-5" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Mourning" ]

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The Flight

Christopher Middleton

Just seen, running, and silver-grayalong the top tube of a fence between myrtles and me,too slinky for a bird and even at this distanceunmistakably a quadruped andnimble, some sort of unspoiled animal, but which?It ran as if awayfrom a threat, peril was everywhere,a footsole crunches it, it is mangledby a tire’s treads...

[ "S2", "S6" ]

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

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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“When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Martyr”

Cortney Lamar Charleston

is surely a peculiar answer for any teacher to receive when asking a kindergartner, but on second take, what word best describes me, crossbreed of butterfly and Super Fly aesthetics, other than peculiar? I suppose calling me a keen kid would also suffice in explaining my avidity for the kind of death that progress...

[ "S3", "S5", "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S3-8", "S5-2", "S5-8", "S6-3", "S9-4" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Coming of Age", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Imago

Franz Wright

From my cell I was staring at a cloud, a dog decaying in the woods, etc., as I took up the long-awaited sequel to my Confessions. By this time my hand was so far away that it looked like a small hairless spider whose progress I could hardly help but follow, from the corner of one eye, as it went on filling page after p...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-1" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Aging" ]

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Barry

C. K. Stead

Later, lying on the lawn of the big house someone asked could we remove our jackets. No one had taken chargewe were young officersand I took mine off.And then (or earlier)we were in the battle zone taking cover behind parked carspostboxes, phone boothsand in abandoned trams when my friend took one full in the chest...

[ "S3", "S6" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

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

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Philosophy and the Sunday Funnies

Rachel Sherwood

The perfect satisfaction of wine, cigarettes, the sun at an afternoon angle passes through flesh as if flesh were a sieve to the direct point the soul of matter.Things fix timealthough the sun moveslazily, creating an imagethat seems like motivethe wine transmutesand becomes bloodcigarettes dissolveto blue thread...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-5" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy" ]

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The Delta Parade

Susan Stewart

Everything stops. A fat man on his way to Baltimore smokes for three hours in the club car. The porter slips out and calls his wife, he has one dime left and he’s almost yelling. Somewhere south of York, she thinks he said. The funeral procession leaves its lights on and out of this pure stubbornness its batte...

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

[ "S9-7" ]

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

[ "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Song for Dead Children

Muriel Rukeyser

We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate who required tribute of hot July flowers— for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones not yet braced for conquering. The sharp cries of ghost-boys are keen above the meadows, and little gir...

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

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

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]

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Sugar Dada

J. Allyn Rosser

Go home. It's never what you think it is, The kiss, the diamond, the slamdance pulse in the wrist. Nothing is true, my dear, not even this Rumor of passion you'll doubtless insist On perceiving in my glance. Please just Go. Home is never what you think it is. Meaning lies in meaning's absence. The mist Is always almost...

[ "S6", "S8" ]

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

[ "Living", "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Home Life", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]

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Dawn

Ella Higginson

The soft-toned clock upon the stair chimed three— Too sweet for sleep, too early yet to rise. In restful peace I lay with half-closed eyes, Watching the tender hours go dreamily; The tide was flowing in; I heard the sea Shivering along the sands; while yet the skies Were dim, uncertain, as the light that lie...

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

[]

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

[]

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The Star-splitter

Robert Frost

"You know Orion always comes up sideways. Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, And rising on his hands, he looks in on me Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something I should have done by daylight, and indeed, After the ground is frozen, I should have done Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful Of was...

[ "S2", "S3", "S5", "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S2-9", "S3-6", "S5-3", "S9-4", "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Camera Eulogia

Michelle Mitchell-Foust

Herodotus says the king made a bowl to leave behind the memory of a number. We don’t know the number. We don’t know if it was divisible by two or three. I want, at the moment, the number to indicate a ratio, part of a proportion, because the measurement of the earth depends on this, the balance among things, the ...

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

[ "S1-3", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-4", "S10-7" ]

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

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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The Dancer

David Tucker

Class is over, the teacher and the pianist gone, but one dancer in a pale blue leotard stays to practice alone without music, turning grand jetes through the haze of late afternoon. Her eyes are focused on the balancing point no one else sees as she spins in this quiet made of mirrors and light— a blue rose on a nail— ...

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-10" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Theater & Dance" ]

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Frozen In

Annie Finch

Venice, December Ours are the only mouths to taste with this smothering slow touch, and the only steps to sink like bellsounds and cave deep into the marble snow. Women w...

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-4" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Winter" ]

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Zeus and Apollo

David Rivard

Written on clapboard or asbestos siding, the cartoony spray-paint signatures of Apollo and Zeus, two home boys out bombing last night in thick fog. Fog near the shade of pearls. Except they didn’t see the mist that way, glad for their thin leather gloves. Wind raw at the wide avenue, so they cut from there to her...

[ "S11" ]

[ "S11-3" ]

[ "Mythology & Folklore" ]

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

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Psychomachia

Joanne Diaz

At the Mind Museum, you can walk to the back,step on several large buttons on the ground,and watch parts of the brain light up: the frontal lobefor decision and memory, the temporal lobefor smell and sound, the occipital for sight. I tryto make my toddler son laugh by hoppingfrom one button to the next, watching each l...

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

[ "S6-5", "S6-7", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Mourning", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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Death of an Infant

Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Death found strange beauty on that cherub brow, And dash’d it out. – There was a tint of rose O’er cheek and lip; – he touch’d the veins with ice, And the rose faded. – Forth from those blue eyes There spake a wistful tenderness, – a doubt Whether to grieve or sleep, which Innocence Alone can wear. – With ruthless ha...

[ "S6" ]

[ "S6-2", "S6-4", "S6-5" ]

[ "Living" ]

[ "Living/Birth & Infancy", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning" ]

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After Reverdy

Ron Padgett

I would never have wanted to see your sad face again Your cheeks and your windy hair I went all across the country Under this humid woodpecker Day and night Under the sun and the rain Now we are face to face again What does one say to my face Once I rested up against a tree So long I got stuck to it That kin...

[ "S8", "S10" ]

[ "S10-6" ]

[ "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]

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Body

Alissa Valles

Map of terror and pleasure, ardent junk, passionate congress filled with the arguments of chemicals, Echo chamber for the fanatical cries of stubborn generations, all the quaint invisibles death has grown a beard on, labyrinth of desire, playing field of impulse, factory where decay's silent armies clock in, ph...

[ "S2", "S6" ]

[]

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[]

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Sitting Down to Breakfast Alone

Christian Wiman

Brachest, she called it, gentling grease over blanching yolks with an expertise honed from three decades of dawns at the Longhorn Diner in Loraine, where even the oldest in the old men's booth swore as if it were scripture truth they'd never had a breakfast better, rapping a glass sharply to get her attention w...

[ "S6", "S9" ]

[ "S6-4", "S9-1" ]

[ "Living", "Activities" ]

[ "Living/Death & Dying", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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Venus' Boyfriend

Rachel Sherwood

She sat on his lap for hours pressed his face to her large pink breasts her hands moved through his hair like fond snakesshe gave him curls, cleft hooves beneath the flesh marvellous flesh, and smooth shoulders

[ "S1" ]

[ "S1-1" ]

[ "Love" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]

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If Spirits Walk

Sophie Jewett

“I have heard (but not believed) the spirits of the dead May walk again.” Winter’s Tale If spirits walk, Love, when the night climbs slow The slant footpath where we were wont to go, Be sure that I shall take the self-same way To the hill-crest, and shoreward, down the gray, Sheer, gravelled slope, w...

[ "S1", "S8", "S11" ]

[ "S1-3", "S11-2" ]

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

[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural" ]

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Alternating lunes

Philip Good

amaryllis comes in many flavors snow sometimes slants when will politics make improvements? strawberry amaryllis walks right in snarling at snowfall saying flowers don’t abuse women female rabbi demands ancient answers untranslatable tablets found there’s more knowledge in flowers aren’t all rabbis ancient fem...

[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]

[ "S2-8", "S2-9", "S3-4", "S10-2" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]

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A White Hunter

Gertrude Stein

A white hunter is nearly crazy.

[ "S10" ]

[ "S10-2" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]

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The Homer Mitchell Place

John Engels

The mountains carry snow, the season fails. Jackstraw clapboard shivers on its nails, the freezing air blows maple leaves and dust, a thousand nails bleed laceries of rust, slates crack and slide away, the gutters sprout. I wonder: do a dead man’s bones come out like these old lintels and wasp-riddled beams? I a...

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

[ "S8-5" ]

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

[ "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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Probability of the Sparrow

Rodney Gomez

The body wicks away its nest, leaves sediment. In salt the silhouette of a wolf or a sheepshead. Who knows who steals bones if not the connoisseur of bones, and who drops a crank behind the body if not the one who drains the river bed? In unrest, buzzards. Or a flat line. The probability of sparrows a ...

[ "S2", "S6" ]

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

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[ "Nature/Animals", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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"How can I keep my maidenhead"

Robert Burns

How can I keep my maidenhead, My maidenhead, my maidenhead; How can I keep my maidenhead, Among sae mony men, O. The Captain bad a guinea for’t, A guinea for’t, a guinea for’t, The Captain bad a guinea for’t, The Colonel he bad ten, O. But I’ll do as my minnie did, My minnie did, my minnie did, But ...

[ "S1" ]

[ "S1-1" ]

[ "Love" ]

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love" ]

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Who Am I, Without Exile?

Mahmoud Darwish

A stranger on the riverbank, like the river ... water binds me to your name. Nothing brings me back from my faraway to my palm tree: not peace and not war. Nothing makes me enter the gospels. Not a thing ... nothing sparkles from the shore of ebb and flow between the Euphrates and the Nile. Nothing makes me desce...

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

[ "S8-3", "S9-7" ]

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

[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

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Now

Robert Browning

Out of your whole life give but one moment! All of your life that has gone before, All to come after it, – so you ignore, So you make perfect the present, – condense, In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment, Thought and feeling and soul and sense – Merged in a moment which gives me at last You around me for on...

[ "S1" ]

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

[ "Love" ]

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

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The Eager Interpreter

Reginald Gibbons

for Gloria Imagining, on a long walk between two Greek towns, those Turkish prisoners the guidebook says were sabred where they crowded together on the stone dock; and then imagining—still walking, anxious to see some worker in the fields or another old couple like the last one (he riding the donkey, she lead...

[ "S3", "S11" ]

[ "S3-11", "S11-3", "S11-4" ]

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

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]

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Folk Education

Paul Foster Johnson

Their singer suffered breakdowns. In their work there was a sense of what it was to live there at that time. One song described the dark around the military vehicles between them and the cocaine waiting in Gramercy. It was about the sepsis that followed love or love repeated as farce, the neck neck neck damaged b...

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

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

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "Living/Coming of Age", "Relationships/Friendship" ]

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Harvest Song

Jean Toomer

I am a reaper whose muscles set at sun-down. All my oats are cradled.But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger.I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it.I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger.My eyes are caked with dust of oat-fields at harvest-time.I am a blind ...

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

[ "S3-2", "S9-1", "S9-4" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Activities/Eating & Drinking", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

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Les Molles

Geraldine Clarkson

In the end, some are incurable. They use lint to mop up the leaking, or apply cold poultices. Creeping mess can be cleared up with pink paste or trapped in sawdust and swept. Blood can pool from their sitting and standing, but they avoid clots by regular shaking, and the sucking of sherbet. Blue blue for the sky...

[ "S9", "S10" ]

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

[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]

6723f811e3582831

Flight

Jenny Bornholdt

It came to pass that I boarded a plane and as I edged past the man in the aisle seat he saidMy name is Dov. I knew you would come.

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

[ "S2-5", "S6-4", "S8-3", "S9-7" ]

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

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

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Hammer

Dean Young

Every Wednesday when I went to the shared office before the class on the comma, etc., there was on the desk, among the notes from students aggrieved and belly-up and memos about lack of funding and the quixotic feasibility memos and labyrinthine parking memos and quizzes pecked by red ink and once orange peels,...

[ "S9", "S10" ]

[ "S9-6" ]

[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]

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The Girl Grew and Grew, Her Mother Couldn’t Stop It

Daisy Fried

The girl grew and grew, her mother couldn’t stop it; it terrorized. What would the finger-dance do? Kindergarten art a buffet of  markers,gluings of stuffs to seasonally-keyed paper, Elmer’s pools drying clear. A stapling and testing of cylinders versus spheres versus cubesfor kinetic and entropic possibilities, ...

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

[ "S6-7", "S8-3", "S8-5", "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Parenthood", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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I Hear a River thro’ the Valley Wander

Trumbull Stickney

I hear a river thro’ the valley wander Whose water runs, the song alone remaining. A rainbow stands and summer passes under.

[ "S2" ]

[ "S2-6" ]

[ "Nature" ]

[ "Nature/Bodies of Water" ]

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From “Reconstructions”

Brad Trumpfheller

I won’t explain. My aunts spell around the vanity mirror & centerpiece me, my lips plummed, my neck belled mid-flight. After the food’s uncooked, the heirloom par...

[ "S1", "S3", "S5", "S6", "S7", "S8" ]

[ "S1-7", "S3-4", "S3-8", "S5-8", "S8-1", "S8-3", "S8-6" ]

[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Relationships" ]

[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/LGBTQ+" ]

13071c92e5f26744

Notes for an Elegy

William Meredith

The alternative to flying is cowardice, And what is said against it excuses, excuses; Its want was always heavy in those men’s bodies Who foresaw it in some detail; and failing that, The rest were shown through its skyey heats and eases In sleep, awoke uncertain whether their waking cry Had been falling fear only...

[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S11" ]

[ "S2-8", "S3-11", "S6-4", "S11-4" ]

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

[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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Dreams

Nikki Giovanni

in my younger years before i learned black people aren’t suppose to dream i wanted to be a raelet and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears” or “tal kin bout tal kin bout” or marjorie hendricks and grind all up against the mic and scream “baaaaaby nightandday baaaaaby nightandday” then as i grew and matured i b...

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

[ "S3-8", "S6-3", "S10-3", "S10-5" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Living/Coming of Age" ]

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Abundance

Paul Violi

In Breughel's great picture “Canal Street,”restaurant customers order roast swaninstead of chicken, hurled saladinstead of tossed salad, while shoppersspill through a maze of stalled trucksand scurry around the sidewalk stallsjammed with countless nameless thingsthat housewives sidestepto surround a Japanese manin a br...

[ "S9" ]

[ "S9-1" ]

[ "Activities" ]

[ "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]

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Venice Beach

Michael Hofmann

Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade. — Andrew Marvell These are all thoughts — of course. At the edge of the ocean with nowhere to go,the nearest land three thousand miles away and under diffe...

[ "S3", "S6" ]

[ "S3-1" ]

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]

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The Pacific

Jennifer Jean

There were no road rails. I remember no road rails and the death depth off the cliffs we motored along. I remember speed in a parched Chevy clunker that could not have sped, and bench seats, and no buckles, and bare thighs peeling off faux leather at every hairpin. Every elevated canyon mile was a feat but a brea...

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

[ "S2-6", "S6-8", "S8-1", "S8-3" ]

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

[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]

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Small Woman on Swallow Street

W. S. Merwin

Four feet up, under the bruise-blue Fingered hat-felt, the eyes begin. The sly brim Slips over the sky, street after street, and nobody Knows, to stop it. It will cover The whole world, if there is time. Fifty years’ Start in gray the eyes have; you will never Catch up to where they are, too clever And always wa...

[ "S2", "S6" ]

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

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

[ "Living/Aging", "Living/Death & Dying" ]

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[Exordium: ‘In what way names’]

Myung Mi Kim

In what way names were applied to things. Filtration. Not every word that has been applied, still exists. Through proliferation and differentiation. Airborn. Here, this speck and this speck you missed. Numbers in cell division. Spheres of doubt. The paradigm’s stitchery of unrelated points. What escapes like so much c...

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

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

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

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

77b29d73dac64f7c

When the Devil Leads Us Home and Yells Surprise

Nikki Wallschlaeger

Is that your house he asked This used to be my house I said But those are not your people So that can’t be your house But it is my house I said I had some people maybe a few Even though those are not your people Even though they don’t look like you I had to live somewhere I said This is the house where I lived...

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

[ "S5-8", "S8-1", "S8-5" ]

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

[ "Religion/The Spiritual", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

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Præmaturi

Margaret Postgate Cole

When men are old, and their friends die,They are not so sad,

[ "S3", "S6" ]

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

[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]

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

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En la Calle San Sebastián

Martín Espada

Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1998 Here in a bar on the street of the saint en la calle San Sebastián, a dancer in white with a red red scarf en la calle San Sebastián, calls to the gods who were freed by slaves en la calle San Sebastián, and his bronze face is a lantern of sweat en la calle San Sebastián, and ...

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

[ "S9-7" ]

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

[ "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]

5fae0a12f2d96677

The Process of Explication

Dorothea Lasky

I Students, look at this table And now when you see a man six feet tall You can call him a fathom. Likewise, students when yes and you do that and other stuff Likewise too the shoe falls upon the sun And the alphabet is full of blood And when you knock upon a sentence in the Process of explication you are going...

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

[ "S1-1", "S9-4", "S9-6" ]

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

[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Activities/Jobs & Working", "Activities/Study & Knowledge" ]

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Grave robbing

Isabel Rogers

Carnations are best. Or roses, tight, before they go blowsy. Daffodils last. Tulips are no good — go limp soon as you look at ’em. Lilies are OK, but mark us with rust you can’t shift. Mam asks too many questions. We leave the lilies. Doug and me — we’re quick. When the earth is fresh we circle in to harvest....

[ "S2", "S6" ]

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

[ "Nature", "Living" ]

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

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Oath

Rosemary Tonks

I swear that I would not go back To pole the glass fishpools where the rough breath lies That built the Earth – there, under the heavy trees With their bark that’s full of grocer’s spice,Not for an hour – although my heart Moves, thirstily, to drink the thought – would I Go back to run my boat On the brown rain t...

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

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

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Aging", "Living/Coming of Age" ]

ac9df4c087675c6f

From the Plane

Anne Marie Macari

It is a soft thing, it has been sifted from the sieve of space and seems asleep there under the moths of light. Cluster of dust and fire, from up here you are a stranger and I am dropping through the funnel of air to meet you.

[ "S1", "S8" ]

[]

[ "Love", "Relationships" ]

[]

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Balm in Gilead

Grace Schulman

“Is there no balm in Gilead?” So cries dour Jeremiah in granite tones. “There is a balm in Gilead,” replies a Negro spiritual. The baritone who chants it, leaning forward on the platform, looks up, not knowing his voice is a rainstorm that rinses air to reveal earth’s surprises. Today, the summer gone, four mona...

[ "S2", "S5" ]

[]

[ "Nature", "Religion" ]

[]

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The Rolling Saint

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Lotan Baba, a holy man from India, rolled on his side for four thousand kilometers across the country in his quest for world peace and eternal salvation. —Reuters He started small: fasting here and there, days, then weeks. Once...

[ "S5" ]

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

[ "Religion" ]

[ "Religion/Other Religions", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]

8305feb211c2365e

Danse Russe

William Carlos Williams

If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,— if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: “I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lone...

[ "S8" ]

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

[ "Relationships" ]

[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]

dc9dfd6363df5782

Crisis Actor

Harmony Holiday

Ruby, please. A night shift nurse fell asleep at the wheel. The whole earth had a fever and the heated pulse beats faster ’til everything picturesque has her reeling. Just tryna make it real baby, like it is. He condescends. Twitching a trio of flax seeds between the thumb and forefinger in a dirty spiral, these are fu...

[ "S3", "S10" ]

[ "S3-4", "S3-6", "S3-7", "S10-3" ]

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

[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]

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Paradise Regain'd: Book 4 (1671 version)

John Milton

PErplex'd and troubl'd at his bad success The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply, Discover'd in his fraud, thrown from his hope, So oft, and the perswasive Rhetoric That sleek't his tongue, and won so much on Eve, So little here, nay lost; but Eve was Eve, This far his over-match, who self deceiv'd And rash, before-h...

[ "S5" ]

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

[ "Religion" ]

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

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A Lay of the Links

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It’s up and away from our work to-day, For the breeze sweeps over the down; And it’s hey for a game where the gorse blossoms flame, And the bracken is bronzing to brown. With the turf ’neath our tread and the blue overhead, And the song of the lark in the whin; There’s the flag and the green, with the bunke...

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

[ "S2-5", "S2-7", "S8-4", "S9-5" ]

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

[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]

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Homage to Soren Kierkegaard

Dana Gioia

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. —St. Paul I was already an old man when I was born. Small with a curved back, he dragged his leg when walking the streets of Copenhagen. "Little Kierkegaard,” they called him. Some meant it kindly. The more one suffersthe more one ac...

[ "S5", "S10" ]

[ "S5-2", "S5-3", "S10-5" ]

[ "Religion", "Arts & Sciences" ]

[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/Faith & Doubt" ]

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The Masked Face

Thomas Hardy

I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: "What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?" "It is Life," said a mask-clad face. I asked: "But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and air be made more clear, Th...

[ "S5", "S6" ]

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

[ "Religion", "Living" ]

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