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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
c5117d0acae15995 | My partner wants me to write them a poem about Sheryl Crow | Kayleb Rae Candrilli | but all I want to do is marry them on a beach
that refuses to take itself too seriously.
So much of our lives has been serious.
Over time, I’ve learned that love is most astonishing
when it persists after learning where we come from.
When I bring my partner to my childhood home
it is all bullets and needles and t... | [
"S1",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
e4069b868622a85e | Black, Poured Directly into the Wound | Patricia Smith | Prairie winds blaze through her tumbled belly, and Emmett’s
red yesterdays refuse to rename her any kind of mother.
A pudge-cheeked otherwise, sugar whistler, her boy is
(through the fierce clenching mouth of her memory) a
grays-and-shadows child. Listen. Once she was pretty.
Windy hues goldened her skin. She was ... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-8",
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S6-7",
"S6-8",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Living/Youth",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
988fc5ac83c4503b | Ode to Dalya’s Bald Spot | Angel Nafis | my sister wraps the throw
around herself on the small
cream loveseat & i know
for sure that she is not
a speck of dirt on a pill.
she coughs & sniffs up all
the lucky air in the room
into her excellent nostrils,
which are endless
holy wells replenishing
the soft architecture of her guts.
not even the lupus c... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S4",
"S5",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S5-5",
"S6-6",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Religion/Islam",
"Living/Health & Illness",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
4dce4c98025ae5ce | Blues for Samson | James Lasdun | My stylistcalls me darling,says Hi I’m Dee, and asks what I’d like today, smiling.My hair back, I tell her, my precious locks,thick and unruly and glossy as they werebefore I was fleeced.Her laughteras she switchesthe clippers on, brings back that sweet-throated witch’swho comforted me as only your enemy canin the days... | [
"S1",
"S5",
"S6"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S5-2",
"S6-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Religion",
"Living"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Religion/Christianity",
"Living/Aging"
] |
0b09ff87cb6f3b3c | Dickhead | Michael Ryan | A man who’s trying to be a good man
but isn’t, because he can’t not take
whatever’s said to him as judgement.
It causes him, as he puts it, to react.
His face and neck redden and bloat,
a thick blue vein bulges up his forehead
and bisects his bald pate, scaring his children
but provoking hilarity at work
where ... | [
"S3",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S8-4",
"S9-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Relationships/Friendship",
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
641402b69f193fce | Five Chinese Verses | Wendy Xu | Music, wind, someone’s car horn
Imagining to return
Buddha’s big toe on the lake
Your intricate gaze of form
Eating the lake like a word
Unzipped carefully by day
You walked it hesitantly
You taste something step by step•
Losing my way, wildly blue
Perhaps annotated past
The return gaze, my snowfall
My city ... | [
"S2",
"S8"
] | [
"S2-6",
"S2-7",
"S2-8",
"S2-10",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Nature",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Nature/Weather",
"Nature/Bodies of Water",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
185d125d43ce23f6 | “What Do Women Want?” | Kim Addonizio | I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in th... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-6",
"S3-4",
"S8-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation"
] |
cd1cebed7b4a48d3 | Everything Good between Men and Women | C. D. Wright | has been written in mud and butter
and barbecue sauce. The walls and
the floors used to be gorgeous.
The socks off-white and a near match.
The quince with fire blight
but we get two pints of jelly
in the end. Long walks strengthen
the back. You with a fever blister
and myself with a sty. Eyes
have we and we ar... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S8-5",
"S8-7"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Relationships/Marriage & Companionship"
] |
8fd19eea014280da | The Metal and the Flower | P. K. Page | Intractable between them grows
a garden of barbed wire and roses.
Burning briars like flames devour
their too innocent attire.
Dare they meet, the blackened wire
tears the intervening air.
Trespassers have wandered through
texture of flesh and petals.
Dogs like arrows moved along
pathways that their noses knew... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S6",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S2-8",
"S8-1",
"S8-4",
"S9-2"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation",
"Relationships/Friendship",
"Activities/Gardening & Farming"
] |
735aab7b4396c305 | Song: Why so pale and wan fond lover? | Sir John Suckling | Why so pale and wan fond lover? Prithee why so pale? Will, when looking well can’t move her, Looking ill prevail? Prithee why so pale? Why so dull and mute young sinner? Prithee why so mute? Will, when speaking well can’t win her, Saying nothing do’t? Prithee why so mute? Quit, quit ... | [
"S1",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-4",
"S1-8",
"S1-9",
"S8-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Infatuation & Crushes",
"Love/Classic Love",
"Love/Unrequited Love",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation"
] |
3915c74ac1f2cede | Two Old Crows | Vachel Lindsay | Two old crows sat on a fence rail. Two old crows sat on a fence rail, Thinking of effect and cause, Of weeds and flowers, And nature's laws. One of them muttered, one of them stuttered, One of them stuttered, one of them muttered. Each of them thought far more than he uttered. One crow asked the other crow a riddle. On... | [
"S8"
] | [
"S8-8"
] | [
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals"
] |
a2d709b15a777e80 | The Book of Hours | B. H. Fairchild | Like the blue angels of the nativity, the museum patrons
hover around the art historian, who has arrived frazzled
and limp after waking late in her boyfriend’s apartment.And here, she notes, the Procession of St. Gregory,
where atop Hadrian’s mausoleum the angel of death
returns his bloody sword to its scabbard | [
"S3",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S10-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
0b842b407630b79c | Staggerlee wonders | James Baldwin | 1
I always wonder
what they think the niggers are doing
while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists,
are containing
Russia
and defining and re-defining and re-aligning
China,
nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile,
from blowing up that earth
which they have already
blasphemed into dung:
the gentle, wide... | [
"S3",
"S4"
] | [
"S3-8",
"S3-11",
"S4-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity",
"History & Politics/Money & Economics"
] |
d0725afbec303dab | Tanka | Paul Violi | Where the blossoms fall
like snow on the dock
bring fifty thousand in cash
or you’ll never see
your baby again | [
"S8"
] | [
"S8-4"
] | [
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
33ec8f05501fa6ef | If Not for the Cat | Jack Prelutsky | If not for the cat,
And the scarcity of cheese,
I could be content. | [
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S8-8",
"S9-1"
] | [
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals",
"Activities/Eating & Drinking"
] |
66acec2be815882d | The Net | Babette Deutsch | Into this net of leaves, green as old glass
That the sun fondles, trembling like images
In water, this live net, swung overhead
From branch to branch, what swam? The spider’s thread
Is less passive, where it appears to float
Like a bright hair clinging to the wind’s coat.
Hot at work, history neither schemes nor ... | [
"S6",
"S7"
] | [] | [
"Living",
"Time & Brevity"
] | [] |
923e85dc780283e9 | Formosan Elegy | Marilyn Chin | for Charles
You have lived six decades and you have lived none
You have loved many and you have loved no one
You wedded three wives but you lie in your cold bed alone
You sired four children but they cannot forgive you
Knock at emptiness a house without your love
Strike the pine box no an... | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-4",
"S6-5"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning"
] |
e958d10445a591a4 | [Sonnet] name address date | Bernadette Mayer | name address date
I cannot remember
an eye for an eye
then and there my
this is
your se
cond ch
ance to
h i s t o r y
r e p e a t s
i t s s e l f
and a tooth
for a tooth
is a tooth: | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S8-4",
"S10-2"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
e03281c2db7803ed | Family Reunion | Maxine Kumin | The week in August you come home, adult, professional, aloof, we roast and carve the fatted calf —in our case home-grown pig, the chine garlicked and crisped, the applesauce hand-pressed. Hand-pressed the greengage wine. Nothing is cost-effective here. The peas, the beets, the lettuces hand sown, are raised to stand ap... | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S6-7",
"S8-3",
"S8-5",
"S9-1",
"S9-2"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Living/Parenthood",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Activities/Eating & Drinking",
"Activities/Gardening & Farming"
] |
dc88e5fc3a83738e | Sonny’s Purple Heart | Adrian C. Louis | But it’s too late to say you’re sorry. — The Zombies
I
Man, if you’re dead, why are you leading
me to drink after five sober years?
Sonny, can I get a witness?
I had a Snow White vision of the prodigal
son returning to America
that day of my final hangover.
I tried to clear th... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S6-1",
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S6-6",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Living/Aging",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Living/Health & Illness",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
1c49ea86fa6d343c | In the Days of Awe | Robin Becker | for Abbe, Sally, and Joseph
I Amidah
Hear my personal prayer, the words of my mouth and the meditation
of my heart | [
"S5",
"S8"
] | [
"S5-4",
"S5-6",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Religion",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Religion/God & the Divine",
"Religion/Judaism",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
e65ecdf5eb509d1d | Happy Hour | Lee Ann Roripaugh | I always forget the name,delphinium,
even though it was the flower
the hummingbirds
loved best. They came in pairs—sleek,
emerald-bright
heads, the clockwork machinery
of their blurred wings
thrumming swift, menacing engines.
They slipped their beaks.
as if they were swizzle sticks, deep
into the blue
throat... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-8",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Nature/Animals",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
d4f7f3924ec98999 | Dracula | Salwa Al-Neimi | Protruding, rebelling against the lips,
the long, pointed, ill-fated fang stared at me,
(in spite of awkward attempts to hide it).
Stealing adolescent glances,
I dreamed it pierced me, pushing deep in the base of my neck.
I bit my lower lip, flushed,
but not before blushing under its spell.
Yesterday,
Yesterday... | [
"S1",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love"
] |
332f1c6f3c235755 | (Cinema) | Daniel Tobin | In the film that doesn’t begin and never ends, a man
wakes, drives to a country farmhouse where he finds
the guests he knows from his recurring dream, each
telling their own strange tale to him, the architect
called in to pitch his new design—a fratricidal son,
that ventriloquist whose dummy mouths his life—
prog... | [
"S10"
] | [
"S10-7"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film"
] |
6101a323f5767c7d | Don't Ask/1980 | Jayne Cortez | Don't ask me
who I'm speaking for
who I'm talking to
why I'm doing what I do in
the light of my existence
You rise you spit you brush you drink you
pee you shit you walk you run you work
you eat you belch you sleep you dream &
that's the way it is
In the morning
tap water tasted fishy
coffee sits in its
dec... | [
"S6"
] | [] | [
"Living"
] | [] |
814d50407c34b63a | After His Diagnosis | Margaret Hasse | Weeks after ice-out,
last fall’s leaves
make a pathway
to the lake, radiant blue
and still deathly cold.
I press my hot forehead
to the window,
smudging it. Blow
and the glass steams.
As if looking at a photo
through parchment,
I’m detached,
the way I saw his body
in the CAT scan
from a foggy distance.
I... | [
"S1",
"S6"
] | [
"S1-3",
"S6-6"
] | [
"Love",
"Living"
] | [
"Love/Heartache & Loss",
"Living/Health & Illness"
] |
1d9c84072355986d | Tonight I Can Almost Hear the Singing | Silvia Curbelo | There is a music to this sadness.
In a room somewhere two people dance.
I do not mean to say desire is everything.
A cup half empty is simply half a cup.
How many times have we been there and not there?
I have seen waitresses slip a night's
worth of tips into the jukebox, their eyes
saying yes to nothing in part... | [
"S1"
] | [
"S1-1"
] | [
"Love"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love"
] |
d5352141d8bf52a3 | Letting Go | Fay Zwicky | Tell the truth of experience
they say they also
say you must let
go learn to let go
let your children
go
and they go
and you stay
letting them go
because you are obedient and
respect everyone’s freedom
to go and you stay
and you want to tell the truth
because you are yours truly
its obedient servant
but ... | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S6-7",
"S8-3",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
ea97ab2af409f7a4 | Thou Art My Lute | Paul Laurence Dunbar | Thou art my lute, by thee I sing,— My being is attuned to thee. Thou settest all my words a-wing, And meltest me to melody. Thou art my life, by thee I live, From thee proceed the joys I know; Sweetheart, thy hand has power to give The meed of love—the cup of woe. Thou art my love, by thee I lea... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S1-7",
"S3-4",
"S10-3"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Romantic Love",
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
a25219f97c84d0d6 | A Posthumous Poetics | Michael Ryan | From embarrassment, I made statements.
My icons—tight caves and mouths—stuck together
briefly like dry lips, like a lover’s insults.
The fact is they were ugly to all of us.
I said, How painstakingly personal!
Here are the words for this,
Relentless as insects! I was hysterical.
Every tone became artful,
the wo... | [
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-5",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
f8c9560a51d86780 | Permanent Home | Mei-mei Berssenbrugge | 1
I seek a permanent home, but this structure has an appearance of indifferent compoundedness and isolation, heading toward hopelessness.
The boy pulls an animal on a leash.
The house with a red roof rests between two hills.
I can look through its windows to the sea.
His aggression opposes what in a domestic anima... | [
"S3",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S3-2",
"S8-5",
"S10-1",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Architecture & Design",
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Social Commentaries/Class & Labor",
"Relationships/Home Life"
] |
ca9e0582f7b478c0 | Dragging the Lake | Thomas James | They are skimming the lake with wooden hooks.
Where the oak throws its handful of shadows
Children are gathering fireflies.
I wait in the deep olive flux
As their cries ricochet out of the dark.
Lights spear the water. I hear the oak speak.
It foists its mouthful of sibilants
On a sky involved with a stillborn m... | [
"S6",
"S11"
] | [
"S6-4"
] | [
"Living",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
711ea82fb2b4bd0c | Storm Ending | Jean Toomer | Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads,Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,Rumbling in the wind,Stretching clappers to strike our ears . . .Full-lipped flowersBitten by the sunBleeding rainDripping rain like golden honey—And the sweet earth flying from the thunder. | [
"S2"
] | [
"S2-8",
"S2-10"
] | [
"Nature"
] | [
"Nature/Weather",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi"
] |
897a4074fbaa9422 | from The Laurel Tree | Louis Simpson | In the clear light that confuses everything
Only you, dark laurel,
Shadow my house,
Lifting your arms in the anguish
Of nature at the stake.
And at night, quivering with tears,
You are like the tree called Tasso’s.
Crippled, and hooped with iron,
It stands on Peter’s hill.
When the lovers prop their bicycles
... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S3",
"S4",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-3",
"S2-8",
"S3-11"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Heartache & Loss",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict"
] |
3377c5b5beec988f | Cell Block on Chena River | dg nanouk okpik | First: Brother, remove the tool marks on your scathed skin, brush your tattoos with
nettles, smear bearberry juice in the gashes. Crack open the jail-seed.
Second: Tear away the bars which restrain
your lean, spare life. Bend your curves i... | [
"S3",
"S11"
] | [
"S3-6",
"S11-2"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural",
"Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice"
] |
536f7ea7d776ee4a | In the Deep Channel | William E. Stafford | Setting a trotline after sundown
if we went far enough away in the night
sometimes up out of deep water
would come a secret-headed channel cat,
Eyes that were still eyes in the rush of darkness,
flowing feelers noncommittal and black,
and hidden in the fins those rasping bone daggers,
with one spiking upward on ... | [
"S9"
] | [
"S9-5"
] | [
"Activities"
] | [
"Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities"
] |
ba93a05c36df06dc | [There is someone who knows] | Roberto Tejada | There is someone who knows.
In no beginning
was there just one language
nor did the surface gleam
with nineteen hours
of music as in our body-heat
through the head & limbs
the thumb and index finger
to form the ovular OH
of our self-fathering fable
war flail ≈ morning star
The original garden erudit... | [
"S8"
] | [
"S8-3"
] | [
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
ccd4c38151c4e38d | Grand Central, Track 23 | Elizabeth Skurnick | I forgot to tell you it's almost time to go.
The sun has distilled its particular worn essence
And the glittering trout is flipped on the bow.
A man asks me what time it is. I don't know.
I have emptied my purse and wept in the presence
Of onlookers. I forgot to remember to go
Before eleven, when the steely arrow... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life"
] |
3fbcc074ea12abda | Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall | Margaret Fishback | Sometimes I wish that I were dead
As dead can be, but then again
At times when I've been nicely fed
On caviar or guinea hen
And I am wearing something new
And reassuring, I decide
It might be better to eschew
My tendency to cyanide. | [
"S6"
] | [] | [
"Living"
] | [] |
2d680a67d148b107 | from Several Questions Answered | William Blake | What is it men in women do require? The lineaments of Gratified Desire. What is it women do in men require? The lineaments of Gratified Desire. | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S1-8",
"S3-4"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Love/Classic Love",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality"
] |
968528ab42aedb06 | Refusing Silence | Tess Gallagher | Heartbeat trembling
your kingdom
of leaves
near the ceremony
of water, I never
insisted on you. I admit
I delayed. I was the Empress
of Delay. But it can’t be
put off now. On the sacred branch
of my only voice – I insist.
Insist for us all,
which is the job
of the voice, and especially
of the poet. Else
w... | [
"S6",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-6"
] | [
"Living",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
bdd5bf75c86375d2 | Ode I, 5: To Pyrrha | Horace | What slender youth, bedew’d with liquid odors, Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave, Pyrrha? For whom bind’st thou In wreaths thy golden hair, Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he Of faith and changed gods complain, and seas Rough with black winds, and storms ... | [
"S1",
"S11"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-6",
"S11-3"
] | [
"Love",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology"
] |
8c7fdc9fc6ddadb0 | The Butterfly’s Dream | Hannah F. Gould | A tulip, just opened, had offered to hold A butterfly, gaudy and gay; And, rocked in a cradle of crimson and gold, The careless young slumberer lay. For the butterfly slept, as such thoughtless ones will, At ease, and reclining on flowers, If ever they study, ’t is how they may kill The best of their mid-su... | [
"S2"
] | [
"S2-5"
] | [
"Nature"
] | [
"Nature/Animals"
] |
1ef6085756e0eaf6 | Astrophil and Stella 49: I on my horse, and Love on me, doth try | Sir Philip Sidney | I on my horse, and Love on me, doth try Our horsemanships, while by strange work I prove A horseman to my horse, a horse to Love, And now man’s wrongs in me, poor beast, descry. The reins wherewith my rider doth me tie Are humbled thoughts, which bit of reverence move, Curbed in with fear, but with gilt boss above Of h... | [
"S1",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-4"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Infatuation & Crushes"
] |
e360f775da478311 | The Passions that we Fought with and Subdued | Trumbull Stickney | The passions that we fought with and subdued Never quite die. In some maimed serpent’s coil They lurk, ready to spring and vindicate That power was once our torture and our lord. | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-1"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Aging"
] |
4afdcd120c8335fd | How Good Fortune Surprises Us | Jackson Wheeler | I was hauling freight out of the Carolinas up to the Cumberland Plateau when, in Tennessee, I saw from the freeway, at 2 am a house ablaze. Water from the firehoses arced into luminescent rainbows. The only sound, the dull roar of my truck passing. I found myself strangely happy. It was misfortune on that co... | [
"S9"
] | [
"S9-4"
] | [
"Activities"
] | [
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
a3ed6f1360a77aae | A Burnt Ship | John Donne | Out of a fired ship, which by no way But drowning could be rescued from the flame, Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay; So all were lost, which in the ship were found, They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd. | [
"S3",
"S6"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S6-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
b1035c824fcf59a1 | The Here and Now | Theodore Weiss | for Yehuda Amichai
Though you live in a little country,
crammed and crisscrossed with debris,
the past oppressive many times over—
where you buy your grapes David, pausing,
eyes a fiery dark girl, a lusty song
riding his breath, the old dance urgent
at his body; where you buy your bread
Christ, stumbling, stoop... | [
"S10"
] | [
"S10-6"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
aec212da0a8fc979 | Over and Under | John Brehm | So sexy to slide under-
neath a river,
to sit inside this
snakelike sub-
marine-like
subway car and
freely imagine
the world above—
the Brooklyn
Bridge invisibly
trembling with the
weight of its
own beauty,
the East River
still guided by
the grooves
Walt Whitman's
eyes wore in it,
the bulldog tug-
boats pushing the
pas... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-4",
"S3-1"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Infatuation & Crushes",
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life"
] |
7a3df154820d9faf | Catching the Moles | Judith Kitchen | First we tamp down the ridges that criss-cross the yard then wait for the ground to move again. I hold the shoe box, you, the trowel. When I give you the signal you dig in behind and flip forward. Out he pops into daylight, blind velvet. We nudge him into the box, carry him down the hill. Four times we’ve done it. The ... | [
"S2",
"S9"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S9-2"
] | [
"Nature",
"Activities"
] | [
"Nature/Animals",
"Activities/Gardening & Farming"
] |
d67cc1e368c6137c | Call as You Will | Todd Boss | —retracing | [
"S2",
"S8"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S8-8"
] | [
"Nature",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Nature/Animals",
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals"
] |
6214f06c361f34cd | G-9 | Tim Dlugos | I'm at a double wake
in Springfield, for a childhood
friend and his father
who died years ago. I join
my aunt in the queue of mourners
and walk into a brown study,
a sepia room with books
and magazines. The father's
in a coffin; he looks exhumed,
the worse for wear. But where
my friend's remains should be
th... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S5",
"S6",
"S7",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S3-4",
"S5-1",
"S5-2",
"S5-3",
"S5-4",
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S6-6",
"S8-4",
"S8-6"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Religion/Buddhism",
"Religion/Christianity",
"Religion/Faith & Doubt",
"Religion/God & the Divine",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Living/Health & Illness",
"Relationships/Friendship",
"Relationships/LGBTQ+"
... |
e9d24870dc772f72 | Crushing | Shane Book | We smuggle crates of Beaujolais
through the squeaky pantry door.
We steal cases of cigarettes,
borrow the bulletproof
Mercedes to race through
the capital’s empty streets.
It’s wonderful, the peace.
No local can afford a car,
except the police.
The police stand beside their cars and wave.
The police lack petr... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S9"
] | [
"S3-8",
"S6-8",
"S9-7"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Activities"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity",
"Living/Youth",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
4e6d73a39cb9b561 | Definition of Great | Lewis Warsh | Momentarily
the language of description is lost
what you see with your eyes is enough, for you, anyway
but how to get the sense of what you saw across
to another person
it’s possible
... | [
"S6",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S9-3",
"S10-2"
] | [
"Living",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Activities/Indoor Activities"
] |
a7d073a2f00ab401 | Monet: “Les Nymphéas” | W. D. Snodgrass | The eyelids glowing, some chill morning.
O world half-known through opening, twilit lids
Before the vague face clenches into light;
O universal waters like a cloud,
Like those first clouds of half-created matter;
O all things rising, rising like the fumes
From waters falling, O forever falling;
Infin... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-8",
"S3-4",
"S6-4",
"S10-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture",
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
21e102f666746b70 | Black Jaguar with Quai Saint-Bernard | Pascale Petit | Behind the Fauverie a crawl of quayside trafficwhile Aramis roars for his food, the airturbulent as he opens his jaws in a hugeyawn. If I hold my breath, half-close my eyesand listen hard — there at the tongue’s root,in the voicebox of night, I might hearthe almost-vanished. He’s summoning his prey,this lord of thunder... | [
"S2",
"S3"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S3-1"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Nature/Animals",
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life"
] |
fc3840127d9ccafd | Autumn | Richard Garcia | Both lying on our sides, making love in
spoon position when she’s startled, What’s that?
She means the enormous ship passing before you—
maybe not that large, is it a freighter
or a passenger ship? But it seems huge in the dark
and it’s so close. That’s a poem you say, D. H.
Lawrence—Have you built your ship of d... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-3",
"S10-3",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Nature/Fall"
] |
6f324cc46357e81d | Anatomy of a leap into the void | Miroslav Holub | A. Use of the lift
going up
is permitted, provided
B. Use of the lift
going down
is not permitted, provided
C. Use of the lift
going up is
D. Use of the lift
going down is not
E. Use of the lift
going up
F. Use of the lift
going
G. ... | [
"S6",
"S7",
"S9"
] | [
"S9-7"
] | [
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Activities"
] | [
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
e4ae8c41a221c781 | Walking West | William E. Stafford | Anyone with quiet pace who
walks a gray road in the West
may hear a badger underground where
in deep flint another time is
Caught by flint and held forever,
the quiet pace of God stopped still.
Anyone who listens walks on
time that dogs him single file,
To mountains that are far from people,
the face of the la... | [
"S2",
"S3",
"S4",
"S5",
"S6",
"S7"
] | [
"S2-5"
] | [
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity"
] | [
"Nature/Animals"
] |
0476f4b34e3d20d7 | The Black-Faced Sheep | Donald Hall | Ruminant pillows! Gregarious soft boulders!
If one of you found a gap in a stone wall,
the rest of you—rams, ewes, bucks, wethers, lambs;
mothers and daughters, old grandfather-father,
cousins and aunts, small bleating sons—
followed onward, stupid
as sheep, wherever
your leader’s sheep-brain wandered to.
My gr... | [
"S2",
"S5",
"S8"
] | [
"S8-3",
"S8-8"
] | [
"Nature",
"Religion",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals"
] |
32dcf231d58f665f | Zebra | C. K. Williams | Kids once carried tin soldiers in their pockets as charms against being afraid, but how trust soldiers these days not to load up, aim, blast the pants off your legs? I have a key-chain zebra I bought at the Thanksgiving fair. How do I know she won't kick, or bite at my crotch? Because she's been murdered, machine-g... | [
"S3"
] | [
"S3-11"
] | [
"Social Commentaries"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict"
] |
790e60f63792e020 | Your World | Georgia Douglas Johnson | Your world is as big as you make it. I know, for I used to abide In the narrowest nest in a corner, My wings pressing close to my side. But I sighted the distant horizon Where the skyline encircled the sea And I throbbed with a burning desire To travel this immensity. I battered the cordons around me And cr... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S8",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S6-3",
"S8-5",
"S9-7",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Living/Coming of Age",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
b4ff8d6ebed5f4be | The Obscenity Prayer | Mary Karr | Our falter, whose art is Heavy,Halloween be thy name.Your kingdom’s numbyour children dumb on earthmoldy bread unleavened.Give us this day ourwayward dead.And give us ourasses as we forgive thosewho ass against us.And speed us notinto wimp nationnor bequiver us with needles, for thineis the flimflam and the sour,and th... | [
"S5"
] | [
"S5-3"
] | [
"Religion"
] | [
"Religion/Faith & Doubt"
] |
c86752a31a7edf01 | Munich, Winter 1973 (for Y.S.) | James Baldwin | In a strange house,
a strange bed
in a strange town,
a very strange me
is waiting for you.
Now
it is very early in the morning.
The silence is loud.
The baby is walking about
with his foaming bottle,
making strange sounds
and deciding, after all,
to be my friend.
You
arrive tonight.
How dull time is!
Ho... | [
"S1"
] | [
"S1-6"
] | [
"Love"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated"
] |
e6528b2ba25d8ed9 | Idea 43: Why should your fair eyes with such sovereign grace | Michael Drayton | Why should your fair eyes with such sovereign grace Disperse their rays on every vulgar spirit, Whilst I in darkness in the self-same place Get not one glance to recompense my merit? So doth the ploughman gaze the wandering star, And only rest contented with the light, That never learned what constellations are, Beyond... | [
"S1"
] | [
"S1-9"
] | [
"Love"
] | [
"Love/Unrequited Love"
] |
cfe0b683e9bf0ef5 | The Stories | Robin Blaser | our suppers stunned on the table
hold radios
hold
flasks of sound,
sharp intensities
bottled up for a time
I taste your imagination, authors,
and place it among cotton trees
whose white stuff perches,
cousins of the air
if the manner could be political
the high w... | [
"S10"
] | [
"S10-8"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books"
] |
309ed35a9d70522c | Beginnings | Jeffrey Greene | National Museum of Scotland
On the ground floor called "Beginnings," a fertility stone is displayed in the diamond-hard blue halogen, a line etching of an erection with two equal circles, as one sees in graffitti in the Underground. The stone is attributed to the Picts, of whom history says little, besides the ... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S10"
] | [
"S10-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture"
] |
3dd5daec74a25255 | Civil Twilight | Gig Ryan | Emotion scoops the footpath’s velvet edges,
estate agents’ bluster calibrates the street’s
livability, treeless, ajar with fridges
bunked out. Investors wave sheets
of sums to air, a tiny computer chalked
on glass, loving the artist’s marble noose
in adjacent pop-up gallery they might’ve forked
out for, but didn... | [
"S3",
"S4"
] | [
"S3-2",
"S4-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Class & Labor",
"History & Politics/Money & Economics"
] |
641d3b45f0930002 | “Roll on, sad world! not Mercury or Mars” | Frederick Goddard Tuckerman | from Sonnets, Second Series XVII
Roll on, sad world! not Mercury or Mars
Could swifter speed, or slower, round the sun,
Than in this year of variance thou hast done
For me. Yet pain, fear, heart-break, woes, and wars
Have natural limit; from his dread eclipse
The swift sun hastens, and the night debars
T... | [
"S2"
] | [] | [
"Nature"
] | [] |
5ccb3f0722d697fb | Sweetness | Stephen Dunn | Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
t... | [
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S8-4"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Relationships/Friendship"
] |
5306beca8e61d8d3 | from Water Music | Hugh MacDiarmid | (To William and Flora Johnstone)
Wheesht, wheesht, Joyce, and let me hear
Nae Anna Livvy’s lilt,
But Wauchope, Esk, and Ewes again,
Each wi’ its ain rhythms till’t. | [
"S2"
] | [
"S2-7"
] | [
"Nature"
] | [
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals"
] |
c692a595cf7a9dfb | Essay on Craft | Ocean Vuong | Because the butterfly’s yellow wingflickering in black mud
was a wordstranded by its language.
Because no one elsewas coming — & I ran
out of reasons.So I gathered fistfuls
of ash, dark as ink,hammered theminto marrow, into
a skull thickenough to keepthe gentle curse
of dreams. Yes, I aimedfor mercy —
but cam... | [
"S10"
] | [
"S10-2",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics",
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
67c67e799f041bd8 | A Ballad of François Villon, Prince of All Ballad-Makers | Algernon Charles Swinburne | Bird of the bitter bright grey golden morn Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years, First of us all and sweetest singer born Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears; When song new-born put off the old world's attire And felt its tune on... | [
"S10"
] | [
"S10-6"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets"
] |
5f31e26e286b00f1 | For a Traveler | Jessica Greenbaum | I only have a moment so let me tell you the shortest story,about arriving at a long loved place, the house of friends in Maine,their lawn of wildflowers, their grandfather clock and candidportraits, their gabled attic rooms, and woodstove in the kitchen,all accessories of the genuine summer years before, when I wasthei... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S3",
"S6",
"S7",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S2-8",
"S3-4",
"S8-1",
"S8-3",
"S8-5",
"S9-1",
"S9-2"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Activities/Eating & Drinking",
"Activities/Gardening & Farming"
] |
530f001ef561df0c | Memorial Day | Gregory Orr | 1
After our march from the Hudson to the top
of Cemetery Hill, we Boy Scouts proudly endured
the sermons and hot sun while Girl Scouts
lolled among graves in the maple shade.
When members of the veterans’ honor guard
aimed their bone-white rifles skyward and fired,
I glimpsed beneath one metal helmet
the salmon... | [
"S3",
"S11"
] | [
"S3-11",
"S11-4"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism",
"Social Commentaries/War & Conflict"
] |
27595dd91790a87b | Fire Season | James Galvin | All the angels of Tie Siding were on fire.
The famous sky was gone.
Presumably the mountains were still there, invisible in haze.
OK,
there was only one angel, but she ... | [
"S1",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-4"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Infatuation & Crushes"
] |
965b6c8fa8e827ea | The Enigma | Anne Stevenson | Falling to sleep last night in a deep crevasse
between one rough dream and another, I seemed,
still awake, to be stranded on a stony path,
and there the familiar enigma presented itself
in the shape of a little trembling lamb.
It was lying like a pearl in the trough between
one Welsh slab and another, and it was ... | [
"S6",
"S7",
"S8"
] | [
"S8-8"
] | [
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals"
] |
e633365fb8ed37f8 | Blueprints and Others | John Ashbery | The man across the street seems happy,or pleased. Sometimes a porter evades the grounds.After you play a lot with the militaryyou are my own best customer.I’ve done five of that.Make my halloween. Ask me not to say it.The old man wants to see you — now.That’s all right, but find your own.Do you want to stop using these... | [
"S6"
] | [] | [
"Living"
] | [] |
ae7afb3f04c00a4a | Janet Waking | John Crowe Ransom | Beautifully Janet slept
Till it was deeply morning. She woke then
And thought about her dainty-feathered hen,
To see how it had kept.
One kiss she gave her mother,
Only a small one gave she to her daddy
Who would have kissed each curl of his shining baby;
No kiss at all for her brother.
“Old Chucky, Old Chucky!... | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S8-3",
"S8-8",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals"
] |
4b9fc651e9703739 | Hugging the Jukebox | Naomi Shihab Nye | On an island the soft hue of memory,
moss green, kerosene yellow, drifting, mingling
in the Caribbean Sea,
a six-year-old named Alfred
learns all the words to all the songs
on his grandparents’ jukebox, and sings them.
To learn the words is not so hard.
Many barmaids and teenagers have done as well.
But to sing... | [
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S8-3",
"S10-3",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
e484d89dd401b9b0 | Lob | Edward Thomas | At hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travellingIn search of something chance would never bring,An old man’s face, by life and weather cutAnd coloured,—rough, brown, sweet as any nut,—A land face, sea-blue-eyed,—hung in my mindWhen I had left him many a mile behind.All he said was: “Nobody can’t stop ’ee. It’sA footpath, right... | [
"S6",
"S9",
"S11"
] | [
"S9-7"
] | [
"Living",
"Activities",
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
7cc2de95d6b63514 | Midas Passional | Lisa Russ Spaar | No one has touched me for weeksyet in this drugged, gilt afternoon, late,when nothing is safe, I’m paralyzed,as though so wildly desired—passing solo through the garden’scinnamon, marigolds, famished roses, where a matted shingleof the swept-up human hair I begged from a local beauty shop& spread out fruitlessly among ... | [
"S11"
] | [
"S11-3"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore"
] | [
"Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology"
] |
d386a1f076a8b0e7 | The Danger of Writing Defiant Verse | Dorothy Parker | And now I have another lad!
No longer need you tell
How all my nights are slow and sad
For loving you too well.
His ways are not your wicked ways,
He's not the like of you.
He treads his path of reckoned days,
A sober man, and true.
They'll never see him in the town,
Another on his knee.
H... | [
"S1",
"S10"
] | [
"S1-6"
] | [
"Love",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated"
] |
6887c17352908427 | Inmate of Happiness | Elizabeth Metzger | Because you were born with your knees
tied together under you
you are bound to need your hands
and resent my knees. Because
you were born with and without knees
your face remains close to the ground
to analyze all the methods
the medics use to unhook them:
they splint your legs against planks,
numb each knee w... | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-8"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Youth"
] |
34fe5b68c0687b39 | enough food and a mom | francine j. harris | The dad. body has just enough gravy on his plate
to sop up one piece of bread. So, enough for one supper, says the mom. She comes back to him, says don’t argue with mom, you’re a ghost. There’s enough
water around to drown a cob in its husk. in a dad. He puts up weather stripping all night. to keep out the mom. He ... | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-4",
"S6-5",
"S6-7",
"S8-3",
"S8-5",
"S8-7"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Living/Mourning",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors",
"Relationships/Home Life",
"Relationships/Marriage & Companionship"
] |
46234c830a139d34 | Approximately Forever | C. D. Wright | She was changing on the inside
it was true what had been written
The new syntax of love
both sucked and burned
The secret clung around them
She took in the smell
Walking down a road to nowhere
every sound was relevant
The sun fell behind them now
he seemed strangely moved
She would take her clothes off
for t... | [
"S1",
"S6",
"S7",
"S8"
] | [
"S1-1",
"S1-6"
] | [
"Love",
"Living",
"Time & Brevity",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Love/Desire & Erotic Love",
"Love/Realistic & Complicated"
] |
8afcb7bdcece7652 | Obedience, or the Lying Tale | Jennifer Chang | I will do everything you tell me, Mother. I will charm three gold hairs from the demon’s head. I will choke the mouse that gnaws an apple tree’s roots and keep its skin for a glove. To the wolf, I will be pretty and kind and curtsy his crossing of my path. The forest, vocal even in its somber tread, rages. A slope ... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S2-5",
"S2-7",
"S6-3",
"S6-7",
"S8-3",
"S10-5"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Nature/Animals",
"Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals",
"Living/Coming of Age",
"Living/Parenthood",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
312ef78501bb8eb9 | Sonata | Gjertrud Schnackenberg | Overture
More loudly to inveigh against your absence,
Raising the volume by at least a third,
Humbly I say I’ve written this immense
Astonishing “Sonata” word by word,
With leitmotivs you’ll wish you’d never heard,
And a demented, shattering Cadenza.
I’m pained to say that scholarship insists
Cadenzas are concl... | [
"S1",
"S8",
"S10"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S8-1",
"S10-3",
"S10-5",
"S10-9"
] | [
"Love",
"Relationships",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Arts & Sciences/Philosophy",
"Arts & Sciences/Sciences",
"Relationships/Breakups & Separation"
] |
62e33bdfde3b08f8 | Elegy with a Brush Hook and Machete | Cody Smith | For Steve
Remember when we almost drowned in ’03, the woods
so thick we only knew the rainstorm by sound of thunder
and violence of the creek, how every day I’d take you to the Stop-N-Go
for your case of Natty Lights? Think back to summertime,
... | [
"S2",
"S6",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S2-8",
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S8-4",
"S9-4"
] | [
"Nature",
"Living",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Nature/Plants & Fungi",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Relationships/Friendship",
"Activities/Jobs & Working"
] |
bff89b87403230e7 | After the Last Fright | Cate Marvin | I carved upon my desk unsayables.
He drank until he vomited on himself.
Eavesdropping, the others resisted sleep.
The house knew the pain of sun on lacquered floorboards.
I carved it with the tips of scissors.
A door creaked; he hung his head into the room.Please, the others cannot sleep.
The shingles twitched li... | [
"S3",
"S8"
] | [
"S3-6",
"S8-5"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice",
"Relationships/Home Life"
] |
ff97b098a5528d5b | Morel Mushrooms | Jane Whitledge | Softly they come thumbing up from firm ground protruding unharmed. Easily crumbled and yet how they shouldered the leaf and mold aside, rising unperturbed, breathing obscurely, still as stone. By the slumping log, by the dappled aspen, they grow alone. A dumb eloquence seems their trade. Like hooded monks in a sacred w... | [
"S2"
] | [] | [
"Nature"
] | [] |
a2ae0797ffc9bfc0 | Solo R&B Vocal Underground | W. S. Di Piero | It seems to head from its last stop too fast,
my transbay train’s strungout hoo, deep
inside the tunnel, and starts to bleed
into the baritone wail of that guy
at platform’s end, a sort of lullaby
rubbed against the wall then caught in a squall
of wind darkening toward us, his whippy voice
skinning its tired song off t... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S8",
"S9",
"S10"
] | [
"S1-6",
"S3-1",
"S9-7",
"S10-3"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships",
"Activities",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Love/Realistic & Complicated",
"Arts & Sciences/Music",
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
2a586a476e671092 | Words from Confinement | Cesare Pavese | We would go down to the fish market early
to cleanse our vision: the fish were silver,
and scarlet, and green, and the color of sea.
The fish were lovelier than even the sea
with its silvery scales. We thought of return.
Lovely too the women with jars on their heads,
olive-brown clay, shaped softly like thighs:
... | [
"S1",
"S2",
"S3",
"S8",
"S9"
] | [
"S2-6",
"S3-4",
"S9-7"
] | [
"Love",
"Nature",
"Social Commentaries",
"Relationships",
"Activities"
] | [
"Nature/Bodies of Water",
"Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality",
"Activities/Travels & Journeys"
] |
3644af96dd17a1bf | Cloaca Maxima | Elizabeth Campbell | Any, every, thing that was exposed
goes underground and is washed into the Tiber.
This is what some people do
with faces, burying. You see them,
the heavy ones, chests like rivers, their heads
bowed down with great
antlers of thought invisible.
After many seasons, the fronts of their bodies
terribly developed t... | [
"S6"
] | [
"S6-5"
] | [
"Living"
] | [
"Living/Mourning"
] |
ccaef28b5cbe6323 | Psalm | Adonis | I amuse myself with my country.
I glimpse its future approaching on the eyelashes of an ostrich, I toy with its history and its days, I strike it with stones and thunderbolts. I extinguish its lamps and light its windows, and at the other end of day I inaugurate its history.
I am a stranger to all of you. I am f... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S5",
"S6",
"S10"
] | [
"S5-5",
"S6-4",
"S10-6"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Religion",
"Living",
"Arts & Sciences"
] | [
"Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets",
"Religion/Islam",
"Living/Death & Dying"
] |
b76a698473ea05ae | My Brother at 3 A.M. | Natalie Diaz | He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door. O God, he said. O God.
He wants to kill me, Mom. | [
"S3",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S6-6",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"Living/Health & Illness",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
98a3e0d5d2baade3 | Anger | April Bernard | I When in a farmhouse kitchen that smelledof old rinds and wet cigarette butts I hoisted the shotgun to my shoulderand aimed but did not fire it at the man who had just taken my virginity like a snack, with my collusion, but still — When I sat in a conference room in an inquisitionat the “newspaper of record,”across fr... | [
"S6"
] | [] | [
"Living"
] | [] |
36a7f5ee519e5285 | The Judgment Tale | Valzhyna Mort | Over the growing shadows fell the dead weight of light.With a long bark mules metered the distance and turned back.Dust rose like columns of unpaid debt.Spit dried before it could reach the ground.Then the thin-barked orange trees disowned their thick-skinned fruit.Then mosquitoes spat out bad blood into the gutters a... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S6"
] | [
"S4-1"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living"
] | [
"History & Politics/Money & Economics"
] |
8e3cbc3356768f61 | The Book of Mycah | Joshua Bennett | Son of Man. Son of Marvin & Tallulah. Son of Flatbush & roti & dollar vans bolting down the avenue after six. The boy grew like a debt, & beautified every meter of the pockmarked, jet black asphalt which held him aloft on days he sped from much larger men along its skin. Godfathers & hustlers, Division 1 scholarship fo... | [
"S1",
"S3",
"S6",
"S9"
] | [
"S1-3",
"S3-1",
"S6-3",
"S6-4",
"S6-5",
"S6-8",
"S9-5"
] | [
"Love",
"Social Commentaries",
"Living",
"Activities"
] | [
"Love/Heartache & Loss",
"Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life",
"Living/Coming of Age",
"Living/Death & Dying",
"Living/Mourning",
"Living/Youth",
"Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities"
] |
4b11757028d2cf3d | He Thinks of His Children | Hittan of Tayyi | Fortune has brought me down—her wonted way— from station great and high to low estate;Fortune has rent away my plenteous store: of all my wealth honor alone is left.Fortune has turned my joy to tears: how oft did fortune make me laugh with what she gave!But for these girls, the kata’s downy brood, ... | [
"S3",
"S4",
"S6",
"S8"
] | [
"S4-1",
"S8-3"
] | [
"Social Commentaries",
"History & Politics",
"Living",
"Relationships"
] | [
"History & Politics/Money & Economics",
"Relationships/Family & Ancestors"
] |
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