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0e4d8447bc2ef761
Photographs
Ivor Gurney
(To Two Scots Lads) Lying in dug-outs, joking idly, wearily; Watching the candle guttering in the draught; Hearing the great shells go high over us, eerily Singing; how often have I turned over, and laughed With pity and pride, photographs of all colours, All sizes, subjects: khaki brothers in France; Or mothe...
[ "S1", "S3", "S8", "S10" ]
[ "S3-11", "S8-1", "S10-7" ]
[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
3f6982b4712448f7
The Labyrinth
Robert P. Baird
Torn turned and tatteredBowed burned and batteredI took untensed time by the teethAnd bade it bear me bankingOut over the walled welter cities and the seaThrough the lightsmocked birdpocked cloudcocked skyTo leave me light on a lilting planetesimal.The stone walls wailed and wh...
[ "S6" ]
[ "S6-4" ]
[ "Living" ]
[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]
3fee0bbfbf721888
Nikita
Alberto Ríos
Under a heavy wire milk case, A piece of concrete foundation On top, in summer, in her backyard, Mrs. Russo keeps the cat Nikita safe From birds, from dogs, from eating Johnson grass, which he throws up. Nikita waits for ants to wander in And for the sun to leave. Instead, she comes to keep him Company, saying...
[ "S8" ]
[ "S8-8" ]
[ "Relationships" ]
[ "Relationships/Pets & Domestic Animals" ]
9d5309733783d078
Get Rid of the X
Marilyn Chin
My shadow followed me to San Diego silently, she never complained. No green card, no identity pass, she is wedded to my fate. The moon is a drunk and anorectic, constantly reeling, changing weight. My shadow dances grotesquely, resentful she can't leave me. The moon mourns his unwritten novels, ...
[ "S1", "S2", "S6" ]
[ "S1-6", "S2-9" ]
[ "Love", "Nature", "Living" ]
[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space" ]
d61cddeae234cb63
Except for Being, It Was Relatively Painless
Mary Jo Bang
It was relatively painless except for being all she could see: a world made of dinner, very pleasant; a lunch at something called a table in the dining room; an endless night; a half-day; another lunch, this on Tuesday. Yesterday. Today. Pieces propped up with supports. The therapist tapped his cigar. He no longer...
[ "S6", "S10" ]
[ "S6-6", "S10-5" ]
[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Living/Health & Illness" ]
0a91afc8f8cf5345
My Father Holds the Door for Yoko Ono
Christopher Chambers
In New York City for a conference on weed control, leaving the hotel in a cluster of horticulturalists, he alone stops, midwestern, crewcut, narrow blue tie, cufflinks, wingtips, holds the door for the Asian woman in a miniskirt and thigh high white leather boots. She nods slightly, a sad and beautiful gesture. Neither...
[ "S3", "S8" ]
[ "S3-7", "S8-3" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
723f8facb20ecc11
Life
Anna Lætitia Barbauld
Animula, vagula, blandula. Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met, I own to me’s a secret yet. But this I know, when thou art fled, Where’er they lay these limbs, this head, No clod so valueless shall be, As all that then remains of me...
[ "S5", "S6", "S7" ]
[ "S5-3", "S6-4" ]
[ "Religion", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]
[ "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
8f568e84b1149196
Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out
Richard Siken
Every morning the maple leaves. Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out You will be alone always and t...
[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S3-1", "S3-7" ]
[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]
a6a65bb548d2e23b
Robin Hood
John Keats
TO A FRIEND No! those days are gone away And their hours are old and gray, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden pall Of the leaves of many years: Many times have winter's shears, Frozen North, and chilling East, Sounded tempests to the feast Of the forest's whispering fleeces, Since men knew nor rent no...
[ "S2", "S10", "S11" ]
[ "S2-2", "S2-4", "S2-9", "S2-10", "S10-3", "S10-8", "S11-1", "S11-4" ]
[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Mythology & Folklore/Fairy-tales & Legends", "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Summer", "Nature/Winter", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space" ]
ef120ccd5993e5ca
Temple You
Lisa Russ Spaar
What is mysterious about loss, flush of arm pulled from a wilted sleeve,summer’s urine-tang in autumn leaves?Let   John Keats light another fag.Or Brontë refuse the doctoron her black sateen settee.For whatever part of   you may be taken away, you said,is the scar I will visit firstwith my mouth, each time, as gold vis...
[ "S1", "S6", "S10" ]
[ "S1-3", "S6-5", "S10-8" ]
[ "Love", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Living/Mourning" ]
6dcea4e37c2e277c
Perhaps Not For You
Alice Notley
There is no audience because there is no audience. So if you speak only to imagined beings what does "only" mean? -------------------------- This building formerly a restaurant . . . this small room has been scraped of its paint and denuded of most former furniture: but also it has grown in size—can a buil...
[ "S6", "S10", "S11" ]
[ "S6-4", "S10-6", "S11-2" ]
[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
5fc98f099fcf34e2
from Omeros
Derek Walcott
BOOK SIXChapter XLIVI In hill-towns, from San Fernando to Mayagüez, the same sunrise stirred the feathered lances of cane down the archipelago’s highways. The first breeze rattled the spears and their noise was like distant rain marching down from the hills, like a shell at your ears. In the cool asphalt Sundays ...
[ "S3", "S8", "S9", "S11" ]
[ "S3-4", "S9-7" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "Relationships", "Activities", "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
b2246420ef1168ac
A Poem for Ciaran
Fanny Howe
The stroll from my cell along the path above the donkeys past a door open, a door shut and a strong smell of wood and cigarettes ends where music helps white marguerites cut through the masonry. * Dark for words with a clicking wren a yellow tit and over the clover a shovel and a rustle of grain. He’s traini...
[ "S2", "S5", "S8", "S9" ]
[ "S2-5", "S2-8", "S5-2", "S8-3", "S9-7" ]
[ "Nature", "Religion", "Relationships", "Activities" ]
[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Religion/Christianity", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
caeb7a85db6c391d
On Reflection
Randall Horton
because a box is a box: humans are cultivated into said box without choice or clarification, specimens only existing—as in: (you—i—us). flesh & frame— restricted bone matter comprising a box reluctant not to be a box. but nurtured inside the box, let’s say form which is shaped by & indigenous, to, the box & the c...
[ "S3", "S6" ]
[ "S3-8" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
e07795a54882f540
Waiting for the Twelfth
Kaveh Akbar
In Shia Islam, the Twelfth Imam is said to have disappeared in the ninth century. It’s believed his return at the end of the world will deliver order from the chaos. no one ever brings up the wages of virtue the cost of avoiding that which you were built to do some men actually love their enemies ...
[ "S5", "S9" ]
[ "S5-5", "S5-8", "S9-1", "S9-7" ]
[ "Religion", "Activities" ]
[ "Religion/Islam", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Activities/Eating & Drinking", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
c18d240ed8b5e3f3
A pot poured out
Samuel Menashe
A pot poured out Fulfills its spout
[ "S9" ]
[ "S9-1", "S9-4" ]
[ "Activities" ]
[ "Activities/Eating & Drinking", "Activities/Jobs & Working" ]
f53391e135d527fb
Semele Recycled
Carolyn Kizer
After you left me forever, I was broken into pieces, and all the pieces flung into the river. Then the legs crawled ashore and aimlessly wandered the dusty cow-track. They became, for a while, a simple roadside shrine: A tiny table set up between the thighs held a dusty candle, weed-and-fieldflower chains place...
[ "S1", "S6", "S8", "S11" ]
[ "S1-3", "S8-1", "S11-3" ]
[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships", "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
a13dfd5160c8b3fc
dear love,
Barbara Jane Reyes
you dream in the language of dodging bullets and artillery fire. new, sexy diagnoses have been added to the lexicon on your behalf (“charlie don’t surf,” has also been added to the lexicon on your behalf). in this home that is not our home, we have mutually exiled each other. i walk down your street in the rain, an...
[ "S1", "S3", "S8" ]
[ "S1-1", "S3-4", "S3-11", "S8-1" ]
[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
fac0e259712d19fa
The Best Game the Fairies Play
Rose Fyleman
The best game the fairies play, The best game of all, Is sliding down steeples— (You know they’re very tall). You fly to the weathercock, And when you hear it crow, You fold your wings and clutch your things And then let go! They have a million other games— Cloud-catching’s one, And mud-mi...
[ "S11" ]
[ "S11-1" ]
[ "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Mythology & Folklore/Fairy-tales & Legends" ]
e24a56de68021de6
Lucks, My Fair Falcon
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Lucks, my fair falcon, and your fellows all, How well pleasant it were your liberty!Ye not forsake me that fair might ye befall. But they that sometime liked my company: Like lice away from dead bodies they crawl. Lo what a proof in light adversity! But ye my birds, I swear by all your bells, Ye be my friends, and so...
[ "S2" ]
[ "S2-5" ]
[ "Nature" ]
[ "Nature/Animals" ]
509899e7f72378ac
Barbershop Quartet, East Village Grille
Sebastian Matthews
Inside the standard lunch hour din they rise, four seamless voices fused into one, floating somewhere between a low hum and a vibration, like the sound of a train rumbling beneath noisy traffic. The men are hunched around a booth table, a fire circle of coffee cups and loose fists, leaning in around the thing the...
[ "S6", "S9", "S10" ]
[ "S6-7", "S9-1", "S10-3" ]
[ "Living", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Living/Parenthood", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
e62555e54845e0af
On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial
Linda Pastan
We invent our gods the way the Greeks did, in our own image—but magnified. Athena, the very mother of wisdom, squabbled with Poseidon like any human sibling until their furious tempers made the sea writhe. Zeus wore a crown of lightning bolts one minute, a cloak of feathers the next, as driven by earthly lus...
[ "S3", "S4", "S5", "S11" ]
[ "S3-8", "S5-4", "S11-3" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Religion", "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Mythology & Folklore/Greek & Roman Mythology", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]
520d5507eda5277f
Structure of Rime XXVIII: In Memoriam Wallace Stevens
Robert Duncan
“That God is colouring Newton doth shew”—William Blake Erecting beyond the boundaries of all government his grand Station and Customs, I find what I have made there a Gate, a staking out of his art in Inconsequence. I have in mind a poetry that will frame the willingness of the heart and deliver it over to ...
[ "S3", "S10" ]
[ "S10-6", "S10-8" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books" ]
cc4f228ed297cc02
To Whistler, American
Ezra Pound
On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery. You also, our first great, Had tried all ways; Tested and pried and worked in many fashions, And this much gives me heart to play the game. Here is a part that's slight, and part gone wrong, And much of little moment, and some few Perfect as Dürer! "In the Stud...
[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]
[ "S3-7", "S10-4", "S10-6" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture" ]
2aa504c7fa2048fc
At the Parrot House, Taronga Park
Vivian Smith
What images could yet suggest their range of tender colours, thick as old brocade, or shot silk or flowers on a dress where black and rose and lime seem to caress the red that starts to shimmer as they fade? Like something half-remembered from a dream they come from places we have never seen. They chatter and th...
[ "S2" ]
[ "S2-5" ]
[ "Nature" ]
[ "Nature/Animals" ]
b88703e134736370
The Fatal Sisters: An Ode
Thomas Gray
(FROM THE NORSE TONGUE) Now the storm begins to lower, (Haste, the loom of Hell prepare.) Iron-sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darken'd air. Glitt'ring lances are the loom, Where the dusky warp we strain, Weaving many a soldier's doom, Orkney's woe, and Randver's bane. See the grisly texture grow, ('Tis of human...
[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S11" ]
[ "S3-11", "S6-4", "S11-4" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
ab978826ce601a66
To Lysander
Aphra Behn
(On some Verses he writ, and asking more for his Heart than ‘twas worth.) I Take back that Heart, you with such Caution give, Take the fond valu’d Trifle back; I hate Love-Merchants that a Trade wou’d drive And meanly cunning Bargains make. ...
[ "S1" ]
[ "S1-6" ]
[ "Love" ]
[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated" ]
915f6490f896fc58
Sonnet to William Wilberforce, Esq.
William Cowper
Thy country, Wilberforce, with just disdain, Hears thee, by cruel men and impious, call'd Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose th' enthrall'd From exile, public sale, and slav'ry's chain. Friend of the poor, the wrong'd, the fetter-gall'd, Fear not lest labour such as thine be vain! Thou hast achiev'd a part; hast gain'd the...
[ "S3", "S4", "S11" ]
[ "S11-4" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Mythology & Folklore/Heroes & Patriotism" ]
22de1885062400f3
Wavelength
David St. John
They were sitting on the thin mattress He’d once rolled & carried up the four floors To his room only to find it covered nearly all Of the bare wood Leaving just a small path alongside the wall & between them was the sack Of oranges & pears she’d brought its neck Turned back to expose the colors of the fruit & ...
[ "S1", "S3", "S8" ]
[ "S1-1", "S1-4", "S1-6", "S3-4" ]
[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
254da8358f0859c7
Nina's Blues
Cornelius Eady
Your body, hard vowels In a soft dress, is still. What you can't know is that after you died All the black poets In New York City Took a deep breath, And breathed you out; Dark corners of small clubs, The silence you left twitching On the floors of the gigs You turned your back on, The balled-up fists of no...
[ "S3", "S4", "S10" ]
[ "S3-8", "S3-11", "S10-3" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
b89f2ab71bb0bd1e
The Suicide's Wife
Amy Gerstler
lives on an island of last-ditch attempts and ancient consolations after the shipwreck she swam ashore near naked hands scraped raw on coral bra and panties soaked through sand in her teeth lapped by aftermath lying exhausted slowly approaching the condition of music he loved her stubborn luster sure they ...
[ "S1", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S1-3", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-7" ]
[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
238c480b2e44d15f
viewfinder
Kirby Knowlton
i thought you had a summer home in barcelona because i had seen pictures of you in front of la sagrada família and knew your father had money. so maybe that’s why when i first met you i didn’t know what to say, someone too worldly to have anything to learn from me. then there was your halloween party w...
[ "S1", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]
[ "S1-1", "S10-6" ]
[ "Love", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
c9ef4b261c8be6d9
Running Away
Rosemary Tonks
In the green rags of the Bible I tore up The straight silk of childhood on my head I left the house, I fled My mother’s brow where I had no ambition But to stroke the writing I raked...
[ "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S6-3", "S8-3", "S8-5" ]
[ "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Living/Coming of Age", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
4a0a1751137f6619
from “The Desk”
Marina Tsvetaeva
Fair enough: you people have eaten me, I—wrote you down. They’ll lay you out on a dinner table, me—on this desk. I’ve been happy with little. There are dishes I’ve never tried. But you, you people eat slowly, and often; You eat and eat. Everything was decided for us back in the ocean: Our places of action, o...
[ "S6" ]
[ "S6-4" ]
[ "Living" ]
[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]
3c10c263eaf6b239
"Once there came a man"
Stephen Crane
Once there came a man Who said: “Range me all men of the world in rows.” And instantly There was a terrific clamor among the people Against being ranged in rows. There was a loud quarrel, world-wide. It endured for ages; And blood was shed By those who would not stand in rows, And by those who pined to stand in rows....
[ "S3" ]
[]
[ "Social Commentaries" ]
[]
618efdb83cbf7a6f
Falling: The Code
Li-Young Lee
1. Through the night the apples outside my window one by one let go their branches and drop to the lawn. I can’t see, but hear the stem-snap, the plummet through leaves, then the final thump against the ground. Sometimes two at once, or one right after another. During long moments of silence I wait and ...
[ "S2" ]
[]
[ "Nature" ]
[]
0689c5ae5bb5711b
For Love
Robert Creeley
for Bobbie Yesterday I wanted to speak of it, that sense above the others to me important because all that I know derives from what it teaches me. Today, what is it that is finally so helpless, different, despairs of its own statement, wants to turn away, endlessly to turn away. If the moon did not ... no...
[ "S1", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S1-6", "S8-7" ]
[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
d810d2d3a7d93e21
Hunting the Cotaco Creek
Charles Ghigna
His hand in hold so trigger-tight its blood believes in ghosts. It clings with finger set on steel and waits inside a dream of ducks. The twilight burns into a rising arc of eastern sky as sun reveals herself too proud and instantly receives full-face a splash of mallard flock. A shotgun blasts the yellow into s...
[ "S2", "S9" ]
[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S2-7", "S9-5" ]
[ "Nature", "Activities" ]
[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Activities/Sports & Outdoor Activities" ]
75dcd18ce0470972
One Girl
Sappho
I Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, Atop on the topmost twig, — which the pluckers forgot, somehow, — Forget it not, nay; but got it not, for none could get it till now. II Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found, Which the passing feet of the sh...
[ "S1" ]
[ "S1-6", "S1-7" ]
[ "Love" ]
[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Love/Romantic Love" ]
60bdc1ec5cf5944a
The Tummy Beast
Roald Dahl
One afternoon I said to mummy, “Who is this person in my tummy? “Who must be small and very thin “Or how could he have gotten in?” My mother said from where she sat, “It isn’t nice to talk like that.” “It’s true!” I cried. “I swear it, mummy! “There is a person in my tummy! “He talks to me at night in bed, “He...
[ "S8", "S9", "S10" ]
[ "S8-3", "S9-1", "S10-5" ]
[ "Relationships", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
008c179ef6bab740
Torch
Lisa Williams
when I beheld a fire win out against a hemisphere of shadows. —Inferno, Dante (tr. by Allen Mandelbaum) If I could hold a fire againsta hemisphere of shadows, hold itclose, not so that damagefinds my hands, but so fire scattersgalvanizing strands, my pupilsresponsive to the flames’ unbridled ...
[ "S5", "S6" ]
[ "S5-8" ]
[ "Religion", "Living" ]
[ "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
cc4705518594fb3d
Lies and Longing
Linda Gregg
Half the women are asleep on the floor on pieces of cardboard. One is face down under a blanket with her feet and ankle bracelet showing. Her spear leans against the wall by her head where she can reach it. The woman who sits on a chair won’t speak because this is not her dress. An old woman sings an Italian so...
[ "S3" ]
[ "S3-2", "S3-4" ]
[ "Social Commentaries" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
935c3bff1855cfca
"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe."
Mother Goose
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn't know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread; And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.
[ "S8" ]
[ "S8-3" ]
[ "Relationships" ]
[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
d1966279e6e7efcb
Ode to a Drone
Amit Majmudar
Hell-raiser, razor-feathered risers, windhover over Peshawar, power's joystick-blithe thousand-mile scythe, proxy executioner's proxy ax pinged by a proxy server, winged victory, pilot cipher unburdened by aught but fuel and bombs, fool of God, savage idiot savant sucking your benumbed trigger-finger g...
[ "S3" ]
[ "S3-11" ]
[ "Social Commentaries" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
de91dc7682a9a393
Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele
Charles Olson
I. Le Bonheur dogwood flakes what is green the petals from the apple blow on the road mourning doves mark the sway of the afternoon, bees dig the plum blossoms the morning stands up straight, the night is blue from the full of the April moon iris and lilac, birds birds, yellow flowers white flowers, the ...
[ "S2", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]
[ "S2-1", "S2-5", "S2-8", "S6-4", "S10-4" ]
[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Painting & Sculpture", "Nature/Spring", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
fc9c1d49de9c5967
Talbingo
Kenneth Slessor
‘Talbingo River’—as one says of bones: ‘Captain’ or ‘Commodore’ that smelt gunpowder In old engagements no one quite believes Or understands. Talbingo had its blood As they did, ran with waters huge and clear Lopping down mountains, Turning crags to banks. Now it’s a sort of aching valley, Basalt shaggy with sc...
[ "S2" ]
[ "S2-7" ]
[ "Nature" ]
[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
ee27c56df1383833
Rosalind’s Madrigal
Thomas Lodge
Love in my bosom like a bee Doth suck his sweet; Now with his wings he plays with me, Now with his feet. Within mine eyes he makes his nest, His bed amidst my tender breast; My kisses are his daily feast, And yet he robs me of my rest. Ah, wanton, will ye? And if I sleep, then percheth he With pretty flight...
[ "S1" ]
[ "S1-1", "S1-4", "S1-7" ]
[ "Love" ]
[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Romantic Love" ]
89acae4fa9b6cf71
Elegy V: His Picture
John Donne
Here take my picture; though I bid farewell Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell. 'Tis like me now, but I dead, 'twill be more When we are shadows both, than 'twas before. When weather-beaten I come back, my hand Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sun beams tann'd, My face and breast of haircloth, and my ...
[ "S1", "S2", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S1-3", "S1-6", "S8-7" ]
[ "Love", "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Heartache & Loss", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
a04246bb44b52dd8
Frequency Modulation
Raymond McDaniel
you are listening to the transmission via seed pearl, aural irritant clockwork and sparkgap ultra high and superlow precious black opal crystal and glass shudders and sings broad cast scattered the seeds among the apocrypha each agent at land or sea satellite or space direct conversion of royal register and groov...
[ "S3", "S6", "S10" ]
[ "S10-2" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Language & Linguistics" ]
42dbd720bcd0b753
Lisbon
Eliza Griswold
We meet midway to walk white cobbles under a fish-flesh gray sky. Europe is collapsing; we are collapsingalways and again no matter how hardwe love one another. I don’t understand our failure, where the feed loops back and spits us into another country, another junior suite reenacting this same,same beat of   a scene t...
[ "S1", "S6", "S8", "S9" ]
[ "S1-6", "S8-1", "S8-7", "S9-7" ]
[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities" ]
[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
75714dcad2c3c00e
Nothing
Ken Mikolowski
can replace poetry in my life and one day surely it will
[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]
[ "S10-6" ]
[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets" ]
ada22df88bdd5e29
Nobaude
Julian Talamantez Brolaski
I left you last evening without the usual privileges. A lot of what my body was was toxin, that held me aloft in idle price, far from the witless wood and Arcadia. There’s no more moon for birds to buss at over streetlamps. Urchins make their way in the mist, trolling for dinner rolls. How frugal my recent times were s...
[ "S3", "S10" ]
[ "S3-1", "S3-4", "S10-8" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
1a9e6d508d510dce
On A Diet
William Matthews
Eat all you want but don’t swallow it. —Archie Moore The ruth of soups and balm of sauces I renounce equally. What Rorschach saw in ink I find in the buttery frizzle in the sauté pan, and I leave it behind, and the sweet peat-smoke tang of bananas, and cream in clots, and chocolate. I give away the satisfaction...
[ "S9", "S10" ]
[ "S9-1", "S10-6" ]
[ "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Activities/Eating & Drinking" ]
64234de1fcd2d627
Future Memories
Mario Meléndez
My sister woke me very early that morning and told me “Get up, you have to come see this the ocean’s filled with stars” Delighted by the revelation I dressed quickly and thoughtIf the ocean’s filled with stars I must take the first flight and collect all of the fish from the sky
[ "S2", "S8" ]
[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S2-9", "S8-3" ]
[ "Nature", "Relationships" ]
[ "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
00867b1c56717448
The Redshifting Web
Arthur Sze
1 The dragons on the back of a circular bronze mirror swirl without end. I sit and am an absorbing form: I absorb the outline of a snowy owl on a branch, the rigor mortis in a hand. I absorb the crunching sounds when you walk across a glacial lake with aquamarine ice heaved up here...
[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S9" ]
[ "S2-7", "S9-7" ]
[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Activities" ]
[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
e45365739ad4e28e
Sunday Chimes in the City
Louise Imogen Guiney
Across the bridge, where in the morning blow The wrinkled tide turns homeward, and is fain Homeward to drag the black sea-goer’s chain, And the long yards by Dowgate dipping low; Across dispeopled ways, patient and slow, Saint Magnus and Saint Dunstan call in vain: From Wren’s forgotten belfries, in the rain, Down the ...
[ "S3" ]
[ "S3-1" ]
[ "Social Commentaries" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
f5a6660802855626
The Midnite Show
Jonathan Williams
Red-Wigglers, Night-Crawlers & Other Worms look out into the crapulous moonlight: figures of women cascading through the Sunday night; no beer in sight. I remember the Night-bloomingCereus by Dr. Thornton, Engraver, Blake’s patron, it hangs in the hall outside the bedroom swaying hungrily like these giant whi...
[ "S2", "S3" ]
[ "S2-2", "S3-9" ]
[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries" ]
[ "Nature/Summer", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life" ]
8def99f76b528cb7
Swifts
Gerald Stern
Bing Crosby died in Spain while playing golf with Franco but who could care less, and at this writing only a few of my dear ones are gone—ah I could make a sad list—the swifts, as if to prove a point, fly into the light and make a mockery out of our darkness. They scream for food but in the world of shadows they only m...
[ "S2", "S3", "S6" ]
[ "S2-5", "S3-11", "S6-4" ]
[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]
[ "Nature/Animals", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
4eca33f6f3f11b4a
Love in a Life
Robert Browning
I Room after room, I hunt the house through We inhabit together. Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her— Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume! As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew: Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather. II Y...
[ "S1", "S8" ]
[ "S1-4", "S1-9", "S8-5" ]
[ "Love", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Infatuation & Crushes", "Love/Unrequited Love", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
c82656d6f505e5e1
To an Isle in the Water
William Butler Yeats
Shy one, shy one, Shy one of my heart, She moves in the firelight Pensively apart. She carries in the dishes, And lays them in a row. To an isle in the water With her would I go. She carries in the candles, And lights the curtained room, Shy in the doorway And shy in the gloom; And shy as a rabbit, Helpful and shy. To ...
[ "S1", "S3", "S8" ]
[ "S1-7", "S3-4" ]
[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality" ]
437ac4ecc2229427
Deerfield:1703
Charles Reznikoff
Before the break of day the minister was awakened by the sound of hatchets breaking open the door and windows. He ran towards the door: about twenty Indians with painted faces were coming into the house howling. Three Indians took hold of him, and bound him as he stood in his night-shirt, and began to rifle th...
[ "S3", "S4" ]
[]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]
[]
46c34bc16b91c2ae
Luxembourg 1939
Léopold Sédar Senghor
This Luxembourg morning, this Luxembourg autumn, As I walk back and forth upon my youth, No strollers, no fountains, no boats in the water, No children, no flowers. Ah! September flowers and the sunburnt shouts of children Defying the coming winter. Now only two old fellows trying to play tennis. This autumn mor...
[ "S6", "S7", "S10" ]
[ "S10-5" ]
[ "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy" ]
a78a364303d3c61e
The Seagull
Norman Dubie
Chekhov, at Yalta A winter evening at the cottage by the bay, And I sat in the black and gold of the dead garden Wrapped in blankets, eating my sister’s suet pudding. The fountain was wrapped in dirty straw and Just below my property in the old Tartar cemetery There was a small funeral in progress: the widow Is ...
[ "S1", "S3", "S6", "S8", "S10" ]
[ "S3-4", "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-3", "S10-8" ]
[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
45442480b41e325d
Private and Profane
Marie Ponsot
From loss of  the old and lack of  the new From failure to make the right thing do Save us, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. From words not the word, from a feckless voice From poetic distress and from careless choice Exclude our intellects,  James Joyce. From genteel angels and apostles unappalled From...
[ "S5", "S10" ]
[ "S5-8", "S10-3", "S10-6", "S10-8" ]
[ "Religion", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Religion/The Spiritual" ]
80d8405b27947b63
Chronic
D. A. Powell
were lifted over the valley, its steepling dustdevils the redwinged blackbirds convened vibrant arc their swift, their dive against the filmy, the finite air the profession of absence, of being absented, a lifting skyward then gone the moment of flight: another resignation from the sweep of earth jackrabbit, swal...
[ "S1", "S6", "S7" ]
[ "S1-6" ]
[ "Love", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]
[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated" ]
00a2f8dc724ff7e4
Over the Heath
Rory Waterman
The truck grinds by and pumps out grit; the road glints and goes still. The barn owl that had not finished herereturns. But withits fill of scavenges, face ruffled in mulch, the vole is lost and safe so the silent specter flits away, its moon face tothe moonand rears unknown against a copse, claws tipped for the strafe...
[ "S1", "S2", "S3", "S8" ]
[ "S1-1", "S2-5", "S3-9", "S8-1" ]
[ "Love", "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Nature/Animals", "Social Commentaries/Rural & Country Life", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
c6a9d64461e878a9
Harold’s Chicken Shack #86
Nate Marshall
we’re trying to eliminate the shack.  — Kristen Pierce, Harold’s CEO & daughter of founder Harold Pierce when i went to summer camp the white kids had a tendency to shorten names of important institutions. make Northwestern University into NU. international relations into IR. everybody started calling me Nate. bef...
[ "S3", "S6", "S10" ]
[ "S3-8", "S10-5" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity" ]
6eb3a8b48922fb71
Low Impact Fat Burning Workout
Adam Fitzgerald
How does one grow the cojones to celebrate a Fudgsicle? I’ll tell you, and won’t begin by mentioning trellises forsooth. The items on the register are mechanisms inscrutable, yes. But they sway in the doubled-up air with a sense of lucidity, A kind of gong affect that chiggers as it steamrolls forth, Appraisals fo...
[ "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S6-8", "S8-3", "S8-5" ]
[ "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Home Life" ]
ecf9b4bf38e9b024
Hebrish
Gerald Stern
At the confluence of tea roses and Russian sage we made a right at the curved iron fence, one of my dead friends beside me explaining how trees communicated but I couldn’t understand a thing because it was all blurry —  the way it gets — and though I knew him well I couldn’t say for sure now whether it was Larry o...
[ "S2", "S3", "S6", "S8", "S9", "S11" ]
[ "S2-5", "S3-1", "S6-4", "S6-8", "S8-4", "S9-1", "S9-7", "S11-2" ]
[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Relationships", "Activities", "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Mythology & Folklore/Ghosts & the Supernatural", "Nature/Animals", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Youth", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Eating & Drinking", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
9e8e8a0ee74bd279
The Seafarer
Ezra Pound
May I for my own self song's truth reckon, Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days Hardship endured oft. Bitter breast-cares have I abided, Known on my keel many a care's hold, And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted, My feet were...
[ "S2", "S9" ]
[ "S2-6", "S9-7" ]
[ "Nature", "Activities" ]
[ "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
2bc7846bb966fd45
The Other Place
William Logan
The leaves had fallen in that sullen place, but none around him knew just where they were. The sky revealed no sun. A ragged blur remained where each man's face had been a face. Two angels soon crept forth with trays of bread, circling among the lost like prison guards. Love is not love, unless its will affords forgive...
[ "S5", "S6" ]
[ "S5-2", "S5-3", "S6-4" ]
[ "Religion", "Living" ]
[ "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
e28798fcde4ce1d3
Ladder
Atsuro Riley
[ Johnny Pep, P.O.W. ] When they flang me down that hole I clawed for home— When they sealed the seam with clay : sucked roots and ore— When my gut would grind would groan of lack I ’voked some meat— When I was blindered underground I seen our creek— When stench would stain the mind the mind would branch— When I ...
[ "S3", "S6" ]
[ "S3-11" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "Living" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict" ]
bc69c3c05b0b1612
Feel Me
May Swenson
“Feel me to do right,” our father said on his deathbed. We did not quite know—in fact, not at all—what he meant. His last whisper was spent as through a slot in a wall. He left us a key, but how did it fit? “Feel me to do right.” Did it mean that, though he died, he would be felt through some aperture, or by some ...
[ "S2", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S6-4", "S6-5", "S8-3" ]
[ "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Mourning", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
6dfc479e416696e6
Box of Cigars
Gerald Stern
I tried one or two but they were stale and broke like sticks or crumbled when I rolled them and lighting a match was useless nor could I put them back in the refrigerator— it was too late for that—even licking them filled my mouth with ground-up outer leaf, product of Lancaster or eastern Virginia, so schooled I...
[ "S3", "S4" ]
[ "S3-1", "S3-2", "S4-1" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
7a1871944b0047f2
Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, O sovran BLANC, The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substa...
[ "S2", "S5" ]
[ "S2-5", "S2-6", "S2-7", "S2-8", "S2-9", "S2-10", "S5-2", "S5-3", "S5-4" ]
[ "Nature", "Religion" ]
[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Animals", "Nature/Bodies of Water", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Nature/Stars, Moons, & Space", "Religion/Christianity", "Religion/Faith & Doubt", "Religion/God & the Divine" ]
c64acefee96e919e
The Little Mariner
Odysseus Elytis
Spotlight a SCENE ONE: Open-air court in the ancient city of Athens. The accused arrive and proceed among curses and cries of Death! Death! SCENE TWO: A jail in the same city, beneath the Acropolis, walls half-eaten by dampness. On the ground, a miserly straw mat an...
[ "S3", "S4" ]
[ "S3-6" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Incarceration & Justice" ]
d26eff4adf0f92bf
Lake Ontario Park
Sadiqa de Meijer
P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. — General Jeffery Amherst in a letter dated  July 16, 1763 Over the warming ground, swings toll like clock tower bells...
[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S6-6", "S8-3" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
ee72a6c1e3869c0d
Cicada
Fred Marchant
That whine is the sound of waste, rot, the frantic, grinding inability to attend to anything but sere thwarting of yourself, a dry corrosion which some say they know, but you and I— (my jaw clenched as youturn a page,you with a heart like drywall,I who wouldlace my arms with razors,then press themslowly to your...
[ "S1", "S2", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S2-5", "S8-1" ]
[ "Love", "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Nature/Animals", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
c02a981b371e48ad
Love Again
Philip Larkin
Love again: wanking at ten past three (Surely he’s taken her home by now?), The bedroom hot as a bakery, The drink gone dead, without showing how To meet tomorrow, and afterwards, And the usual pain, like dysentery. Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt, Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare, And me ...
[ "S1", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S1-6", "S8-1" ]
[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Relationships/Breakups & Separation" ]
2aa87521460f2f77
Gooseberry Fool
Amy Clampitt
The gooseberry’s no doubt an oddity,an outlaw or pariah even—thornyand tart as anykindergarten martinet, it can harborlike a fernseed, on its leaves’ under-side, bad news for pine trees,whereas the spruceresists the blister rustit’s host to. That veiny Chineselantern, its stolid jellyof a fruit, not only has no aroma b...
[ "S2", "S9" ]
[ "S2-8", "S9-2" ]
[ "Nature", "Activities" ]
[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Activities/Gardening & Farming" ]
d8e72651266fdd6c
In the Changing Light
Carter Revard
Brimming the trees with song they flood July, spill over into August pulsing lovecries, cicadas here—one that our cat brought me lay, legs folded neatly, on clear wings as on a shroud, green and white, fizzing now and then, but when I threw it spread wings and zagged in a wide curve into the sweetgum tree wher...
[ "S2", "S6", "S7", "S10" ]
[ "S2-2", "S2-7", "S2-8", "S10-8" ]
[ "Nature", "Living", "Time & Brevity", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Reading & Books", "Nature/Summer", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "Nature/Plants & Fungi" ]
f9f37342e6cff4c8
Fame Food & Liquor
Nate Marshall
we cut down 115th street for a quicker stroll past the pastor's house, vacant lot, liquor store. buses pointing out the hood & back. the route every morning goes by the liquor store. the loose Philly blunts and hard & dry. the sour mouth washed away by a dull gulp of liquor. store a honey bun in your fat back poc...
[ "S3" ]
[ "S3-1" ]
[ "Social Commentaries" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life" ]
751d519ac1b4dc62
Transitory, Momentary
Juliana Spahr
The Brent geese fly in long low wavering lines on their migrations. They start in western Europe, fatten in Iceland, then fly over the Greenland ice cap to Canada. They sometimes breed on the Arctic coasts of central and western Siberia and winter in western Europe, some in England, the rest in Germany and France. ...
[ "S3", "S4", "S9", "S10" ]
[ "S3-1", "S3-8", "S3-11", "S4-1", "S9-4", "S9-7", "S10-3", "S10-6" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Activities", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Race & Ethnicity", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Activities/Jobs & Working", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
ef06b3eee63dc327
Listening To A White Man Play The Blues
Silvia Curbelo
Pushing the seed into the ground isn't enough. Whatever blooms in this place is dumb and blind. Foreclosure is a one-eyed man. Nothing falls from a sky like this except a little rain, never enough rain. All night my wife looks down the neck of my guitar passing the bottle back and forth like a story she's been...
[ "S6", "S10" ]
[ "S6-5", "S10-3" ]
[ "Living", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Music", "Living/Mourning" ]
9a3e75e18cf4a553
Il Penseroso
John Milton
Hence vain deluding Joys, The brood of Folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys; Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams, ...
[ "S2", "S10", "S11" ]
[ "S2-7", "S10-5" ]
[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences", "Mythology & Folklore" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Philosophy", "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals" ]
ceb4bf26cd4916ab
Northern Farmer: New Style
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy? Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'em saäy. Proputty, proputty, proputty—Sam, thou's an ass for thy paaïns: Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs, nor in all thy braaïns. Woä—theer's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam; yon 's parson's 'ouse— Dosn't tho...
[ "S3", "S4", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S3-2", "S4-1", "S8-7" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Class & Labor", "History & Politics/Money & Economics", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
43ce9aa72640dfba
Across a Table
Steven Cordova
“I’m glad you’re positive.” “I’m glad you’re positive, too, though, of course, I wish you weren’t.” I wish you weren’t either is the response I expect, and you say nothing. And who can blame you? Not me. I’m not the one who’ll call you after dinner and a movie. You’re not the one who’ll call me. We both know ...
[ "S1", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S1-6" ]
[ "Love", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated" ]
75aeae14bb38355f
Prints
Joseph Bruchac
Seeing photos of ancestors a century past is like looking at your own fingerprints— circles and lines you can't recognize until someone else with a stranger's eye looks close and says that's you.
[ "S8", "S10" ]
[ "S8-3", "S10-7" ]
[ "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Photography & Film", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
2a6c0be4afcd453d
Dolores Park
Randall Mann
The palms are psalms. The nail salons, manicured lawns. This is some phase. The park has been razed. I miss the hip, hours at a clip, their dopey glazed Dolores haze (sorry). I worry about basic stuff: my graying scruff, Ambien addiction. Eviction ... — But there’s another story: this site was once a c...
[ "S3", "S6", "S7" ]
[ "S3-1", "S6-4" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]
[ "Social Commentaries/Cities & Urban Life", "Living/Death & Dying" ]
9d0e1d59da9a85e3
Alla Breve Loving
C. D. Wright
Three people drinking out of the bottle in the living room. A cold rain. Quiet as a mirror. One of the men stuffs his handkerchief in his coat, climbs the stairs with the girl. The other man is left sitting at the desk with the wine and the headache, turning an old Ellington side over in his mind. And over. H...
[ "S1", "S8", "S10" ]
[ "S1-6", "S10-3" ]
[ "Love", "Relationships", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Arts & Sciences/Music" ]
1d48a4f57bf44050
[into the strenuous briefness]
E. E. Cummings
into the strenuous briefness Life: handorgans and April darkness,friends i charge laughing. Into the hair-thin tints of yellow dawn, into the women-coloured twilight i smilingly glide. I into the big vermilion departure swim,sayingly; (Do you think?)the i do,world is probably made of roses & hello: (of...
[ "S6", "S7" ]
[ "S6-4" ]
[ "Living", "Time & Brevity" ]
[ "Living/Death & Dying" ]
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On PrEP or on Prayer [“spare us your burial rites”]
sam sax
spare us your burial rites spare us the first rib the flood, the resurrection spare us your dairy & meats your belief in a life after this one heaven’s a city we’ve been priced out of our mothers fled for more affordable children for the price of liver heaven wants nothing to do with pleasure on earth on t...
[ "S1", "S3", "S5", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S1-1", "S1-6", "S3-4", "S5-4", "S5-8", "S6-4", "S6-6", "S8-6" ]
[ "Love", "Social Commentaries", "Religion", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Desire & Erotic Love", "Love/Realistic & Complicated", "Social Commentaries/Gender & Sexuality", "Religion/God & the Divine", "Religion/The Spiritual", "Living/Death & Dying", "Living/Health & Illness", "Relationships/LGBTQ+" ]
48464fc91659e1a2
Sounding Chinese at Inspiration Point
Tom Clark
Nice spring day off big white cloud At Inspiration Point escaping time wars Poet takes book & wine bottle up into Mist Mountains Since only available agenda is rhyming with silence Seeking window of opportunity on a wall I disguise what I have to say by sounding Chinese Such as stars are now darker and farther aw...
[ "S2", "S10" ]
[ "S2-1", "S10-6" ]
[ "Nature", "Arts & Sciences" ]
[ "Arts & Sciences/Poetry & Poets", "Nature/Spring" ]
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February Snow
Francisco Aragón
The tint of the sky between sunset and night. And wandering with you and your nephew in that maze, half-lost—Madridof the Austrias—looking for Plaza of the Green Cross where, days before you arrived, an Opel with false plates was parked, its wheels straddling the curb, and so the van heading for the barracks that...
[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S8", "S9" ]
[ "S2-4", "S2-10", "S3-7", "S3-11", "S8-3", "S8-4", "S9-7" ]
[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Relationships", "Activities" ]
[ "Nature/Weather", "Nature/Winter", "Social Commentaries/War & Conflict", "Social Commentaries/Popular Culture", "Relationships/Family & Ancestors", "Relationships/Friendship", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
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Song (Wintah, summah, snow er shine)
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Wintah, summah, snow er shine, Hit's all de same to me, Ef only I kin call you mine, An' keep you by my knee. Ha'dship, frolic, grief er caih, Content by night an' day, Ef only I kin see you whaih You wait beside de way. Livin', dyin', smiles er teahs, My soul will still be free, Ef only thoo de comin' yeahs ...
[ "S1", "S2", "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S1-7", "S8-7" ]
[ "Love", "Nature", "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Love/Romantic Love", "Relationships/Marriage & Companionship" ]
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Despotisms
Louise Imogen Guiney
I: THE MOTOR: 1905 From hedgerows where aromas fain would be New volleyed odours execrably arise; The flocks, with hell-smoke in their patient eyes, Into the ditch from bawling ruin flee: Spindrift of one abominated sea Along all roads in wrecking fury flies Till on young strangled leaf, on bloom...
[ "S3", "S4" ]
[ "S4-1" ]
[ "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics" ]
[ "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]
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Moving Things
W. S. Di Piero
My aunts mentioned her just once,calling her my aunt, their sister,though she wasn’t. They mentionedthe vinyl recliner in the kitchen,the “I Like Ike” poster, the Sacred Heart,cabbage smells, sulfur, and shame.Before jolted by the gift that calledthrough but never really for her,she became unpleasantly calm.Moments lat...
[ "S6", "S8" ]
[ "S8-3" ]
[ "Living", "Relationships" ]
[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
2b659bf10d5afb97
“I used to love the run-up to a storm”
Melanie Braverman
I used to love the run-up to a storm, watching from the porch as the grown-ups hurried to bring things in, my mother rummaging through drawers for a flashlight, cursing: nothing was where it was supposed to be in our house. It can’t be so, but the only people I ever remember huddled in the basement were my mother and m...
[ "S8" ]
[ "S8-3" ]
[ "Relationships" ]
[ "Relationships/Family & Ancestors" ]
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The Other
Edward Thomas
The forest ended. Glad I wasTo feel the light, and hear the humOf bees, and smell the drying grassAnd the sweet mint, because I had comeTo an end of forest, and becauseHere was both road and inn, the sumOf what’s not forest. But ’twas hereThey asked me if I did not passYesterday this way? “Not you? Queer.”“Who then? an...
[ "S2", "S6", "S9" ]
[ "S2-8", "S9-7" ]
[ "Nature", "Living", "Activities" ]
[ "Nature/Plants & Fungi", "Activities/Travels & Journeys" ]
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John Sutter
Yvor Winters
I was the patriarch of the shining land, Of the blond summer and metallic grain; Men vanished at the motion of my hand, And when I beckoned they would come again. The earth grew dense with grain at my desire; The shade was deepened at the springs and streams; Moving in dust that clung like pillared fire, The gat...
[ "S2", "S3", "S4", "S6" ]
[ "S2-7", "S4-1" ]
[ "Nature", "Social Commentaries", "History & Politics", "Living" ]
[ "Nature/Landscapes & Pastorals", "History & Politics/Money & Economics" ]