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from Every Time I Ever Said I Want to Die Andrea Gibson […] a difficult life is not less worth living than a gentle one. Joy is just easier to carry than sorrow, and you could lift a city from how long you’ve spent holding what’s been nearly impossible to hold. This world needs those who know how to do that. Those who can find a tunnel with no light at the end of it and hold it up like a…
America Is Loving Me to Death Michael Kleber-Diggs acrostic golden shovel America is loving me to death, loving me to death slowly, and I Mainly try not to be disappeared here, knowing she won’t pledge Even tolerance in return. Dear God, I can’t offer allegiance. Right now, 400 years ago, far into the future―it’s difficult to Ignore or forgive how despised I am and have been in the Centuries I’ve…
Resolution 2 Layli Long Soldier ALT —- (Today’s poem is shared as an image, and includes a transcription/description of the poem as alt text. If you’re unable to see it, you can also find it transcribed below.) I was lucky enough to see Layli Long Soldier give a reading this year; she’s a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation (and quite charming). This is one of her poems in response to…
Peril Sonnet David Baker Where do you suppose they’ve gone the bees now that you don’t see them anymore four-winged among flowers low sparks in the clover even at nightfall are they fanning have they gone another place blued with pollen stuck to their bristles waiting beyond us s pring dwindle i s what we call it collapsing neonicotinoids high levels in pneu- matic corn exhaust” loss of habitat or…
Driving After Supper Marianne Boruch The old senselessness returns when driving in June the ribbon roads, low corn on either side, then woods, then meadows where sheep just stand there, slowly turn their heads. We are talking again about how cool it is. It could be Maine, I say for the 20th time, though usually this seems the other harder world—Indiana— birds with their wait wait wait high in…
A Strange Feeling Nâzim Hikmet “The plum trees are in bloom —the wild apricot flowers first, the plum last — My love, let’s sit face to face on the grass. The air is delicious and light —but not really warm yet— the almond shells are green and fuzzy, still very soft … We’re happy because we’re alive, We’d probably have been killed long ago if you were in London, if I were in Tobruk or on an…
Afro Morgan Parker I’m hiding secrets & weapons in there: buttermilk pancake cardboard, boxes of purple juice, a magic word our Auntie Angela spoke into her fist & released into hot black evening like gunpowder or a Kool, 40 yards of cheap wax prints, The Autobiography of Malcolm X , a Zulu folktale warning against hunters drunk on Polo shirts & Jägermeister, blueprints for building ergonomically…
from The Palace Kaveh Akbar I have a kitchen device that lets me spin lettuce. There is no elegant way to say this—people with living hearts that could fit in my chest want to melt the city where I was born. At his elementary school in an American suburb, a boy’s shirt says: “We Did It To Hiroshima, We Can Do It To Tehran!” · At his elementary school in an American suburb, a boy’s shirt says: “We…
Solitude Franny Choi I hope no one comes to my party, I said out loud, and meant it. In the email, I tried to sound too busy to care like, I’m having too much sex to waste time on proper punctua tion, pretending it’s not the other way around. Laura convinced me to jump in the Narragansett Bay on my birthday— February. There’s no good word for the opposite of fire, the ice’s…
Coconut Paul Hostovsky Bear with me I want to tell you something about happiness it’s hard to get at but the thing is I wasn’t looking I was looking somewhere else when my son found it in the fruit section and came running holding it out in his small hands asking me what it was and could we keep it it only cost 99 cents hairy and brown hard as a rock and something swishing around…
Give Me This Ada Limón I thought it was the neighbor’s cat back to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house but what came was much stranger, a liquidity moving all muscle and bristle. A groundhog slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still green in the morning’s shade. I watched her munch and stand on her haunches taking such pleasure in…
Riveted Robyn Sarah It is possible that things will not get better than they are now, or have been known to be. It is possible that we are past the middle now. It is possible that we have crossed the great water without knowing it, and stand now on the other side. Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now we are being given tickets, and they are not tickets to the show we had been thinking of, but…
Still Life with Invisible Canoe Idra Novey Levinas asked if we have the right To be the way I ask my sons If they’d like to be trees The way the word tree Makes them a little animal Dancing up and down Like bears in movies Bears I have to say Pretend we are children At a river one of them says So we sip it pivot in the hallway Call it a canoe It is noon in the living room We are rowing through a…
“God-With-Us” Reginald Shepherd after Jean Valentine What will I call you when you are gone? How will I know your name? Little star, reflection on the Sea of Galilee, a lantern in the wood, half-hid, half-seen? reflecting on what can’t be touched, be known? And the sheen of milk across the sky, the galaxy poured out like me, true sky, false dawn, and a young woman’s nipple, star of…
Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line George Starbuck for Helen Vendler O for a muse of fire, a sack of dough, Or both! O promissory notes of woe! One time in Santa Fe N.M. Ol’ Winfield Townley Scott and I … But whoa. One can exert oneself, ff , Or architect a heaven like Rimbaud, Or if that seems, how shall I say, de trop , One can at least write sonnets, a propos Of nothing…
Tulips Kevin Young What the dead want— shelter—opposable thumbs—to quit being compared to taxes, as if they can be evaded. Each April sadly sadly wiser, & alone they push up like tulips from the earth, perennial as pain. Trouble me again. —- Kevin Young is incredible at making his poems so, so spare, yet stuffed full of meaning. Every word brimming over. Some others: + Gutbucket + Boogaloo +…
You Are Who I Love Aracelis Girmay You, selling roses out of a silver grocery cart You, in the park, feeding the pigeons You cheering for the bees You with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding cats You protecting the river You are who I love delivering babies, nursing the sick You with henna on your feet and a gold star in your nose You taking your medicine, reading the magazines You looking…
Muffin of Sunsets Elaine Equi The sky is melting. Me too. Who hasn’t seen it this way? Pink between the castlework of buildings. Pensive syrup drizzled over clouds. It is almost catastrophic how heavenly. A million poets, at least, have stood in this very spot, groceries in hand, wondering: “Can I witness the Rapture and still make it home in time for dinner?” —- Also: + After…
My Perimenopausal Body Cistern Disappointing How Surprising Gabrielle Calvocoressi Bled all day. Stopped bleeding. Bled some more. Went to the doctor who reached inside the woman body I try to live with: make peace with: but also ignore. Sad tenant, my uterus. One day the tenant turns out to be the landlord. All day I wonder what it means, a clock I know as well as I know anything but also never…
The Darker Sooner Catherine Wing Then came the darker sooner, came the later lower. We were no longer a sweeter-here happily-ever-after. We were after ever. We were farther and further. More was the word we used for harder. Lost was our standard-bearer. Our gods were fallen faster, and fallen larger. The day was duller, duller was disaster. Our charge was error. Instead of leader we had louder,…