When a whole being
births into your hands
still you see your hands
no matter how unworldly
the beauty of the child
Then the universe of words
works past cosmology
to a useful name a handle
in English unlike the Indigenous
... – by HEID E. ERDRICH | 28 Views added 1 year ago
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In this kingdom
the sun never sets;
under the pale oval
of the sky
there seems no way in
or out,
and though there is a sea here
there is no tide.
For the egg itself
is a moon
glowing faintly
in the galaxy of the barn,
safe... – by Linda Pastan | 102 Views added 1 year ago
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Crows, crows, crows, crows
then the slow flapaway over the hill
and the dead oak is... – by ED OCHESTER | 23 Views added 1 year ago
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Man, the egregious egoist,
(In mystery the twig is bent,)
Imagines, by some mental twist,
That he alone is sentient
Of the intolerable load
Which on all living creatures lies,
Nor stoops to pity in the toad
The speechless sorrow of its... – by Elinor Wylie | 14 Views added 1 year ago
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It is Monday, I am twelve years old,
summer still feel like summer to me...
Ernest Green
My elementary school principal was white
I only had one white teacher, she was named
after the juice the... – by Afaa Michael Weaver | 44 Views added 1 year ago
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The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are... – by LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI | 70 Views added 1 year ago
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Diagram of a diagram: if properly decoded,
the first image which will appear
is a circle. Or, go backwards.
... – by Katie Willingham | 25 Views added 1 year ago
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Dear stranger, reading this small, true book
By a simple man who loved much and wasn't loved,
Merging your own life with the lines on this page,
Lines that remind you of some frightening shore,
Cold rains, shipwreck, and loud winds and waves,
... – by Stephen Stepanchev | 32 Views added 1 year ago
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I met a man a dying man and I said me too.
Met a dead man and I said me too. Must be
dead cuz the living can’t meet the dead and he
said me too. Did you know the dead can fall
in love he said. Fact. Did you know the dead
fall in love better... – by Diane Seuss | 284 Views added 1 year ago
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I am glad I resisted the temptation,
if it was a temptation when I was young,
to write a poem about an old man
eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.
I would have gotten it all wrong
thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend... – by Billy Collins | 175 Views added 1 year ago
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From the five good emperors
I have learned that there were five good emperors,
From the lemon tree I’ve planted
now I know that leaves unpummeled yet will drop,
From the clock, the time, it’s five p.m.,
from the sun the length of day,
... – by Lisa Jarnot | 9 Views added 1 year ago
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In a crumpled shirt (so casual for a god)
Bow tucked loosely under an arm still jittery from battle
He balanced himself on a flat boat painted black.
Each wave as I kneel closer a migrant flag
A tongue with syllables no script can catch.... – by Meena Alexander | 24 Views added 1 year ago
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A student at the military school 1956
and a literary teacher at the nearby high school
fall in love Cute:
each day after school the military student left
a love letter on her door Thao (an orphan)
wrote back and left a love letter... – by Hoa Nguyen | 69 Views added 1 year ago
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He hardly spoke any words
only two —
or you could call it one
the last thing
he said
was bye-bye
flight-feathers
veined and hairlike
with interlocking barbules
of sound
the bye-bye trapped
a breath of air
the two linked words
... – by Moniza Alvi | 87 Views added 1 year ago
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My thumb & index finger
frame a zero, then an 8
sleeping on its side, & I say,
Leonardo, show me how
the miraculous scapula
moves like a torn wing
half-fused, barely unstuck,
& a life dares to lift off.
Floating... – by YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA | 36 Views added 1 year ago
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They return to the site whence they came with eyes tearful,
with psalms trumpeting the air.
They stand ever so watchful;
guarding the graves of their ghosts and their kind.
They shall not forget. They shall not want.
They lie down in... – by Gerard Malanga | 7 Views added 1 year ago
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This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids... – by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. | 6 Views added 1 year ago
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I was born in the century of the death of the rose
when the motor had already driven out the angels.
Quito watched as the last stagecoach rolled away,
and at its passing the trees ran past in perfect order,
and also the hedges and houses of new... – by JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE | 9 Views added 1 year ago
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The rain falling on a night
in mid-December,
I pull to my father’s engine
wondering how long I’ll remember
this. His car is dead. He connects
jumper cables to his battery,
then to mine without looking in
at... – by Terrance Hayes | 200 Views added 2 years ago
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You came You came from
You came from your homes Your family Your
rivers creeks came
with you in your blood in your songs
the hawks flew ... – by Dean Rader | 16 Views added 2 years ago
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Is it only when you’re little
you know tigers live in your closet—
one with your shoes on his two ears,
another with your umbrella tied to his tail;
the rest wearing your red coat
and blue trousers with the red buttons?
Is it only when you’re... – by Diane Glancy | 14 Views added 2 years ago
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A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is... – by Gertrude Stein | 31 Views added 2 years ago
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It is a soft thing, it has been sifted
from the sieve of space and seems
asleep there under the moths of light.
Cluster of dust and fire, from up here
you are a stranger and I am dropping
through the funnel of air to meet... – by Anne Marie Macari | 16 Views added 2 years ago
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If I beg and pray you to set me free, then bind me more tightly still.
— Homer
I’m striving to be a better astronaut,
but consider where I’m coming from,
the exosphere,
a desk where the bluest air
thins to a lip. Impossible
to know the... – by Keith S. Wilson | 36 Views added 2 years ago
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It’s not spring yet, but I can’t
wait anymore. I get the hoe,
pull back the snow from the old
furrows, expose the rich dark earth.
I bare my hand and dole out shriveled peas,
one by one.
I see my grandmother’s hand,
doing just this,... – by Linda M. Hasselstrom | 12 Views added 2 years ago
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He said, ‘Tracking across space-time in their long-drawn elliptical
orbits, as many Comets as fish in the sea
are announcing their approach by a fall, from seven Radiants,
of meteors, bombarding Earth with heavenly
debris; myriads... – by Daisy Aldan | 13 Views added 2 years ago
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First
there was some other order of things
never spoken
but in dreams of darkest creation.
Then there was black earth,
lake, the face of light on water.
Then the thick forest all around
that light,
and then the human clay
whose blood we... – by LINDA HOGAN | 28 Views added 2 years ago
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They in their cruel traps, and we in ours,
Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours
Commiserating each the other’s woe,
To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.
Man could but little proffer in exchange
Save that his cages have... – by Countee Cullen | 20 Views added 2 years ago
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She sings the letters
to my daughter, strings them
marigolds into garlands
in the order of the alphabet
E, F, G, she
tugs the haitch, taut and long
far from the breast, a letter
the length of a coast, the width
of a gull’s caw, she now... – by Divya Victor | 5 Views added 2 years ago
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They throw stones at the little girls
Over and over they throw stones
They who are their fathers
They who are their brothers
___
They burn the veil of the little girl
The pink one, her favorite
Not too short, not too long
With gilded... – by Marilyn Chin | 31 Views added 2 years ago
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are some things up there
uptown
I want to see
I want to see I'm going to look at that and see
I want to go up and see
that show. That show
I went to see, I went to see.
There are some things up
there uptown
... – by Rebecca Wolff | 20 Views added 2 years ago
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I celebrate myself
And what I hereby cede you shall hereby cede,
For the country relinquished by me as good is relinquished by you
I loafe and convey to the United States
All the right, title and interest ... in my country, occupied and... – by Beth Piatote | 5 Views added 2 years ago
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It would be a quieter holiday, no fireworks
or loud parades, no speeches, no salutes to any flag,
a day of staying home instead of crowding away,
a day we celebrate nothing gained in war
but what we're given—how the sun's warmth
is democratic,... – by John Daniel | 32 Views added 2 years ago
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father, it was an honor to be there, in the dugout
with you, the glory of great black men swinging their lives
as bats, at tiny white balls
burning in at unbelievable speeds, riding up & in & out
a curve breaking down wicked, like a ball falling... – by QUINCY TROUPE | 20 Views added 2 years ago
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Dear Sirs:
I have been enjoying the law and order of our
community throughout the past three months since
my wife and I, our two cats, and miscellaneous
photographs of the six grandchildren belonging to
our previous neighbors (with whom we... – by June Jordan | 89 Views added 2 years ago
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Think not, when the wailing winds of autumn
Drive the shivering leaflets from the tree,—
Think not all is over: spring returneth,
Buds and leaves and blossoms thou shalt see.
Think not, when the earth lies cold and sealed,
And the weary birds... – by Harriet Beecher Stowe | 1,962 Views added 2 years ago
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You are the ice cream sandwich connoisseur of your generation.
Blessed are your floral shorteralls, your deeply pink fanny pack with travel-size lint roller just in case.
Level of splendiferous in your outfit: 200.
Types of invisible pain... – by Chen Chen | 118 Views added 2 years ago
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Herodotus says the king made a bowl to leave behind
the memory of a number. We don’t know the number.
We don’t know if it was divisible by two or three.
I want, at the moment, the number to indicate
a ratio, part of a proportion, because the... – by MICHELLE MITCHELL-FOUST | 3 Views added 2 years ago
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of the missing plastic is in the garage. when you ask to
write inside of my writing. when you drop me off in the
K-Mart parking lot and say you will be back later. the minimall
is close by a horse farm. at birthday parties he would
pull me... – by LAURA MARIE MARCIANO | 59 Views added 2 years ago
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Let my music be found wanting
in comparison
to yours (as it must)
let me be found loving
(as you were)
extravagantly the beautiful
let me find you
and the song (forever)
between us
in these terrible... – by Eloise Klein Healy | 5 Views added 2 years ago
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gin-heavy heaven, blessed ground to think gay & mean we.
bless the fake id & the bouncer who knew
this need to be needed, to belong, to know how
a man taste full on vodka & free of sin. i know not which god to pray to.
i look to christ, i... – by Danez Smith | 90 Views added 2 years ago
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by the time it arrived
had made its plan heretofore
stonewall it had not a penny
thats not true it had several pennies
can you make a sovereign nation a national park how condescending
instead just tell them to honor the treaty
... – by JULIAN TALAMANTEZ BROLASKI | 14 Views added 2 years ago
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As we
embrace resist
the future the present the past
we work we struggle we begin we fail
to understand... – by Layli Long Soldier | 114 Views added 2 years ago
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—for Antonio Gomez
. . . it seems like the whites don't want to get
involved with the Indians. They think we're bad.
We drink. Our families drink. Dirty. Ugly. And
the teachers don't want to help us . . . because they
don't understand. So we... – by CRISOSTO APACHE | 6 Views added 2 years ago
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I.
In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.
II.
In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
My house... – by St John of the Cross | 20 Views added 2 years ago
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For my great aunt & Jonathan Hicks
my first venture west was in Windows 98
or Independence, Missouri. class in the computer lab
& we were supposed to be playing some typing game
or another. the one i remember had a haunted theme.
ghosts... – by Nate Marshall | 5 Views added 2 years ago
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One
Green moves through the tops of trees and grows
lighter greens as it recedes, each of which includes a grey, and among the
greys, or beyond them, waning finely into white, there is one white spot,
absolute; it could be an egret or... – by COLE SWENSEN | 12 Views added 2 years ago
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Miep managed to snap them up for 27.50 guilders. Burgundy-colored suede and leather ...
— Anne Frank, Tuesday, August 10, 1943
When Miep took us home with her
She held us up in the air,
... – by Phillis Levin | 9 Views added 2 years ago
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Everything is perfect, dear friend.
—KEROUAC
Get some sleep.
Don't give advice.
Take care of your teeth and gums.
Don't be afraid of anything beyond your control. Don't be afraid, for... – by Ron Padgett | 108 Views added 2 years ago
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13.
After the dinosaurs fell
asleep, after those terrible lizards
began their slow decay into mythology,
Andre the Giant was there to cradle
their bodies in his soft hands and weep.
24.
Andre the Giant wrestled the... – by W. Todd Kaneko | 15 Views added 2 years ago
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