When no one else would listen, Saint Anthony
preached seaward, his words fishnet for the lost
souls of the heretics. Caught up in despair, we plea
to the one who will listen: Saint Anthony,
please return Tía’s teeth or the misplaced key
to our... – by DEBORAH PAREDEZ | 3 Views added 2 years ago
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The past
will overtake
alien force
our house
formed
of my mind
to enter
explorer
in a forest
of myself
for all
my learning
Solitude
quiet
and quieter
fringe
of trees
by a river
bridges black
on the deep
... – by SUSAN HOWE | 66 Views added 2 years ago
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Make your mind what you want it to be.
—Curtis Mayfield
Tired of waiting for him, I think of a plan to stick it to the
Man—he waylaid me with promises: protection, his valuable keys.
Nights of seduction, I would glide to the curb in my... – by Lynn Crosbie | 8 Views added 2 years ago
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I. GERYON
Geryon was a monster everything about him was red
Put his snout out of the covers in the morning it was red
How stiff the red landscape where his cattle scraped against
Their hobbles in the red wind
Burrowed himself down in the red... – by ANNE CARSON | 36 Views added 2 years ago
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Gwendolyn Brooks
I. 1981
When I am so small Da’s sock covers my arm, we
cruise at twilight until we find the place the real
men lean, bloodshot and translucent with cool.
His smile is a gold-plated incantation as we
drift by... – by Terrance Hayes | 43 Views added 2 years ago
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You were a girl of satin and gauze
Now you are my mountain and waterfall companion.
Long ago I read those lines of Po Chu I
Written in his middle age.
Young as I was they touched me.
I never thought in my own middle age
I would have a... – by KENNETH REXROTH | 11 Views added 2 years ago
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Once & could-be-future girl, believe we’re not like you. Sure,
the pickup was tucked in dusk, shed all carefree w/ its sunburn
shimmer. Still nothing new to say about the creek, how reeds
get moony, or when we saw pelicans hold hands & gossip.
... – by Bradley Trumpfheller | 7 Views added 2 years ago
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Ashglory behind
your shaken-knotted
hands at the threeway.
Pontic erstwhile: here,
a drop,
on
the drowned rudder blade,
deep
in the petrified oath,
it roars up.
(On the vertical
breathrope, in those days,
higher than above,
... – by Paul Celan | 176 Views added 2 years ago
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In this house are things:
a boy, a lantern,
dead mice, silverware,
running water, screams.
There is filth in this house,
and there is a mop,
and the filth is mop,
and the mop is filth.
And there is me: mop and filth.
This house is a... – by SOMTO IHEZUE | 17 Views added 2 years ago
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Quick passage into
memory and behind
only blank spaces,
blue stain on pink
litmus or merely
known so closely
something falls away
receding from touch,
caught in the air
your fingers move,
agile water-fly
padding the surface
of... – by MICHAEL ANANIA | 9 Views added 2 years ago
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The wind ain’t never been nothing but breath.
Every hurricane season—rhapsody—Black bodies
emerge from water and wake in the trees. Somewhere,
stone cracks, and we hear: Stacy, a surname left
like a charred femur after a ritual. In search
of... – by CHRISTELL VICTORIA ROACH | 1 View added 2 years ago
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I hear you
Outside my winter studio
Moaning in the alley below my bedroom window
Calling for god the machine of all magics
All spells written on our bodies
All the right incense of rank summer
The flowers breaking through the confusion
You... – by Dan Taulapapa McMullin | 3 Views added 2 years ago
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Even though it’s May & the ice cream truck
parked outside my apartment is somehow certain,
I have a hard time believing winter is somehow,
all of a sudden, over — the worst one of my life,
the woman at the bank tells me. Though I’d like to be,
... – by Hieu Minh Nguyen | 30 Views added 2 years ago
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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... – by Salwa Al-Neimi | 20 Views added 2 years ago
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are ways to hold pain like night follows day
not knowing how tomorrow went down.
it hurts like never when the always is now,
the now that time won't allow.
there is no manner of tomorrow, nor shape of today
only like always having to... – by Raquel Salas Rivera | 118 Views added 2 years ago
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WHEREAS a string-bean blue-eyed man leans back into a swig of beer work-weary lips at the dark bottle keeping cool in short sleeves and khakis he enters the discussion;
Whereas his wrist loose at the bottleneck to come across as candid “Well at... – by Layli Long Soldier | 69 Views added 2 years ago
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This is no child that dances. This is flame.
Here fire at last has found its natural frame.
What else is that which burns and flies
From those enkindled eyes...
What is that inner blaze
Which plays
About that lighted face?...
This thing is... – by Louis Untermeyer | 23 Views added 2 years ago
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Twenty-four haiku, for each year he lived
when you die, i’m told
they only use given names
christopher wallace
no notorious
neither b.i.g. nor smalls
just voletta’s son
brooklyn resident
hustler for loose change, loosies
and a lil... – by Chinaka Hodge | 36 Views added 2 years ago
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Ahead and Around
Met, quarreled, quilled the bird of peace,
Untidied a pleasant plane.
Ahead accused Around of complete deceit,
Around accused Ahead of being discontented.
Neither listened to each.
Either lined on,
Making round straight and... – by Laura Riding Jackson | 47 Views added 2 years ago
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This may sound queer,
but in 1985 I held the delicate hands
of Dan White:
I prepared him for burial; by then, Harvey Milk
was made monument—no, myth—by the years
since he was shot.
I remember when Harvey was shot:
twenty, and I knew I was... – by Randall Mann | 85 Views added 2 years ago
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the gate—
work the lock with your fingers,
pull the smooth wire loop
over the top of the ʻōhia log post,
grasp the top rail with your right hand,
press your left booted heel
into the warm flank of your mount
the tap of a spur might... – by kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui | 12 Views added 2 years ago
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All you violated ones with gentle hearts;
You violent dreamers whose cries shout heartbreak;
Whose voices echo clamors of our cool capers,
And whose black faces have hollowed pits for eyes.
All you gambling sons and hooked children and bowery... – by Margaret Walker | 16 Views added 2 years ago
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I do not have any memories of Waikīkī ever being like this
not even in my father’s stories was she so utterly alone.
No sunburnt tourists, no convertibles on Kalākaua Ave.
not even a leathery beach boy to survey the shoreline.
... – by Christy Passion | 43 Views added 2 years ago
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first and most important
dream our missing friends forward
burn their reflections into empty chairs
we are less bound by time than the clockmaker fears
this morning all I... – by CAConrad | 146 Views added 2 years ago
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The trouble with geraniums
is that they’re much too red!
The trouble with my toast is that
it’s far too full of bread.
The trouble with a diamond
is that it’s much too bright.
The same applies to fish and stars
and the electric light.
... – by Mervyn Peake | 244 Views added 2 years ago
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So she went into the garden
to cut a cabbage-leaf
to make an apple-pie;
and at the same time
a great she-bear, coming down the street,
pops its head into the shop.
What! no soap?
So he died,
and she very imprudently married the Barber:
and... – by Samuel Foote | 15 Views added 2 years ago
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This morning I didn’t even honi you when I came in.
I just walked right by your shallow breath,
your eyes shut in the living room, and that bed
stuffed with pulu. And all the blurred words
projecting onto the backs of your eyelids.
Ke alanui... – by Donovan Kūhiō Colleps | 23 Views added 2 years ago
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13
Horse cart skirrs through the Upper East Gate
to the north beyond the city walls gaze
at the graves White poplars rustle xiao
xiao pine cypress line the wide road
Dead arranged under... – by Xiao Tong | 14 Views added 2 years ago
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amy winehouse
All song is formal, and you
Maybe felt this and decided
You’d be formal too. (The eyeliner, the beehive: formal.)
When a desire to escape becomes formal,
It’s dangerous. Then escape requires
Nullity, rather than a walk in... – by Kathleen Ossip | 19 Views added 2 years ago
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A tumbled down, and hurt his Arm, against a bit of wood.
B said, "My Boy, O! do not cry' it cannot do you good!"
C said, "A Cup of Coffee hot can't do you any harm."
D said, "A Doctor should be fetched, and he would cure the arm."... – by Edward Lear | 13 Views added 2 years ago
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The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy, O... – by Edward Lear | 50 Views added 2 years ago
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Badu: This cyclone of good fortune.
You handling?
Kendrick:
... – by Camonghne Felix | 27 Views added 2 years ago
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a meadow
after a snowfall
that a poem
hopes to... – by Francisco X. Alarcón | 125 Views added 2 years ago
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To see you standing in the sagging bookstore door
So filled me with chagrin that suddenly you seemed as
Pink and white to me as newborn, hairless mouse. For
I had hoped to delight you at home. Be a furl
Of faint perfume and Vienna’s cord like... – by Margaret Danner | 42 Views added 2 years ago
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Personification is inevitable. It goes hand
-in-hand with reinventing the wheel.
It reeks of misfortune. Gives a mess
its mass. Is why slime
never forgets
its shapelessness,
while memory
foam must, in what doesn’t leave
an... – by Rosebud Ben-Oni | 124 Views added 2 years ago
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Last night, when the moon
slipped into my attic room
as an oblong of light,
I sensed she’d come to commiserate.
It was August. She traveled
with a small valise
of darkness, and the first few stars
returning to the northern sky,
and my... – by Kathleen Jamie | 43 Views added 2 years ago
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When it comes to clothes, make
an allowance for the unexpected.
Be sure the spare in the trunk
of your station wagon with wood paneling
isn’t in need of repair. A simple jean jacket
says Hey, if you aren’t trying to smuggle
rare Incan coins... – by Aimee Nezhukumatathil | 18 Views added 2 years ago
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Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's
Insignia on our sneakers,
We outmaneuvered the footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost
Last... – by YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA | 288 Views added 2 years ago
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He glanced around to check if the treacherous gods
had really given him the reward promised for his accomplished song
and there she was, Eurydice restored, perfectly naked and fleshed
in her rhyming body again, the upper and lower smiles and... – by Albert F. Moritz | 12 Views added 2 years ago
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Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average... – by James Vincent Cunningham | 35 Views added 2 years ago
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go to Bible study every Sunday
and swear she’s still not convinced,
but she likes to be around people who are.
We have the same conversation
every few years—I’ll ask her if she stops
to admire the perfect leaves
of the Japanese maple
she... – by AMY UYEMATSU | 36 Views added 2 years ago
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There will be no edges, but curves.
Clean lines pointing only forward.
History, with its hard spine & dog-eared
Corners, will be replaced with nuance,
Just like the dinosaurs gave way
To mounds and mounds of ice.
Women will still be... – by Tracy K. Smith | 46 Views added 2 years ago
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Cinco de Mayo celebrates a burning people,
those whose land is starved of blood,
civilizations which are no longer
holders of the night. We reconquer with our feet,
with our tongues, that dangerous language,
saying more of this world than the... – by Luis J. Rodríguez | 22 Views added 2 years ago
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We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.
And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
... – by Mark Strand | 32 Views added 2 years ago
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Clean the spittoons, boy.
Detroit,
Chicago,
Atlantic City,
Palm Beach.
Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.
Hey,... – by Langston Hughes | 159 Views added 2 years ago
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Through darkness they came,
covered in ash, scarred by depths
and distance, they bore salt and fire, breath steaming
at edges of decks, hands clutching
railings, their bodies dizzied by the lurching vessel,
... – by BRIAN KOMEI DEMPSTER | 13 Views added 2 years ago
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There's a certain sadness to this body of water
adjacent to the runway, its reeds and weeds,
handful of ducks, the water color
manmade. A still life. And still
life's a cold exercise in looking back,
back to Florida, craning my neck
like... – by Randall Mann | 19 Views added 2 years ago
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If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise... – by Ross Gay | 126 Views added 2 years ago
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1
There is a gold light in certain old paintings
That represents a diffusion of sunlight.
It is like happiness, when we are happy.
It comes from everywhere and from nowhere at once, this light,
And the poor soldiers sprawled at... – by Donald Justice | 16 Views added 2 years ago
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Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle
in its ghost-part when the bark
slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against
each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.
When it falls apart, some feel the moondark air
drop its motes to the patch-thick... – by JOANNA KLINK | 66 Views added 2 years ago
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