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  • Poem

    Unromantic Love

    By J. V. Cunningham
    There is no stillness in this wood.
    The quiet of this clearing
    Is the denial of my hearing
    The sounds I should.

    There is no vision in this glade.
    This tower of sun revealing
    The timbered scaffoldage is stealing
    Essence from shade.

    Only my love is love’s ideal....
  • Poem

    The Metaphysical Amorist

    By J. V. Cunningham
    You are the problem I propose,
    My dear, the text my musings glose:
    I call you for convenience love.
    By definition you’re a cause
    Inferred by necessary laws—
    You are so to the saints above.
    But in this shadowy lower life
    I sleep with a terrestrial wife
    And...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Dyed Carnations

    By Robyn Schiff
    There’s blue, and then there’s blue.
    A number, not a hue, this blue
    is not the undertone of any one
    but there it is, primary.
    I held the bouquet
    in shock and cut the stems at a deadly angle.
    I opened the toxic sachet of flower...
  • Poem

    After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

    By Galway Kinnell
    For I can snore like a bullhorn
    or play loud music
    or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
    and Fergus will only sink deeper
    into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,   
    but let there be that heavy breathing
    or a...
  • Poem

    The House of Life: 19. Silent Noon

    By Dante Gabriel Rossetti
    Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
       The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
       Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
    'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
    All round our nest, far as...
  • Poem

    A Red, Red Rose

    By Robert Burns
    O my Luve is like a red, red rose
       That’s newly sprung in June;
    O my Luve is like the melody
       That’s sweetly played in tune.

    So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
       So deep in luve am I;...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Celebration for June 24

    By Thomas McGrath
    Before you, I was living on an island
    And all around the seas of that lonely coast
    Cast up their imitation jewels, cast
    Their fables and enigmas, questioning, sly.
    I never solved them, or ever even heard,
    Being perfect in innocence: unconscious of self;
    Such ignorance...
  • Poem

    Altruism

    By Molly Peacock
    What if we got outside ourselves and there   
    really was an outside out there, not just   
    our insides turned inside out? What if there   
    really were a you beyond me, not just   
    the waves off my own fire, like those waves off   
    the backyard grill...
  • Poem

    Tamer and Hawk

    By Thom Gunn
    I thought I was so tough,
    But gentled at your hands,
    Cannot be quick enough
    To fly for you and show
    That when I go I go
    At your commands.

    Even in flight above
    I am no longer free:
    You seeled me with your love,
    I am blind to...
  • Poem

    Finale

    By Pablo Neruda
    Matilde, years or days   
    sleeping, feverish,   
    here or there,
    gazing off,
    twisting my spine,   
    bleeding true blood,   
    perhaps I awaken   
    or am lost, sleeping:
    hospital beds, foreign windows,
    white uniforms of the silent walkers,
    the clumsiness of feet.

    And then, these journeys   
    and my sea of renewal:   
    your head on the pillow,   
    your hands...
  • Poem

    Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

    By William Shakespeare
    When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
    I all alone beweep my outcast state,
    And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
    And look upon myself and curse my fate,
    Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
    Featured like him, like him...
  • Poem

    Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

    By William Shakespeare
    Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
    Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
    And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
    Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
    And often is his...
  • Poem

    Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

    By William Shakespeare
    My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
    Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
    If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
    If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
    I have seen roses damasked, red and...
  • Poem

    Wedding Dress

    By Michael Waters
    That Halloween I wore your wedding dress,
    our children spooked & wouldn’t speak for days.
    I’d razored taut calves smooth, teased each blown tress,
    then—lipsticked, mascaraed, & self-amazed—
    shimmied like a starlet on the dance floor.
    I’d never felt so sensual before—
    Catholic schoolgirl & neighborhood...
  • Poem

    Moraine for Bob

    By Joanna Fuhrman
    You were never a man
    in the television sense of the word.

    I was never a wild Slinky
    in the sex-club sense of a toy.

    You were never a tobacco store
    in the Modernist sense of a trope.

    I was never a snowdrop
    in the candy store...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Postlude

    By William Carlos Williams
    Now that I have cooled to you
    Let there be gold of tarnished masonry,
    Temples soothed by the sun to ruin   
    That sleep utterly.
    Give me hand for the dances,            
    Ripples at Philae, in and out,         
    And lips, my Lesbian,         
    Wall flowers that once were flame.         

    Your hair...
  • Poem

    The Ache of Marriage

    By Denise Levertov
    The ache of marriage:

    thigh and tongue, beloved,   
    are heavy with it,   
    it throbs in the teeth

    We look for communion
    and are turned away, beloved,   
    each and each

    It is leviathan and we   
    in its belly
    looking for joy, some joy   
    not to be known outside it

    two by two...
  • Poem

    Chance Meeting

    By Susan Browne
    I know him, that man
    walking- toward me up the crowded street
    of the city, I have lived with him
    seven years now, I know his fast stride,
    his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrust   
    deep in his jacket pockets, hands
    that have known my body,...
  • Poem

    Superbly Situated

    By Robert Hershon
    you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to   
    right from the beginning—a relationship based on   
    good sense and thoughtfulness in little things

    i would like to be loved for such simple attainments   
    as breathing regularly and not falling down too...
  • Poem

    Love Explained

    By Jennifer Michael Hecht
    Guy calls the doctor, says the wife’s   
    contractions are five minutes apart.   
    Doctor says, Is this her first child?
    guy says, No, it’s her husband.

    I promise to try to remember who   
    I am. Wife gets up on one elbow,

    says, I wanted to get married.   
    It...
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