Category

Occasions

Showing 1-20 of 377 results
  • Poem
    By Laura Gilpin
    Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
    freak of nature, they will wrap his body
    in newspaper and carry …
  • Poem
    By Alexis De Veaux
    I pray for us
    as evening  glides over
    implore the gods
    pray for us         pray
    for this breathing
    planet the           milky way
    dreams us
    into galaxy
    no need for heaven this
    is how it started:
    way out beyond         we
    below
    the sweet of your lips
    dipped in promise
    anxieties claim us
    bark and skin
    what we...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Respite

    By Elane Kim
    It’s New Year’s.
    It’s New Year’s & the stars are white-hot & all your favorite dishes
    are flushed warm on the island: tteokguk for fortune, knife-cut noodles
    for longevity, persimmon pudding & a tin can of sardines.
    The nectarines are in season in our...
  • Poem
    By Patricia Smith
    Dear ferocious dreamer. Dear maven of song and surveyor of every flung star. Dear meandering romantic, audacious witness, dear listener with the whole of your covetous heart. Dear listener to the air’s brutal and gorgeous music, soft dancer to ballads...
  • Poem
    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
    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

    Today

    By Victoria Chang
    Jan.4.2022
    A call is just a call. I pick it up.

    Jan.6.2022
    I lift blankets looking for my father.

    Jan.7.2022
    When I take off the patch, your eye is gone.
    I spend the day in other people’s tears.

    Jan.9.2022
    Someone says your eyelid almost came off,
    the doctors tried...
  • Poem
    By Ben Purkert
    A week apart, our birthdays
    formed a bridge. They always fell

    at the best time: snow over flowers
    like thoughts scattered suddenly

    over the phone. You want to know
    his name? He was the beautiful friend,

    the loudmouth, the one whose voice
    shook the walls until the...
  • Poem
    By Dylan Thomas
    Do not go gentle into that good night,
    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
    Because their words had forked no lightning they
    Do...
  • Poem
    By Lucille Clifton
    won't you celebrate with me
    what i have shaped into
    a kind of life? i had no model.
    born in babylon
    both nonwhite and woman
    what did i see to be except myself?
  • Poem
    By Hart Crane
    I

    Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
    Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.   
    They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,   
    And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed   
    Gaily digging and scattering.

    And in answer to their treble interjections   
    The sun beats lightning...
  • Poem
    By Countee Cullen
    Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
       With the stars strung for a rattle;
    I cut my teeth as the black raccoon—
       For implements of battle.

    Some are swaddled in silk and down,   
       And heralded by a star;
    They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown   
       On...
  • Poem
    By Countee Cullen
    With two white roses on her breasts,
       White candles at head and feet,   
    Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
       Lord Death has found her sweet.

    Her mother pawned her wedding ring   
       To lay her out in white;
    She’d be so proud she’d dance and sing   
       To...
  • Poem
    By Anne Sexton
    Everyone in me is a bird.
    I am beating all my wings.   
    They wanted to cut you out   
    but they will not.
    They said you were immeasurably empty   
    but you are not.
    They said you were sick unto dying   
    but they were wrong.
    You are singing like a...
  • Poem
    By Phillip B. Williams
    A kiss. Train ride home from a late dinner,
    City Hall and document signing. Wasn't cold
    but we cuddled in an empty car, legal.
    Last month a couple of guys left a gay bar
    and were beaten with poles on the way
    to their car....
  • Poem
    By Alyse Knorr
    Between us bobs the baby, solemn in her infant wet suit.
    The pool is the only place where
                  screaming does not indicate terror.

    The neighbor’s pansy beds—O to lie down in those beds
    and doze. Greener than grass, says Sappho,
                  originator of envy.

    My...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Perfect Orange

    By Ching-In Chen
    Because today our hands unravel a perfect orange
    we each left our homes
    drank ripening light before boarding
    put our hands together into red soil

    we each left home
    to place new juice in our mouths
    put our hands together into red soil
    kept our eyes open...
  • Poem
    By Anne Sexton
    Gone, I say and walk from church,   
    refusing the stiff procession to the grave,   
    letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.   
    It is June. I am tired of being brave.

    We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
    myself where the sun gutters from the...
  • Poem
    By Bill Zavatsky
    That's what the first line says
    of the song I've been playing all summer
    at the keyboard—trying to get my hands
    around its dark, melancholy chords,
    its story line of a melody that twists
    up like snakes from melodic minor scales
    that I've also been trying...
  • Poem
    By Luci Tapahonso
    This morning we gather in gratitude for all aspects of sacredness:
    the air, the warmth of fire, bodies of water, plants, the land,
    and all animals and humankind.
    We gather to honor our students who have achieved the extraordinary
    accomplishment of earning doctoral or...
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