Featured Poems

Poem of The Day

From the magazine:

In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

By Eduardo C. Corral

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,
unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.

If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water. The silver letters

on his black belt spell Sangrón. Once,...
Poem of The Day
By Paul Muldoon
The snail moves like a
Hovercraft, held up by a
Rubber cushion of itself,
Sharing its secret

With the hedgehog. The hedgehog
Shares its secret with no one.
We say, Hedgehog, come out
Of yourself and we will love you.

We mean no harm. We want
Only to listen...
Poem of The Day
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?

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Featured Poetic Term

Glossary Terms
Bad verse traditionally characterized by clichés, clumsiness, and irregular meter. It is often unintentionally humorous. The “giftedly bad” William McGonagall was an accomplished doggerelist, as demonstrated in “The Tay Bridge Disaster”:

            It must have been an awful sight,
            To witness in the dusky moonlight,
            While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
            Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
            Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
            I must now conclude my lay
            By telling the world…

Poem Guides

From the Poetry Magazine Archive

  • Poem

    From the magazine:

    Turnstile Jumping

    By Janelle Tan
    the card machine is broken again.

    on the platform, a boy
    jumps the turnstile behind me.

    i notice him, walking toward the tracks
    with no look back.
    some days the turnstiles swing forward,
    and i don’t look back.
    some days by the emergency exit a hand on...
  • Poem

    From the magazine:

    notes on domesticity

    By t’ai freedom ford
    there are no spoons left      too much tasting & stirring      the eggs
    are cooked just so & speckled white with goat cheese but’ve gone
    cold, of course      as always      but the toast is warm & unburnt
    fake butter buttered      smeared with jammy fruit...
  • Poem

    From the magazine:

    Queer Appalachia

    By RK Fauth
    Take me to the holler.
    I want to see the cows
    Big Mamaw’s grave and
    something about tobacco fields.

    I don’t recall all you said at Barley’s, but you
    introduced yourself with an anecdote
    about toothbrushes made from
    chewed-up willow branches and
    coyotes loping along a
    wooded backyard—Uncle Clark’s
    and...

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