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From the magazine:
For my love at the time of our ceremony
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...
Voyages
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...
Epithalamium
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....
From the 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...
"You Don't Know What Love Is"
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...
From the magazine:
The Wedding Planners
By Gregory Pardlo
We need a preacher who’ll say up in here instead of herein.
Our vows should reference calla lilies and the snowy pistils they
jab ardently at our faces. Let’s place their linty, foul-mouthed kiss
at the center of satin table cloths white as bee...
The Wine of Love
By James Thomson (Bysshe Vanolis)
The wine of Love is music,
   And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
   Love sits long:

Sits long and ariseth drunken,
   But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth...
Wedding Poem
By Ross Gay
Friends I am here to modestly report
seeing in an orchard
in my town
a goldfinch kissing
a sunflower
again and again
dangling upside down
by its tiny claws
steadying itself by snapping open
like an old-timey fan
its wings
again and again,
until, swooning, it tumbled off
and swooped back to the...
Forever – is composed of Nows – (690)
By Emily Dickinson
Forever – is composed of Nows –
‘Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –

From this – experienced Here –
Remove the Dates – to These –
Let Months dissolve in further Months –
And Years – exhale in...
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;...
From the magazine:
Marriage
By Lawrence Raab
Years later they find themselves talking
about chances, moments when their lives
might have swerved off
for the smallest reason.
                                     What if
I hadn’t phoned, he says, that morning?
What if you’d been out,
as you were when I tried three times
the night before?
                           Then she tells...
The Canonization
By John Donne
For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
         Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
         With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
                Take you a course, get you a place,
               ...
From the 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...
The Whitsun Weddings
By Philip Larkin
That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of...
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...
A Maul for Bill and Cindy’s Wedding
By Gary Snyder
Swung from the toes out,
Belly-breath riding on the knuckles,
The ten-pound maul lifts up,
Sails in an arc overhead,
And then lifts you!

It floats, you float,
For an instant of clear far sight—
Eye on the crack in the end-grain
Angle of the oak round
Stood up...
One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII
By Pablo Neruda
Translated By Mark Eisner
I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t...
From the magazine:
[love is more thicker than forget]
By E. E. Cummings
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always...
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...
- Love
- Classic Love
- Romantic Love
- Nature
- Summer
- Anniversary
- Engagement
- Weddings
- Valentine's Day
- Verse Forms
- Sonnet
- + 4 more
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...

Quick Tags

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:For my love at the time of our ceremony

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:Perfect Orange

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:The Wedding Planners

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:Marriage

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:Celebration for June 24

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:[love is more thicker than forget]

From the magazine:
For my love at the time of our ceremony

From the magazine:
Perfect Orange

From the magazine:
The Wedding Planners

From the magazine:
Marriage

From the magazine:
Celebration for June 24

From the magazine:
[love is more thicker than forget]