All Poems

I was pre-Pandoran once, clear & amok, scarlet free where scarcely …

I don't usually talk to strangers, but it is four o'clock and I can't get a cab. I need a cab because I have packages, but it's four o'clock and all the cabs are off duty. They are making a shift change. At the bus stop I say, It's hard to get a cab now. The woman standing next to me glances over without turning her head. She faces the street where cab after cab drives by with its light off. She says, as if to anyone, It's hard to live now. I don't respond. Hers is an Operation Iraqi Freedom answer. The war is on and the Department of Homeland Security has decided we have an elevated national-threat level, a code-orange alert. I could say something, but my packages are getting heavier by the minute and besides, what is there to say since rhetorically it's not about our oil under their sand but about freeing Iraqis from Iraqis and Osama is Saddam and Saddam is “that man who tried to kill my father” and the weapons of mass destruction are, well, invisible and Afghanistan is Iraq and Iraq is Syria and we see ourselves only through our own eyes and the British, but not the French, and Germany won't and Turkey won't join us but the coalition is inside Baghdad where the future is the threat the Americans feel they can escape though there is no escaping the Americans because war, this war, is about peace: “The war in Iraq is really about peace. Trying to make the world more peaceful. This victory in Iraq, when it happens, will make the world more peaceful.” …

My tongue is divided into two …

Nikita zips across stage …

especially the rarest kind / or the kind named Priscilla G & not drowning …

you put this pen …

Dear Writers, I’m compiling the first in what I hope is a series of publications I’m calling artists among artists. The theme for issue 1 is “Faggot Dinosaur.” I hope to hear from you! Thank you and best wishes. …

i want ! to be friends ! with katya ! i want …

can walk without …

one sketch …

This was something she could bear …

defunct …

Not ecstasy, not agony, not grief, …

water …

'...SO IN A SHAPELESSE FLAME', …

POBTRY …

I stood in a longhouse …

A hears by chance a familiar name, and the name involves a riddle of the past. …

lies on the shoulder …

+... AND WHITE THE WHITE INVOKES …

. +... THE KINGDOM OF THE AIR …

I …

I …

Niha hastsoí, nihidzanii …

The sea and a crescent strip of beach …

At night on the station platform, near a pile of baskets, a couple em- …

Be music, night, …

The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin …

Early to bed and early to rise: …

Fire in the window! flashes in the pane! …

'I love you,' he wouldn't say: it was against his philosophy; I-love-you …

'Tis a land of hospitable people, …

decreed my mother-in-law as my husband …

One morn I left him in his bed; …

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard …

The moon came late to a lonesome bog, …

An inland sea – blue as a sapphire – set …

I …

'TIS opposites entice, …

’TIS so much joy! ’Tis so much joy! …

’TWAS comfort in her dying room …

’TWAS later when the summer went …

'TWAS the old road …

'TWAS warm at first like us, …

When you see millions of the mouthless dead …

WHY do I love thee, Sir? …

You with the knees of a fish, …

“Faith” is a fine invention …

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - …

was soon so great that the enduring fame of several …

A Bird, came down the Walk - …

A bridge engineer, Mr. Crumpett, …

A bridge used to be there, someone recalled, …

We’re not sure you caught that, your …

A furnace in my father’s voice; I prayed for the coal stove’s …

A kiss on the forehead—erases misery. …

A lamb blinking over a patch of earth …

A monster owl …

A narrow Fellow in the Grass …

A new obsession. How to get out …

A not admitting of the wound …

A peanut sat on a railroad track, …

A snake eats a mynah …

"A"-SECOND MOVEMENT …

FOUNDED IN I912 BY HARRIET MONROE …

"K-19 …

LOUIS ZUKOFSKY …

LOUIS ZUKOFSKY …

"A" -9 …

Orange peels, burned letters, the car lights shining on the grass, …

After experience taught me that all the ordinary …

After great pain, a formal feeling comes - …

Again on this night like the previous at Lampedusa …

Ah Margarida, …

Alas, so all things now do hold their peace! …

All overgrown by cunning moss, …

All the hills and vales along …

Alone I stare into the frost’s white face. …

From childhood’s hour I have not been …

Why cry over dried flowers? …

Although the wind …

My uncle always insisted, …

That I would even use the phrase suggests …

Now the summer air exerts its syrupy drag on the half-dark …

- Plot summary of a 1925 novel in a …

from Sonnets, Second Series …

And then the sun came slicing sideways, …

And then we cowards …

Any fool can get into an ocean …

Are you the new person drawn toward me? …

As we are so wonderfully done with each other …

At night, she’d turn into a beastwoman …

At nights birds hammered my unborn …

Banish Air from Air - …

Because he swings so neatly through the trees, …

Because I could not stop for Death - …

Behold, the grave of a wicked man, …

Bicaa lulu’ laadu …

Birds small enough to nest in our young cypress …

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art— …

A football coach has taught this human flesh …

Cadi cayuuba di ra gucana’ya’ …

(Inscription on Emily Dickinson's tombstone) …

Cover art by Damon Locks for Carving Out Rights from Inside the Prison Industrial Complex (Hat & Beard Press, 2020), a collection of poems and essays about human rights accompanied by foam block prints of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by artists at Stateville Prison, edited by Tara Betts, Aaron Hughes, and Sarah Ross. This artwork appeared in Poetry’s December 2020 issue along with additional work excerpted from the book. …

Is there no when where this dream will rest? …

Crumbling is not an instant's Act …

Crying, my little one, footsore and weary? …

Cuando tenía seis años, ocho años, la abuela dictaminó vestido de liebre, que me librase de todo mal. Y, entonces, hizo un sacón de piel de liebre y lo ajustó, y, adentro, puso lápices y libros. …

czy świat umrze trochę …

Daddy Yankee escribió: …

Daddy Yankee wrote: …

from Sonnets, First Series …

Dear, if you change, I’ll never choose again; …

The place has carved out my sleep. I walk it every night. …

Do not embrace your mind’s new negro friend …

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave …

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short; …

The King’s Highway to the Dare-Not-Know …

Either she was foul, or her attire was bad, …

el desierto ahuyenta este campo sagrado de insinuaciones burdas, complejo de ciudad, de alma humana queriendo abigarrarse en hierro, cemento, vitrales, ósculos de santos, mosaicos medioevales. …

Most afternoons, I’d run laps through Parc Brassens …

engendro vacíos …

When Precious Jackson, a middle-aged Black woman …

escribo hasta perder el rostro …

"Est-elle almée?..." …

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. …

Every time I see something Beautiful …

Fame is the one that does not stay - …

I never knew the earth had so much gold— …

Fever your sex is a crab …

Fièvre ton sexe est un crabe …

My mother’s mother, widowed very young …

Fog against the prison fence. …

For all we have and are, …

For years my heart inquired of me …

For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers, …

Forever - is composed of Nows - …

On opening a long unopened book, …

From my first lessons, my ears held onto A and B. …

from the sustaining air …

from the waist–so that, turned the bulb that's oneself (thorax) …

FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE …

Glass was the Street - in Tinsel Peril …

My aunt, drowning in birdcalls, telephones …

God! How I hate you, you young cheerful men, …

Grief is a Mouse - …

i. …

That was the week …

In nyc, we stalked fishes …

This sunlight on snow. …

Hacer el amor llorando …

my name is Alice Elizabeth, so am I …

We keep saying “it’s ok it’s ok it’s ok” …

Fourteen and twelve, we were the despair …

Heaven is what I cannot reach! …

HEAVEN has different signs to me; …

“HEAVENLY Father,” take to thee …

Hey, diddle, diddle, …

Hickory, dickory, dock, …

Wyatt, with no insurance on his own head, …

Historical brutality, …

Hot-cross buns! …

How awkward when playing with glue …

How can I keep my maidenhead, …

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck …

from Sonnets, Second Series …

from Sonnets, Third Series …

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, …

Hurlements d’une montagne qui accouche …

Hush little baby, don't say a word, …

Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top, …

I am an open wound …

I am happy living simply: …

—Mahogany L. Browne, “On Meditation” …

I am not I. …

I am not separate from the likeness …

I am the last Napoleonic soldier. It’s almost two hundred years later and I am still retreating from Moscow. The road is lined with white birch trees and the mud comes up to my knees. The one-eyed woman wants to sell me a chicken, and I don’t even have any clothes on. …

I am the night …

I bring forth voids …

I broke the spell that held me long, …

living in actual ass under the stars Josie’s experiment …

I came upon the gnawed torso of a seal, silver fur agleam against the sand like a coin thrown down in a losing bet. What left this bounty of meat on the beach to rot? I watched the neighbor’s small boys skirt the dead seal the way sandpipers tease themselves in the surf, dodging up and back along the body’s shore. “It’s dead,” I told their father as he ambled behind them up the beach. He called to the little boys, his voice borne toward them on the mild breeze. “Boys, come back,” he said, and they did not. …

I cry your mercy—pity—love!—aye, love! …

I dwell in Possibility - …

i en annen tid …

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, …

I have a yong suster …

I have never needed God …

I have never seen "Volcanoes" - …

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - …

I know that all beneath the moon decays, …

I like to kiss scars …

I like to see it lap the Miles - …

I loved you first: but afterwards your love …

I never hear that one is dead …

I never hear the word “Escape” …

Like the pied piper …

I saw a man pursuing the horizon; …

I saw a man this morning …

I saw my Lady weep, …

I shall go back again to the bleak shore …

I stand alone at the foot …

I started Early - Took my Dog - …

I think I should have loved you presently, …

I used to love the run-up to a storm, watching from the porch as the grown-ups hurried to bring things in, my mother rummaging through drawers for a flashlight, cursing: nothing was where it was supposed to be in our house. It can’t be so, but the only people I ever remember huddled in the basement were my mother and me, suspended in that eerie half-light like bats. We’ve just spent a week like this, my mother perched in a chair above the water keeping watch for the next bad thing. We were happy so sometimes she’d let the vigil rest, the sentry of her shoulders easing to a more receptive pose, a quarter moon, until something called her back to the watch, mother first no longer but this white, foremost light. You can read by it. You can see. …

I want to sleep with you elbow to elbow …

his voice not so much hypnotic as reaching …

I was thinking: God has abandoned me, …

ELISE PASCHEN …

I wish I could remember that first day, …

I would not paint - a picture - …

I write until my face is erased …

I, being born a woman and distressed …

I'm Nobody! Who are you? …

The eye’s desire for relief. …

If Cynthia be a queen, a princess, and supreme, …

If no love is, O God, what fele I so? …

If no one ever marries me,— …

If you smell iodine, the captain is nearby. …

If you’re fond of road-blocks, this one can’t be beat: …

if there is a river …

Il n’y a pas de mots …

Imagine Lucifer …

in another time …

In Kyoto, …

You can’t imagine what it’s like here. In her past …

And it won’t be multiple choice, …

In this short Life that only lasts an hour …

It is spring again, spring so astonishingly familiar: so why is poetry choking on itself? The tree outside my window is committing plagiarism for the twentieth year in a row, adding green leaves to green leaves. The flowers of the cherry tree are no different from the first cherry tree; the same smell as yesterday permeates the air. And—though old people say this is tedious—my sister is kissing someone under the same tree where I used to kiss, …

Tonight my children hunch …

It sifts from Leaden Sieves - …

It was not Death, for I stood up, …

It’s going to hurt …

It’s raining, it’s pouring, …

It's such a shock, I almost screech, …

Itsy bitsy spider …

Jack be nimble, …

Je suis la nuit …

Je veux dormir avec toi coude à coude …

Jerry wants to argue about the existentialists again …

John Anderson my jo, John, …

Keyless, son of louts …

Kiss’d yestreen, and kiss’d yestreen, …

kniven suser lydløst …

Knocks on the door. …

La guerra nos declaraste …

La poesía es la gran aguafiestas …

Ladybird, ladybird, …

I see you in your backyard's lavender, …

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust; …

Let me not thirst with this Hock at my Lip, …

Let’s make love crying …

The problem with calling our leader a bugger, …

Oh, we fear our enemy’s mind, the shape …

Once I wasn’t always so plain. …

Loving you less than life, a little less …

The loop of rusty cable incises …

Lucretius grabbed my arm and led me …

Among other economies, I'm of two …

Make broadness broadness …

I find it helpful to imagine writing in a blizzard …

Mamá decía “coronas de novia,” y yo miraba los racimos apretados, de un blanco oscuro, adusto, retratos de antiguas bodas, demasiado serias, el novio tieso, la novia en caja, como una muñeca, con adornos de strass. …

Mama said “wedding crowns,” and I looked at the tight bouquets, dark white, forbidding, portraits of ancient weddings, too serious, the groom stiff, the bride boxed, like a doll, adorned with rhinestones. …

A part of, a part of love, hates, hates a part of. …

Many in aftertimes will say of you …

Mary had a little lamb, …

Mary, Mary, quite contrary …

Me gusta besar cicatrices …

“Mexican” …

Mine - by the Right of the White Election! …

Cirrus dispersed. As a black night grew colder, …

moje serce jest władcą absolutnym …

Also known as the brown-headed cowbird. Also known, like the cuckoo, as brood parasites. …

I know better than to be on the beach past midnight, …

Composed in the Tower before his execution …

Much Madness is divinest Sense - …

Must have let out a now-I’ve-seen-it-all sigh when, …

My hat …

First, I took off my jacket, …

my heart is an autocrat …

My mother is a fish …

My voice will weigh on you …

NATURE is what we see, …

WINDS OF MARCH …

Lack of listeners did not deter Louis Moreau Gottschalk, living on …

That day you tried to spell rhinoceros like …

No duelen las heridas …

No longer if we’ll get cancer but when, the doctor said. Now questions accrete around the irritant like pearl: Not when but how? Not how but whom? And then why. And then why not. I take a can of ashes to the beach and empty them into the wind. Outside the trash man collects bottles like a miser rattling his jewels, tossing them onto the growing heap. …

“No one cares less than I, …

No wound hurts …

No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved. …

Or the true feelings of those slaves who say they …

No, you’re right, I’m wrong ... …

Nord er ikke håndfast …

North is not final …

—Now let me tell you why I said that. …

Now goth sonne under wod: …

Now I knew I lost her - …

O Eritrea I'd fill the horn …

Of Glory not a Beam is left …

oh antic God …

Oh could I raise the darken’d veil, …

Oh fairest of the rural maids! …

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word! …

On a branch …

Once there came a man …

Other women’s husbands are complete sentences. …

Our sweet companions—sharing your bunk and your bed …

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me, …

The Santa Fe Depot's Moorish architecture of displacement— …

Pasaban murciélagos, prendidos a la ropa de las vacas, las gacelas; cuando pude quité alguno. …

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man, …

Pease porridge hot, …

Before boys, Susan drove me to work, for teriyaki takeout on Manchester past Lincoln Boulevard. Inseparable, we planned winter and Easter vacations. In the stairwell, I tried to talk. She cut me off. Her echo was loud when she said you can’t see yourself. We went to see Purple Rain. That fall, I had dinner with a boy. Susan was angry and told me I was wrong. I felt it was true. Was it that boy? That he had once dated someone Susan knew? We stopped talking. We were eighteen. A decade later, I turned a corner coming out of a bookstore and heard Susan laugh. I know that, I thought, remembering how she’d saved me from saying who I was. I circled back. She answered as she had before we fell out. She answered with shame. Do you remember how things ended, she asked, because of boys? …

Phoebus was gone, all gone, his journey over. …

Pity me not because the light of day …

It is a pleasure to welcome The Monthly Chapbook, a …

Poetry is the supreme killjoy …

Poetry rejoices even if the culture dies, …

Polly, put the kettle on, …

Por las noches ella se convertía en animala …

The thing inside the …

Museum of Modern Art, 1984 …

Publication - is the Auction …

MAURICE ENGLISH …

In my car, driving through Black Mountain, …

Quick! quick! …

“REMEMBER me,” implored the Thief— …

Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross, …

Ring around the rosy, …

from Sonnets, Second Series …

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - …

Shall I wasting in despair …

She had forgotten how the August night …

She steps into La Roue de la Fortune movie theater …

Shrieks from a mountain giving birth …

Sim, não tenho razão ... …

Sing a song of sixpence, …

So many gods! …

Soldier from the wars returning, …

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church - …

Some motionless conflict in the sky …

soy llaga abierta …

Star light, star bright, …

Still to be neat, still to be dressed, …

Still will I harvest beauty where it grows: …

Success is counted sweetest …

Surgeons must be very careful …

Te pesará mi voz …

In the old neighborhood, each funeral parlor …

Tego roku jest znowu wiosna, wiosna niesłychanie znajoma, dlaczego więc poezja dławi się własnym oddechem. Drzewo pod moim oknem popełnia plagiat już dwudziesty rok z rzędu do liści zielonych dodając zielone liście. Kwiaty czereśni tego roku nie są inne niż na początku drzewa czereśniowego, ten sam zapach co wczoraj przenika powietrze. I—chociaż ludzie starzy twierdzą, że to nużące—moja siostra całuje się pod drzewami tak samo, jak ja się całowałam; całuje się namiętnie popełniając w nieskończoność plagiat z pierwszego pocałunku. Jeszcze mogłabym przywołać trawy, wszystkie trawy, które wzeszły z nasion wiernie i nieustępliwie, te same, takie same jak kilka miesięcy temu. Życie nie obawia się popełniać plagiatu rodząc życie i zawsze jednakowo zdumiewa monotonna w swym uporze śmierć. Dlaczego więc potępiać wiersze o miłości, czemu mieć im za złe bezwstyd …

Tell all the truth but tell it slant - …

That day drew a broken tower …

Tulips panted against the wall. So much need to feed …

If you want to know the truth vs. if  you need …

The bats arrived, attached to the coats of calves, gazelles; when I could, I plucked one off. …

The Bustle in a House …

A Mardi Gras of primroses line my driveway. …

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! …

To cure a child of rickets, split a living …

the desert dispels this hallowed ground of coarse insinuations, complex of city, of human soul wishing to daub itself in iron, cement, stained glass windows, saintly osculations, medieval mosaics. …

The relatives are leaning over, staring expectantly. …

"HE PACT IS THE SWEETEST DREAM THAT …

KENNETH IRBY …

Sylvia Plath is setting my hair …

is not a man being swallowed by a fish …

The flower that smiles to-day …

Faith, if you can believe it, falls something …

the knife soars soundless …

the lilies of  the valley …

The marriage behaves, the business behaves, so what? …

The morns are meeker than they were - …

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants - …

The oil spill would advance …

God of lost souls, thou who are lost amongst the gods, hear me: …

The Poets light but Lamps - …

The pond is sheathed in ice, a duck troubles the reeds, the air around us still enough to hear the baby stir, but we don’t know where it is yet. By the force of our longing it is getting made for us, as thrilled people, palms full of seed, long for the chickadees to light, and they do. Light. …

The Props assist the House …

X. J. KENNEDY …

The ribs and terrors in the whale, …

The ship, solid and black, …

The Soul has Bandaged moments - …

The three little kittens, they lost their mittens, …

They bear, in place of classic names, …

The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish …

yells the man walking through the park, though the man …

There are no words …

There is a gold light in certain old paintings …

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile, …

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. …

There was this bear cam …

There's a certain Slant of light, …

There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House, …

They buried their son last winter. …

They shut me up in Prose - …

I …

from Sonnets, Third Series …

San Manuel the priest who kept …

This living hand, now warm and capable …

This spirit she came upon me as I slept — in such a way …