Poetry
Monsoon
To watch a compassionate sky with you, the palms bend and the wind chase the parakeets home.
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Poetry
Showing 241-264 of 671 pieces
Poetry
Baby womb tomb, catacomb write
Kiss the wall & pretend they’re here. Let them cry like those sweet cadaverous ways they might have. I am living this life & wondering about those miniature coffins.
Poetry
Cartography of Self (Leaving)
My traitor tongue whispers tales like wind through mountain hollows, hugging teeth like clouds that cradle snowy peaks. I’ve mapped this topography in abundance, traced familiar trails like lines inked by well-worn pen, stain left to pool at base of storied waters.
Poetry
Cancer Hair Cut
The salon is quirky— an indoor swing, a stuffed unicorn— silver and pink everywhere. My stylist meets me at the door tearful and subdued, as though about to prep a beloved aunt for burial.
Poetry
Some Boys
Trash-talk. Heart on one’s sleeves. Girls. Tattoos and scraped knees/ Random talk of beautiful, myth, foolish, heady girls/ more girls. Brittle desires unfurl.
Poetry
A Long Time Ago, at a McDonald’s in West Columbia, SC
The McDonald’s, bright and beautiful,is a coloring book filled in bya comic book artist. Yellow doesn’tstay inside the lines of the GoldenArches. Yellow doesn’t spill..
Poetry
Shaker Dreams
We should do everything as if we had a thousand yearsto live and as if we were going to die tomorrow.-Mother Ann Lee Down below..
Poetry
Outside the Laundromat: A Forward
Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, 2008 In mottled cotton, shambling toe-heel, toe-heel,Bass-ackwardsWith Zen concentration and breathing down the neck Of the square’sPath, sinking under the shards of bruised..
Poetry
Clothesline
I blink at sky, fiery yellowthis time of afternoon, as I unpinlaundry flapping in an intermentbreeze like flags of surrender. Clothes have wrapped around themselves,knotted into..
Poetry
An Ad I Wrote As A Child for a Ghost to Live in the Attic
I show my dead grandmothers the map I drew: here is woman, there is queer, here is my dot on gender ave. Wish you’d braid..
Poetry
What I Might Have Said
When I came to say goodbye,I brought a pocketful of poems,not mine, but some which I meant to comfort you,and I hope they did,hope you..
Poetry
Separation
In the spirit of all things we are not, I should be honest. Demand:take your cardigan off first, then my pantyhose, use your tongue to..
Poetry
Family Matter
Mother, this home is infectedwith demons, every rooma photograph of the tragedieswe performed many a night. Frightening is the bedroom whereI threatened to hit youif..
Poetry
Just Silence
On some nights, she doesn’t eat but instead writes about the food she really wants. Jae Yook Gui. Kimchi jigae. Foods representing her Korean heritage…
Poetry
Playing moonlight sonata in the morning
Forgive me –The day breaks and so do I. Someone played the moonlight sonata at11 in the morning and all I could think of was..
Poetry
Nameri
Many have asked me,‘Who is Nameri?’Even you, Nameri. In all the world,there is only one Nameri.Nameri, the place,Nameri, the woman.Nameri:‘From God, who protects her,’from me,..
Poetry
Abecedarian for A Child Brought Up with Magic
Architecture meant nothing— except blanket forts in August. I didn’t know aboutBrutalist monoliths, Renaissance churches & Gothic arcs. I only knew aboutCrafting glue. I smattered..
Poetry
4 poems by Diego Valeri in Translation
Diego Valeri is an Italian poet and literary critic affectionately remembered as ‘the poet of Venice’. Laura Valeri translates four of his poems here.
Poetry
Bird-Scattered
He broke my spine down the middle,folded me between vertebraelike a grocery listand carried me to the mountaintopwhere the ground is too hard to dig…
Poetry
America’s Coast Is Ragged
America’s coast is ragged at the bottomYou know this from maps, of courseBut you don’t know it until you fly down into Louisianaon a late..
Poetry
the lake
i walk into the lake and die therethe search team drags nothingbut water to the shore i was just a kid after alland my blood..
Poetry
Entre Rios
Born between rivers, you are infinitelycultivated. Sand backwashed from the ocean. Good silt down from the plains. Fermented in Disneyworld bacteria, embryos fasciculate in polluted foam…
Poetry
confession
Afterward, I weep into the mole It waits, in shadows of your wrist I smoothen it, lingering my teeth
Poetry
The Air We Lived In
I remember the air we lived in;the color of hyper, aqueous thin and glinting lifebut shake the razor globe, upend itand we were jim-jammed, shaky,unfounded,..