By Andrew Frisardi
The city lies back in its winding-sheet
While little digits drum a steady beat
On roofs and terraces, …
While little digits drum a steady beat
On roofs and terraces, …
Explore Poems: Couplet
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- By Ada LimónMy brother holds a snake by its head. The whole
length of the snake is the length
of my brother’s body. The snake’s head
is held safely, securely, as if my brother
is showing him something in the distant high grass.
I... - By Ada LimónIs it okay to begin with the obvious? I am full of stones—
is it okay not to look out this window, but to look out another?
A mentor once said, You can't start a poem... - By John MurilloFor me, the movie starts with a black man
Leaping into an orbit of badges, tiny moons
Catching the sheen of his perfect black afro.
Arc kicks, karate chops, and thirty cops
On their backs. It starts with the swagger,
The cool lean into the... - By Paisley RekdalHow horrible it is, how horrible
that Cronenberg film where Goldblum’s trapped
with a fly inside his Material
Transformer: bits of the man emerging
gooey, many-eyed; bits of the fly
worrying that his agent’s screwed him—
I almost flinch to see the body later
that’s left its... - By K. IverAt my beloved’s burial,
I can’t see his body.
Only carnations. I hear
your name and my beloved’s
in the … - By Ama Codjoe1.
He had a caribou's face. Once he let me
lick the sadness there. It tasted of salt
and moss-covered rocks. He grew the beard
of a mountain goat. He scaled the face
of a mountain. Lying beside him, I stared
into the face of faceless... - By Rajiv MohabirLook at your feet, so beautiful. Do
not step on the ground, filth will smear them;
your future will fill with pricks. He with a
fearful heart, understand dead. Death will dance
on your head — lift your eyes and see. I am
its servant,... - By J. V. CunninghamI am no shepherd of a child’s surmises.
I have seen fear where the coiled serpent rises,
Thirst where the grasses burn in early May
And thistle, mustard, and the wild oat stay.
There is dust in this air. I saw in the heat
Grasshoppers... - By Ted HughesI climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,
Not a leaf, not a bird,—
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood
Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining... - By James K. BaxterThe wish to climb a ladder to the loft
Of God dies hard in us. The angels Jacob saw
Were not himself. Bramble is what grows best
Out of this man-scarred earth, and I don’t chop it back
Till the fruit have ripened. Yesterday I... - By Rachel Tzvia Back1
The cyclamens have a hard time
breathing in July.
The sun ravages them and earth
is too dry.
Still, try remembering March light
and the tight
deep-buried bulbs that somehow
do not die.
2
The children are scattered
like weeds.
The children are scattered dust-colored
dirt-covered
like weeds. Mid-summer grey reigns,
and rain
exists not... - By Trish Salahi.
Dog. The time you take home, the time you take away from home.
The insistence, the instance worried at with your thick tongue.
Stink. Because of what you found on the ground and put in your gut.
Harry. As in beset, or beast.... - By Marie HoweWhat we did to the earth, we did to our daughters
one after the other.
What we did to the trees, we did to our elders
stacked in their wheelchairs by the lunchroom door.
What we did to our daughters, we did to our... - By Genevieve ArlieThe geometer wishes he were David
cut from stone by lightning, his mind
gyring wide into figures of space
out of time, ever gauging the shock
of the word for the pathos, ever
slinging the rock of his wound
at the sugared glass of me.
I'd rather... - By Travis Chi Wing LauTwo fingers can turn
with ease to violence:
some things must not be
permitted to grow,
so I weed with the white lie
of remorse
the limp strands
that a woman who traded
her worn schoolbooks for refuge only
to grey in entrapment
has said means I was touched by... - By Ciaran CarsonI am being paraded through the streets with my head shaved,
with no memory of what I have done to deserve this.
I run a gauntlet of women who call me slut and whore,
staggering under their fusillade of accusation:
What stories did I... - By Countee CullenThey in their cruel traps, and we in ours,
Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours
Commiserating each the other’s woe,
To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.
Man could but little proffer in exchange
Save that his cages have a larger range.
That lion... - By Countee CullenWhat is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is... - By Sterling A. BrownI
When Ma Rainey
Comes to town,
Folks from anyplace
Miles aroun’,
From Cape Girardeau,
Poplar Bluff,
Flocks in to hear
Ma do her stuff;
Comes flivverin’ in,
Or ridin’ mules,
Or packed in trains,
Picknickin’ fools. . . .
That’s what it’s like,
Fo’ miles on down,
To New Orleans delta
An’ Mobile town,
When Ma...