Featured Poems

Poem of The Day
By Yvor Winters
This is the terminal: the light
Gives perfect vision, false and hard;
The metal glitters, deep and bright.
Great planes are waiting in the yard—
They are already in the night.

And you are here beside me, small,
Contained and fragile, and intent
On things that I...
Poem of The Day

From the magazine:Human Torpedo

By Jan Beatty
I was launched below the water’s surface towards a target.
I was born from a hired gun & wet desire.

5…
Poem of The Day
By Julian T. Brolaski
who by the time it arrived
had made its plan heretofore
stonewall   it had not a penny
thats not true it had several pennies
 
can you make a sovereign nation a national park how condescending
instead just tell them to honor the treaty
 
what can poetry...

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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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