Category

Elegy

A mournful, reflective poem lamenting the loss of someone or something.

Showing 1-20 of 265 results
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Self-Elegies 

    By Martha Silano
    Because why not? Why not take the smashed pinecone 
    of my life, render it in purple? Why not dream of…
  • Poem
    By Kevin Prufer
    The brutality of those two men
                                                     who broke into her apartment
    and murdered her boyfriend,
           ...
  • Poem
    By Layli Long Soldier
    Here, the sentence will be respected.

    I will compose each sentence with care, by minding what the rules of writing dictate.

    For example, all sentences will begin with capital letters.

    Likewise, the history of the sentence will be honored by ending each one...
  • Poem
    By Federico García Lorca
    1.
    La cogida y la muerte

    A las cinco de la tarde.
    Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde.
    Un niño trajo la blanca sábana
    a las cinco de la tarde.
    Una espuerta de cal ya prevenida
    a las cinco de la tarde.
    Lo demás era muerte...
  • Poem
    By Federico García Lorca
    Translated By Sarah Arvio
    1

    The Goring and the Death

    At five in the afternoon
    At the stroke of five
    The boy brought the white sheet
    at five o’clock
    A basket of lime all ready
    at five o’clock
    The rest was death and only death
    at five o’clock

    Wind carried off the cotton balls
    at...
  • Poem
    By Tracy K. Smith
    200 cows         more than 600 hilly acres

                property would have been even larger
    had J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
                    waste from its Washington Works factory
    where J was employed        
           ...
  • Poem
    By Lucie Brock-Broido
    How odd that she would die into an August
    night, I would have thought
    she would have gone out in a pale clear
    night of autumn, covered to the shoulder
    in an ivory sheet, hair
    fanned out across the pillow perfectly.
    Fame will go by, and,...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Abuelo,

    By Gabriel Ramirez
    I couldn’t be who I am
    today if it wasn’t for you
    being dead. It was time
    for glitter, nail polish, and locs.
    Glitter in my nail polish.
    Glitter in my locs.
    You wouldn’t have
    loved me loving myself;
    my joy rendered
    inconvenience.
    Sucked teeth keeping me
    your grandson.
    My love for...
  • Poem
    By Rachel Tzvia Back
    1
    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...
  • Poem
    By Rachel Tzvia Back
    In the south we are busy now
    slaughtering each other, there's no time
    for flowers––

    Slowly summer will
    scalding pass, autumn will
    arrive unnoticed.

    If only rain would come to
    send us all indoors––
    There to stand

    at ruined thresholds and
    watch the yellow sky
    weep and weep

    for all our dead.
  • Poem
    By Dylan Thomas
    Do not go gentle into that good night,
    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
    Because their words had forked no lightning they
    Do...
  • Poem
    By Tristan Tzara
    Translated By Heather Green
    then the clouds rolled in
    young is the night that is to say
    a cellophane softness ensued
    which blew across the sky like wisps of straw
    their firearms—a job well done
    young is the night

    and when the circus tent begins to blaze
    beneath the eyes speak...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    The Language of Dust

    By Assotto Saint
    where
    do you find
    strength
    to climb
    down the hill
    to your lover’s
    grave

    what
    do you bring
    but thirteen years
    of memories/

    how do you deal
    with his death
    when your gasps
    loom
    in the autumn air
    like circling crows
    spasms rock
    your body
    like squirrels
    shake the scarlet oak
    & purple dogwood
    branches
    while through the buzz
    of a helicopter
    the roar
    of an...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    picasso laughing

    By Patti Smith
    notebook
    divine love is so.
    invisible.

    notebook
    november 1. all souls day. rimbaud-o. go
    to hell. picasso knows. how he really fucking
    knew knows. where can he go now.

    notebook
    picasso hoax: don’t nobody tell when he dies.
    continue let time continue and move like myth.
    till suddenly somebody rings...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Elegy

    By David St. John
    Who keeps the owl’s breath? Whose eyes desire?   
    Why do the stars rhyme? Where does
    The flush cargo sail? Why does the daybook close?

    So sleep and do not sleep.

    The opaque stroke lost across the mirror,
    The clamp turned.
    The polished nails begin the curl...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Reading: An Elegy

    By Jeanne Larsen
    If  I claim this poem presents the tundra
    swans we saw at first light, you might,
    wrongly, think of  Yeats at Coole.

    Or 9-&-50 other suppositions. In fact,
    the blue slate of this lake reflected formerly
    some blockchain constellations. Alas

    now for mimesis; a star necklace...
  • Poem
    By Thylias Moss
    Because all energy went into making him breathe
    dawn was not noticeable

    though on the beach it was bigger than anywhere
    else, awakened stars stowing away in sand,

    low-tide sparkle of a cosmos the sea will take away,
    subtraction is basic, the boy's body when...
  • Poem
    By Audre Lorde
    I have not ever seen my father’s grave.

    Not that his judgment eyes
    have been forgotten
    nor his great hands’ print
    on our evening doorknobs
                one half turn each night
                and he would come
                drabbled with the world’s business   
                massive and silent
                as the whole day’s wish   
                ready to redefine
                each...
  • Poem
    By Cody Smith
                             Remember when we almost drowned in ’03, the woods
                so thick we only knew the rainstorm by sound of thunder
    and violence of the...
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