Audio
Poetry Off the Shelf
Cass Donish on grief rituals, putting on makeup, and letting in joy.
Category
Marriage & Companionship
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- PoemBy William OlsenObservation isn’t serious play. It is living serious. Same heron. It’s used to us, we are as twilight…
- PoemBy Brenda HillmanHaving stopped using dolphins to locate explosives in the Cold War
they had 30 leftover dolphins.
An officer… - PoemBy Cornelius EadySome folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell… - PoemBy Ama CodjoeI don’t like being photographed. When we kissed
at a wedding, the night grew long and luminous.
You unhooked my bra. A photograph
passes for proof, Sontag says, that a given thing
has happened. Or you leaned back to watch
as I eased the straps... - PoemBy Richard SikenDriving, dogs barking, how you get used to it, how you make
the new streets… - PoemBy DaMaris B. HillEvery wife must apologize for not being her husband’s
mother? But he will not forgive you. The absence
of his mother's kiss is the scar of repeated
wounding. He marries you too young, before
he littered his seeds along the road. This is why
he... - PoemBy Amber AdamsOn the morning after my death
it will seem like any other day
where you will both wake and sleep
and some events between,
but I will not be here
to change the mop pad, or order
the coffee pods before we run out.
I will be... - PoemBy C.L. O’DellOne day
either you
or me
as if drugged
will be staring
at a collage
of photos
in an unfamiliar
foyer,
the other
sleeping
in the next room over
inside a shiny box
like a saw-in-half trick
where everyone
seated in rows
is waiting for something
to happen.
I know
I’ll be stuck
in that first room
where old friends
who knew
you... - PoemBy J. V. CunninghamYou are the problem I propose,
My dear, the text my musings glose:
I call you for convenience love.
By definition you’re a cause
Inferred by necessary laws—
You are so to the saints above.
But in this shadowy lower life
I sleep with a terrestrial wife
And... - PoemBy Shira ErlichmanIn the cab, you turn pink from the streetlights checkering the window.
Just as palpable, you grow inner-blue with hush, staring somewhere
beyond the moon. Post-surgery, wrapped in a massive scarf,
sunglasses on, you fall suddenly asleep. I have no choice but to... - ArticleBy Julie IrigarayA hymn to female independence in the form of a withering critique of marriage
- PoemBy Brian GyamfiWhen Eloise tells Kofi she wants a divorce,
he sits naked on the kitchen floor skinning
an ox tongue to prepare Eloise’s favorite dish.
Blood trickles down his fingers onto the floor.
This is not in my head, in my head the bruised
organ is... - PoemBy Gabrielle BatesI am warned against marrying
early love. I am also told
it works out, sometimes,
for saplings can be braided like hair.
We will bend and grow together
while the centuried oaks at Toomer’s Corner
hollow, and the college tree poisoner
brags on the radio. Your ring... - PoemBy Isabel Duarte-GrayThe Devil made a meal of me and all
the Sundays I was sleeping.
To think of all the hours,
what I might've offered to the Book or of the Book
to needful ears grown up like burdock in our hag-rid
thorn-bit flock of town.
Sunday... - PoemBy Philip Metres1.
Outside, in a country with no word
for outside, they cluster on trees,
red bunches. I looked up
ryabina, found mountain ash. No
mountains here, just these berries
cradled in yellow leaves.
When I rise, you fall asleep. We
barely know each other, you said
on the phone... - PoemBy Susan BrowneI know something’s cooking
When you give me that look,
Your eyes appearing slightly crossed
Above your CPAP mask,
Which you start taking off,
The mask that saves you from death
By apnea but makes you look like a snorkeler
From dreamland or an escapee from a... - PoemBy Lauren WhiteheadOkay
Tell that to the palm
of this Black man’s hand
ever so slightly cupped
and carrying in its bend
the finger tips of another
Black man, both of them
arms stretching upward
toward the sky, measuring
their reach against one another
on a basketball court
in Brooklyn, in spring
Okay
Spring
And when... - PoemBy Charlotte PenceI. Only Use Light Years When Talking to the General Public
or to squirrels who test spring between two
branches. Or to a new mother saddened
by thoughts of earth and its death; sun's death;
her death. She watches her husband leave
the room for... - PoemBy Keetje KuipersUp the snow-slicked hill, the truck's tracks behind
us like the drag of our twin wedding trains,
until through the something-blue windowpane
the valley floor opened, clear as my mind
just after I'd lifted your veil's tulle blind.
The shotgun's recoil shivered its dull pain,
and...