Category

Metaphor

A comparison that is made without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”

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  • Poem

    Take the I Out

    By Sharon Olds
    But I love the I, steel I-beam
    that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
    into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
    a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
    Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
    marketed it, and bought bourbon, and...
  • Poem

    The City in Which I Love You

    By Li-Young Lee
    And when, in the city in which I love you,
    even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
    and I mount the…
  • Poem

    Deep Water Trawling

    By Jorie Graham
    The blades like irises turning very fast to see you completely—steel-blue then red where the cut occurs…
  • Poem

    The Covenant

    By Brenda Hillman
    Having stopped using dolphins to locate explosives in the Cold War
    they had 30 leftover dolphins.
    An officer…
  • Poem

    I Don‘t Like Poetry

    By Joshua Seigal
    I don’t like similes.Every time I try to think of onemy brain feels like a vast, empty desert;my eyes…
  • Poem

    Cyrus & the Snakes

    By Ada Limón
    My 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...
  • Poem

    The Magnificent Frigatebird

    By Ada Limón
    Is 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...
  • Poem

    Calling Things What They Are

    By Ada Limón
    I pass the feeder and yell, Grackle party! And then an hour later I yell, Mourning dove afterparty! (I call the feeder the party and the seed on the ground the afterparty.) I am getting so good at watching that...
  • Poem

    Gratitude

    By Cornelius Eady
    I’m here
                 to tell you 
                                 an old story. 
                                 This
    Appears to be
                     my work.
                                    I live
                                    in the world,
    Walk
             the streets…
  • Poem

    I’m a Fool to Love You

    By Cornelius Eady
    Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
    Some type of supernatural creature.
    My mother would tell…
  • Poem

    Mrs. Butterworth, Uncle Ben & Aunt Jemima

    By Frank X. Walker
    ...walk into a bar in America.
    Butterworth says, I’m being repackaged.
    Ben says, I’m being rebranded.
    Jemima says, I remember
    when they branded my mama     on her back.

    The bartender says, I could stand in the middle
    of Main Street and kill somebody
    and I wouldn’t...
  • Poem

    The Bug Wrangler

    By Mike Doughty
    He was jailed for cruelty to insects, and his agent wasn’t answering the phone, so he stayed awake in the cell all night, pictures jumping around his head of the cops and the blowdryer they took as evidence. He used...
  • Poem

    Self-Portrait as David Lynch

    By David Roderick
    I wear a flower in my lapel.
    I like the sweetness of its lie in my nose.
    A carnation, the fool’s flower,

    its heart a wilting empire.
    In late-night editing sessions,
    I imagine I’m planting flowers

    in the sockets of eyes. Whatever helps
    me reach our rigor...
  • Poem

    Marigolds of Fire

    By Ama Codjoe
    1.

    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...
  • Poem

    Crip vs. Crip

    By Walela Nehanda
    Crip (noun): slang for a disabled person/the whole of
         the disabled community/
    a school of thought
    Example: “I’m on crip time” 
    Meaning: Time bends differently when the universe that is
         my body dictates it 

    Crip (noun): a Black gang that originated in...
  • Poem

    XLIX. ("its a secrete")

    By Jos Charles
                its a secrete

                the grls speeching mye hole  /

                inn 2 the lindens  /  wee go out

            & playe footballe  /  verie nashenallie

            how wee leeve a stall  /  piteus

                        wen the grls

                        speech me  /
     
    this is how u make a porno   /    ...
  • Glossary Terms

    Metaphor

    A comparison that is made without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”
  • Poem

    Into the Weeds

    By Kevin Prufer
    The brutality of those two men
                                                     who broke into her apartment
    and murdered her boyfriend,
           ...
  • Poem

    I Have Wasted My Life

    By Justin Phillip Reed
    There it goes, thin thing,
                  cheshiring between trees
                                whose reaper-robes trail
                         ...
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