Category

Villanelle

A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas.. Read More
Showing 1-20 of 57 results
  • Glossary Terms
    A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas.
  • Poem
    By Kimiko Hahn
    The child looks out the window at the peeling barn.
    The mother sits on the roof and waves at her.
    The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove.

    The child has put away her Little Marvel Stove
    because her grandmother is baking real bread.
    The child...
  • Poem
    By Michael Luis Medrano
    Jesús José Medrano went away
    no more motel rooms to clean
    he asked my dad to take his place

    when Dad cried and looked the other way
    the mortician closed the coffin on the body
    Jesús José Medrano went away

    He wore his best gray suit...
  • 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

    poetry-magazine

    After Roethke

    By Randall Mann
    The vulgar ones will grind, and gnaw the bone,
    our semipublic faces caked with joy.
    The pure admire the pure, and live alone.

    If we could find a bias of our own,
    then we, the altar- and the mama’s boy—
    the vulgar ones—will grind and...
  • Poem
    By Raymond Antrobus
    My mother says my father had a heartless sense of humour.
    That winter she fell, ice on the road—

    She can't forget her bruise, his laughter.
    Not even his shadow helped her up or soothed her.

    He watched from the kerb—boozy red-eyed Dad—
    laughed when...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Out Walking

    By Jennifer Horne
    We don’t know how to behave.
    As in adolescence, we stand uneasily
    At awkward distances from one another.

    As in adolescence, we stand uneasily
    In this new space, revising
    All that we’ve been taught.

    In this new space, revising
    The meaning of breath, hand, touch, near,
    Our bodies...
  • Poem
    By Anthony Hecht
    We have set out from here for the sublime
    Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream;
    I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

    Is all the green of that enameled prime
    A snapshot recollection or a dream?
    We have set out from here...
  • Poem
    By George Bradley
    Suppose your mere existence sickened you,
    That human kind appeared the name of greed,
    Your horse a god compared to gods you knew,

    And suddenly a mercenary crew
    Of drunken thugs insisted you succeed
    To just the sort of sham that sickened you:

    Declared a god...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Daedal

    By A.E. Stallings
    To build a labyrinth it takes
    A twisted mind, a puzzled art,
    A fractal branching of mistakes.

    Drag out the shovels and the rakes,
    The spirit level, sacred chart.
    To build a labyrinth it takes

    Shadows, stones, a way that snakes
    And ladders to its shaky start;
    An...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Letter to My Blackout

    By Maria Hummel
    Dear sip, dear shotgun, dear pound:
    beneath the house, the kegs roll in;
    the party flips its switches down.

    When drunk comes, it comes as sound,
    a chord, a liftoff. I ride the rim,
    dear sip, dear shotgun, dear pound.

    He could be anyone, and he...
  • Poem
    By Veronica Forrest-Thomson
    It is the sense, it is the sense, controls,
    Landing every poem like a fish.
    Unhuman forms must not assert their roles.
     
    Glittering scales require the deadly tolls
    Of net and knife. Scales fall to relish.
    It is the sense, it is the sense, controls.
     
    Yet...
  • Poem
    By Diane Gilliam Fisher
    She cannot imagine it otherwise.
    She wakes in the morning and twists her ring,
    loves how every night in their bed he lies
     
    breathing warm in the dark and never shies
    away. He lets her talk, he lets her sing.
    She cannot imagine it otherwise.
     
    One...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Nursery

    By Kiki Petrosino
    We opened the door to the fairy house
    & took our tea on matching pebble seats.
    Somehow we got out of there alive

    though something crystalline of us
    remains in that dark, growing its facets.
    We opened the door to the fairy house

    at the oak’s...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    After the Dinner Party

    By Adrienne Su
    Dropping napkins, corks, and non-compostables
    into the trash, I see that friends have mistaken
    my everyday chopsticks for disposables,

    helpfully discarding them alongside inedibles:
    pork bones, shrimp shells, bitter melon.
    Among napkins and corks, they do look compostable:

    off-white, wooden, warped from continual
    washing — no lacquer, no ornament....
  • Poem
    By Richard Hugo
    The dim boy claps because the others clap.
    The polite word, handicapped, is muttered in the stands.   
    Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

    One whole day I sit, contrite, dirt, L.A.
    Union Station, ’46, sweating through last night.   
    The dim boy claps...
  • Poem
    By Anthony Lawrence
    My darling turns to poetry at night.
    What began as flirtation, an aside
    Between abstract expression and first light

    Now finds form as a silent, startled flight
    Of commas on her face — a breath, a word ...    
    My darling turns to poetry at night.

    When rain inspires...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Lullaby in Fracktown

    By Lilace Mellin Guignard
    Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes.
    You know that Mama loves you lollipops
    and Daddy still has a job to lose.

    So put on a party hat. We’ll play the kazoos
    loud and louder from the mountaintop.
    Child, when you’re sad put...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Gratuitous Oranges

    By David Shapiro
    Nothing rhymes in English with an orange.
    It stands alone, with luster in a far tinge.
    It stands alone, and seems to make a star cringe.

    On Saturday it’s blue like an orange
    Or like a surrealist sight rhyme in a garage.
    Nothing rhymes in...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Sound

    By Billy Ramsell
    To render the ocean one needs a whole year
    with Zoom in freezing fingers on a quarter-mile of coast.
    Sound is the one true vocabulary of nature

    and not the peacock-palette painters swear
    he uses for his best stuff, for his daily disposable frescoes.
    To...
Newsletters

Sign up for Poetry Foundation newsletters

Sign Up