Poems
Poem of The Day
By Naomi Shihab Nye
In college, people were always breaking up.
We broke up in parking lots,
beside fountains.
Two people broke up
across a table from me
at the library.
I could not sit at that table again
though I did not know them.
I studied bees, who were able
to convey...
We broke up in parking lots,
beside fountains.
Two people broke up
across a table from me
at the library.
I could not sit at that table again
though I did not know them.
I studied bees, who were able
to convey...
Poem of The Day
By Linda Pastan
It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.
And so I smile, as if...
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.
And so I smile, as if...
Poem of The Day
By Jalen Skye Smallcanyon
i.
Blue luster radiates under Divine Darkness’s blanket.
Golden light glares from brightened hallways,
seeping through the threshold as shadows walk past
and eyelids close tighter. Fragments of broken glass
glisten while Spider Woman spins her crystalline webs—
soft knocks at the door, and Shinálí rouses me
from a deep slumber …
Blue luster radiates under Divine Darkness’s blanket.
Golden light glares from brightened hallways,
seeping through the threshold as shadows walk past
and eyelids close tighter. Fragments of broken glass
glisten while Spider Woman spins her crystalline webs—
soft knocks at the door, and Shinálí rouses me
from a deep slumber …
Browse All Poems
Featured This Month
Prose from Poetry Magazine
By Victoria Chang, Prageeta Sharma & Khaty Xiong
Featured Poetic Term
Glossary Terms
An eight-line stanza having just two rhymes and repeating the first line as the fourth and seventh lines, and the second line as the eighth. See Sandra McPherson’s “Triolet” or “Triolets in the Argolid” by Rachel Hadas.
Poem Guides
Poem GuideBy CM BurroughsThere is lightness within these downtrodden lives!
Poem GuideBy Austin AllenBridging two languages and generations in one intricate poem.
From the Poetry Magazine Archive
- PoemBy Carmen GiménezIn Lima, my mother screams from her bed and from a garden
and in the parlor of her nursing home, and… - PoemBy Nikki GiovanniI watched Mommy
Cook
Though I cooked
With Grandmother
With Grandmother I learned
To pluck chickens
Peel carrots
Turn chittlins inside out
Scrub pig feet
With Mommy I watched
leftovers for stew
Or vegetable soup
Great northern beans
Mixed collards turnips and mustard greens
Garlic cloves Bay Leaves
Very beautifully green
Stiff so fresh
With just a... - PoemBy Tayi TibbleRinsing the sea salt out of our bikinis
with the drinking water and getting a slap
upside the head from your mother with her
House & Garden magazine reserved especially
for fanning away mosquitoes and sighing
because we know that this is how
it’s always going...
Schools and Movements
- Glossary Terms
Confessional poetry
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Affrilachian poets
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Symbolist poets
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Imagism
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Slam