Explore Poems: Arts & Culture

For someone to read a poem
again, and again, and then,

having lifted it from page
to brain—the easy part—

cradle it on the longer trek
from brain all the way to heart.

My sister found them.
 
Read them out loud.
She’s so proud,
 
she’s running to our parents
waving my poems in the air.
 
Doesn’t she know 
she’s waving my underwear?

I am hardly ever able
to sort through my memories
and come away whole
or untroubled.
It is difficult
to sift through the stones,
the weighty moments and know
which is rare gem,
which raw coal,
which worthless shale or slate.
So, one by one,
I drag them across the page
and...

I am a door of metaphor
waiting to be opened.
You’ll find no lock, no key.
All are free to enter, at will.
Simply step over the threshold.
Remember to dress for travel, though.
Visitors have been known
to get carried away.Illustration by Shadra Strickland

Apart, we are two quiet things:
a person and an instrument.
I in my body,
the clarinet in its case.

We are like good friends.
The clarinet takes nothing away from me.
It lets me borrow its notes.

If I loan it my breath,
I can speak with...

“That kid is weird,” says
the teacher, flipping her shining hair.
“I don’t know where he’s at.”
Indeed, he is quiet
in the way of a giraffe:
ears tuned to something we can’t hear.
He turns his sleepy eyes on me—
chocolate brown
with long, extraordinary lashes—
as I...

1

Standing outside
staring at a tree
gentles our eyes

We cheer
to see fireflies
winking again

Where have our friends been
all the long hours?
Minds stretching

beyond the field
become
their own skies

Windows   doors
grow more
important

Look through a word
swing that sentence
wide open

Kneeling outside
to find
sturdy green

glistening blossoms
under the breeze
that carries us silently

2

And...

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
       Of deities or mortals, or of both,
               In Tempe...

Books are door-shaped
portals
carrying me
across oceans
and centuries,
helping me feel
less alone.

But my mother believes
that girls who read too much
are unladylike
and ugly,
so my father's books are locked
in a clear glass cabinet. I gaze
at enticing covers
and mysterious titles,
but I am rarely permitted
to touch
the enchantment
of...

City life is a whirl of poetry readings
and forbidden tertulias, gatherings
where young and old, rich and poor,
male and female, dark and light—
runaway slaves and freed ones,
former masters and former
servants—all take turns
sharing secret verses
rooted in startling
new ideas.

Each evening, I go home
with...

On an island of music
in a city of drumbeats
the drum dream girl
dreamed
 
of pounding tall conga drums
tapping small bongó drums
and boom boom booming
with long, loud sticks
on big, round, silvery
moon-bright timbales.
 
But everyone
on the island of music
in the city of drumbeats
believed that only...

words
are birds
that arrive
with books
and spring

they
love
clouds
the wind
and trees

some words
are messengers
that come
from far away
from distant lands

for them
there are
no borders
only stars
moon and sun

some words
are familiar
like canaries
others are exotic
like the quetzal bird

some can stand
the cold
others migrate
with the sun
to the south

some words
die
caged—
they're difficult
to translate

and others
build...

If you can't wait to pick a book right now
And read it through until the very end
To find out who did what, and why, and how,
Then—lucky you!—you're a READER, my friend!
 

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis...

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell...

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be...

I came hungry
into the world,
and for that,
look no further
than my Pa.
A history buff
and a small-p
poet, he built
so many book-
shelves, our house
became the local
lending library.
At least to those few
who knew a book
to be a friend.

Carole Robertston,
Who loved books, earned straight A's,
And took dance lessons every Saturday.
Who joined the Girl Scouts and science club
And played clarinet in the high school band.
A member of Jack and Jill of America.
Carole, who thought she might want
To teach history...

She had the jitters
She had the flu
She showed up late
She missed her cue
She kicked the director
She screamed at the crew
And tripped on a prop
And fell in some goo
And ripped her costume
A place or two
Then she forgot
A line she knew
And went...