By Sappho
Translated By Anne Carson
]frequently ]for those I treat well are the ones who most of all ]…
Explore Poems: Blame
Showing 1-20 of 1,363 poems
- 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...
- By Toi DerricotteTo be born woman is to know—...
- By Georg TraklAt evening autumn forests drone
With deadly weapons, the golden plains
And the blue lakes, above which somberly
The sun rolls down. The night
Embraces dying warriors, the wild laments
Of their shattered mouths.
But in the willow valley silently
The outspilled blood collects, red clouds
In which... - By 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... - By Shanta LeeMama birthed me, Papa sold me in the land of weeping willows
Traces of sin trail miles across skin, I go by Never Forget
My body’s evidence of daddy’s pestilence spread across the land
His sin traces my skin, a path never forgotten
Nameless,... - By Gwendolyn BrooksJohn Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe,
all whitebluerose below his golden hair,
wrapped richly in right linen and right wool,
almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff;
almost forgot Grandtully (which is The
Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost
forgot the sculpture... - By Lorna Dee CervantesIt was never in the planning,
in the life we thought
we’d live together, two fast
women living cheek to cheek,
still tasting the dog’s
breath of boys in our testy
new awakening.
We were never the way
they had it planned.
Their wordless tongues we stole
and tasted the... - By Lorna Dee CervantesHe was a good boy
making his way through
the Santa Barbara pines,
sighting the blast of fluff
as he leveled the rifle,
and the terrible singing began.
He was ten years old,
hunting my grandpa’s supper.
He had dreamed of running,
shouldering the rifle to town,
selling it, and... - By Maxine KuminWell, she didn't kill herself that afternoon.
It was a mild day in October, we sat outside
over sandwiches. She said she had begun
to practice yoga, take piano lessons,
rewrite her drama rife with lust and pride
and so she didn't kill herself that... - By Frank ChipasulaThey ran out of cuffs, but
with apologies for the inconvenience,
they carefully wrapped barbed wire
round the wrists of the political prisoners
who, as if in a ritual stretched
their arms out to the young masters.
The spikes strayed into the flesh still
and the prisoners... - By Frank ChipasulaI have nothing to give you, but my anger
And the filaments of my hatred reach across the border
You, you have sold many and me to exile.
Now shorn of precious minds, you rely only on
What hands can grow to build your... - By Frank ChipasulaIn the sad hotel that drinks a swamp,
You breathe malarial air and enjoy
Frog music piped in from the dismal swamp.
Bits of your life measured out in bars,
Your thoughts gripped in clamps,
Your lips pierced through
With fish-hooks, locked shut,
Silenced over the stab... - By Frank ChipasulaDarkness chained me to my tattered reed mat;
The head of tyranny sprinkled
The soot of ignorance in my eyes, and sleep
Hammered my head with slogans,
Then a nightmare stumbled on my sprawled life,
Tripped on the alarm of my heart,
And set me singing... - By Donna Aza Weir-SoleyLights, camera, action!
Cue George Floyd
crying for his Black mother
for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
8 minutes and 46 seconds
Kumbaya Mummah
George Floyd’s Black life belonged to Derek Chauvin;
he took it because it was his to take.
in Amerikkka Black life is police property
Black... - By Jason McCallProbably one of those understated pieces. Simple silver. No ring
of laurels surrounding an emperor or an eagle
catching prey in its claws. No hours marked
by birthstones. I like to believe he cared
about showing his worth through the transitive properties
of the world.... - By Jason McCallI won’t care if Trump is halfway into his third term.
I won’t care if the world is half flood and half fire.
I won’t care if my great-niece learns to talk
about tigers the way I talk about the velociraptors
from Jurassic Park.
I... - By Jacqueline Allen TrimbleQ. How do others sin against you?
A. By cursing me—telling lies about me—or striking me.
Q. What must you do to those who thus sin against you?
A. I must forgive them. *
See, I learned my catechism well.
Learned to offer my cloak and... - By Jacqueline Allen TrimbleThis carpetbagging, gentrifying Aryan mother’s son cut
through our neighborhood buying houses. Called himself
a community developer, clipped all the live edges and liberty
neat and bound for himself and his posterity. Declaration of Independence
just doing what it do. And he was pursuing... - By Aliyah CottonIs prepare a lynching. It cannot intercept the man,
woman, or child as they make their way home.
It cannot drag them from that home,
heels in the dirt, body contorting with fear. It cannot
...