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If Love Be Staunch
By Countee Cullen
If love be staunch, call mountains brittle
Love is a thing will live
So long, my dear,––oh, just the little
While water stays in a sieve.

Yea, love is deathless as the day
Whose death the stars reveal;
And love is loyal all the way,
If treachery...
A Fairly Sad Tale
By Dorothy Parker
I think that I shall never know
Why I am thus, and I am so.
Around me, other girls inspire
In men the rush…
Notes on Devotion
By Caroline Harper New
A man by the name of Skinner becomes famous
for keeping caged
pigeons, whom his clock feeds or starves
at random. Their tiny twitching heads exaggerate until...
Guilt or Dread What An Amazing Instrument You Are
By Karen Houle
Pulling the foreign body off me— out of the dress up over my arms through the neckhole—
he says, You…
Dirty Valentine
By Richard Siken
There are so many things I’m not allowed to tell you.
I touch myself, I dream.
Wearing your clothes…
1 ["Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind"]
By Sappho
Translated By Anne Carson
Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,
child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you
do not break with…
Wulf ond Eadwacer
By Unknown
Lēodum is mīnum swylce him mon lāc gife;
willað hȳ hine āþecgan gif hē on þrēat cymeð.
Ungelīc is ū…
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…
[I like to think that when lovers say…]
By Tilsa Otta
Translated By Farid Matuk
I like to think that when lovers say they’ll love forever
That really their love does last forever
And…
- Love
- Break-ups & Vexed Love
I Love You, Love You Anyhow
By Cheryl Clarke
I could use a good ole R&B lyric
right about now to face this hard absence.
Only its terse verse can approximate
the testament.

Or the big arms of “these arms”
circling my wide waist
to close the space
after all the years
...
Obituary
By Salima Rivera
Died: Our vows to love, honor, and cherish.
Time: Left suddenly on a bright summer day
Cause of Death: misgivings, duplicity
and lack of faith.
The dearly departed left behind
a discarded lover
who has inherited an estate of left over memories
and a grievous soul.
The deceased...
In the House by the Sea
By Stacie Cassarino
I admired the sea, most days,
but not the heirs or millionaires
sailing in stiff-capped winds,
buttoned for summer. After all,
we were the spectacle, two women
touching in all the wrong places,
furnishing rooms with no children
in the hull of a house gone still.
She had...
Down the Lane
By Susan Browne
Down the lane winding between & behind houses, I find the cottage
I rented after I left Michael, he painted it bright yellow, decades later
it’s the same color, Mike with stars of paint in his curly black hair,
standing at the door,...
Self-Portrait with Sylvia Plath’s Braid
By Diane Seuss
Some women make a pilgrimage to visit it
in the Indiana library charged to keep it safe.

I didn’t drive to it; I dreamed it, the thick braid
roped over my hands, heavier than lead.

My own hair was long for years.
Then I became...
The Almost Love Poem of Eloise and Kofi
By Brian Gyamfi
When Eloise tells Kofi she wants a divorce,
he sits naked on the kitchen floor skinning
an ox tongue to prepare Eloise’s favorite dish.
Blood trickles down his fingers onto the floor.
This is not in my head, in my head the bruised
organ is...
Every Cell in this Country Looks Like a Choice You Can Walk In and Out Of
By Justin Phillip Reed
Does a man with no intentions know he means
you only harm? If lodged in the scar were a pearl
of such precise damage no tongue could lift it—

Either I am talking about my ex-lover or
I am talking about the president. Every
choice...
Wulf and Eadwacer
By Unknown
Translated By Roy M. Liuzza
It's as if someone should give a gift to my people—
they will kill him if he comes to the troop.
It is otherwise for us.
Wulf is on an island, I on another.
Fast is that island, surrounded by fen.
The men on the...
Portrait of a Lady
By T. S. Eliot
I

Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself — as it will seem to do—
With 'I have saved this afternoon for you';
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the...
Vietnam Ghost Story: Đà Lạt Lovers
By Hoa Nguyen
A student at the military school 1956
and a literary teacher at the nearby high school
fall in love Cute:

each day after school the military student left
a love letter on her door Thao (an orphan)
wrote back and left a love letter reply...
Poem for the Black Bird
By Alina Stefanescu
Today I wept with the kids as we drove
the dirt roads, grass greener than ever. I felt it
closed. The meadows smothered dozing cows in clover
and violet. A certain valence. It came so close
to something nameless. I needed the omnivorous
metaphor, a...

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poetry-magazineWulf ond Eadwacer

poetry-magazine[I like to think that when lovers say…]

poetry-magazineI Love You, Love You Anyhow

poetry-magazineObituary

poetry-magazineIn the House by the Sea

poetry-magazineDown the Lane

poetry-magazineThe Almost Love Poem of Eloise and Kofi

poetry-magazinePoem for the Black Bird

Wulf ond Eadwacer

[I like to think that when lovers say…]

I Love You, Love You Anyhow

Obituary

In the House by the Sea

Down the Lane

The Almost Love Poem of Eloise and Kofi

Poem for the Black Bird