By Colby Cedar Smith
I loved a preacher’s son.
Hide and seek
in labyrinthine basements
red roses and kissing.
A deep wooden…
Hide and seek
in labyrinthine basements
red roses and kissing.
A deep wooden…
Explore Poems: Faith & Doubt
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- By Kemi AlabiI used to pray to a man-faced god.
Kept his whip beneath my bed.
Set alarms for daybreak lashings.
Pressed white cotton to the flay.
Made flags of the bloodsoak.
Raised them from my window.
Called this worship.
Dreamt heaven a jury small as a county
where nobody... - By Christian J. CollierBetween us, there are one hundred one
umber haints in our home.
In bed, we discuss
our future, our children… - By Christian J. CollierI used to think
there was only one of You
before the miscarriage.
Now, I am not so sure.
Maybe there are… - By Sri ChinmoyUltimately everything
Becomes boring.
Even great miracles
Become boring.
Even the tremendous powers of… - By Paisley RekdalHow horrible it is, how horrible
that Cronenberg film where Goldblum’s trapped
with a fly inside his Material
Transformer: bits of the man emerging
gooey, many-eyed; bits of the fly
worrying that his agent’s screwed him—
I almost flinch to see the body later
that’s left its... - By Cyrus Console
Rotor wash, or the downward-flowing
Air by which our helicopters formed
Imprints in the jungle grass beneath
Now stands effectively for Vietnam
Because our understanding of that war
Omitted many things but not the wind
We bowed our heads and fled. In this case we
Refers effectively... - By BazeedIn the hiding
hour of autophagy
ghosts hang out all day and talk to us.
An archival haunting demanding tribute:
half a lime for breakfast every day.
بشرٌ يئنّونَ من الألمِ
human voices keening in pain
تُشعلُ أجسادَهُمَ النارُ
their bodies, consumed by fire
light up the... - By James K. BaxterThe wish to climb a ladder to the loft
Of God dies hard in us. The angels Jacob saw
Were not himself. Bramble is what grows best
Out of this man-scarred earth, and I don’t chop it back
Till the fruit have ripened. Yesterday I... - By T. S. EliotTwelve o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes... - By T. S. EliotI
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the... - By Mechthild of MagdeburgAh blessed absence of God,
How lovingly I am bound to you!
You strengthen my will in its pain
And make dear to me
The long hard wait in my poor body.
The nearer I come to you,
The more wonderfully and abundantly
God comes upon me,
In... - By St. John of the CrossI.
In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.
II.
In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.
III.
In that happy night,
In secret, seen... - By PatacaraWhen they plow their fields
and sow seeds in the earth,
when they care for their wives and children,
young brahmans find riches.
But I've done everything right
and followed the rules of my teacher.
I'm not lazy or proud.
Why haven't I found peace?
Bathing my feet
I... - By Destiny O. BirdsongAfter Donne
exeunt my heart, evangelical god, for you
are still frosted and feathered somewhere
in the eighties, still fed with the fates of fetuses,
“fairies,” and the virginities of fatherless girls.
you inhabited... - By Teresa Pham-CarsilloI crouch on grass with wet denim knees,
smoke in my eyes and a cat-scratched throat,
hands cupping the air around a fallen form:
brown and speckled white
girl bird with entrails as tangled... - By Kwame Opoku-DukuIt gets messy underneath the veil
when the strength it takes to be
can zap the moisture from your skin,
and all you want is to be held to the
breast of a beautiful being and never let go
while the beautiful people sing,
I hope... - By Michaella Batteni.
i am sitting in sunday school
in a handsewn pink dress and white lace tights
i am putting my hand down when we
learn about david and jonathan
i am not asking if king david was bi
i am taking communion
i am bowing my head... - By Julia EdwardsBehind me, a man retrieves waterfalls
of coins from a vending machine while
laundry owners fold cloth, hold a crying baby.
I’m across the street from a restaurant
we drove to in the haze of motion meant to
anticipate grief—gallons of water, a burnt
quesadilla. What... - By Bob KaufmanMy head, my secret cranial guitar, strung with myths plucked from
Yesterday's straits, it's buried in robes of echoes, my eyes breezeless bags, lacquered to present a glint . . .
My marble lips, entrance to that cave, where visions renounce renunciation,
Eternity...