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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...
The Time Traveler Finally Falls in Love
By T.S. Leonard
and it ends, of course, in fabulous heartbreak, like anything—
it’s not an if, but when—so the trick …
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…
Case Study
By Christian J. Collier
We were ravaged by our loss, our child.

In the shower, slightly past midnight,

after I’d covered the …
My Love You Died in My Dream Last Night
By Heather Christle
I did not know it was possible (your constancy
being among your chief characteristics)

and I, bereft…
Calling Things What They Are
By Ada Limón
I pass the feeder and yell, Grackle party! And then an hour later I yell, Mourning dove afterparty! (I call the feeder the party and the seed on the ground the afterparty.) I am getting so good at watching that...
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
...
god
By K. Iver
At my beloved’s burial,
I can’t see his body.

Only carnations. I hear
your name and my beloved’s

in the …
M A S H
By Kush Thompson
You will tell your babies, someday,
of the little house behind the wall clock.

They will love most the part about the window
sloped inside a six’s hollow, silhouettes

of Sundays, shadows having dinner.
How they walk along the edges of hands

at night, skipping pebbles...
Confession
By Countee Cullen
If for a day joy masters me,
Think not my wounds are healed;
Far deeper than the scars you see,
I keep the roots concealed.

They shall bear blossoms with the fall;
I have their word for this,
Who tend my roots with rains of gall,
And...
Fragment Thirty-six
By H.D.
I know not what to do—
My mind is reft.
Is song's gift best?
Is love's gift loveliest?
I know not what to do,
Now sleep has pressed
Weight on your eyelids.

Shall I break your rest,
Devouring, eager?
Is love's gift best?—
Nay, song's the loveliest.
Yet, were you lost,
What...
A Bird in Bishopswood
By John Tickhill
Translated By Eric Weiskott
In springtime, chief of all seasons,
       in May when new joys rise and flourish,
               the sun is lord and messenger at once and sends down to us
       to rouse our bodies and be merry:
humankind to...
A Bird in Bishopswood
By John Tickhill
In a sesone of somere þat souerayne ys of alle,
Þat was þe myry monþ of May when many myrthys spryng,
Þe sonne ys somnore and syre and sendyth tyl vs doun,
And byddyth vs bisy for to be oure bodys for to glade;
Man for to myrth hym in al maner wys,
Bestys for to buske ham on bentys tyl abyde,
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...
Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías
By Federico García Lorca
1.
La cogida y la muerte

A las cinco de la tarde.
Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde.
Un niño trajo la blanca sábana
a las cinco de la tarde.
Una espuerta de cal ya prevenida
a las cinco de la tarde.
Lo demás era muerte...
Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías
By Federico García Lorca
Translated By Sarah Arvio
1

The Goring and the Death

At five in the afternoon
At the stroke of five
The boy brought the white sheet
at five o’clock
A basket of lime all ready
at five o’clock
The rest was death and only death
at five o’clock

Wind carried off the cotton balls
at...
Today
By Victoria Chang
Jan.4.2022
A call is just a call. I pick it up.

Jan.6.2022
I lift blankets looking for my father.

Jan.7.2022
When I take off the patch, your eye is gone.
I spend the day in other people’s tears.

Jan.9.2022
Someone says your eyelid almost came off,
the doctors tried...
from “Lamentation”
By Rachel Tzvia Back
(1)
In worded a world
how broken
from beginning:

sunburst and blossoms all
subterfuges
of creation ruses

of beauty –
fragrant thicket no less
complicit:

we exist
in a shattered vessel
shards at our bare feet –

Someone’s mother cries out
Stand still or
you’ll get hurt – and

you try hard in the slivered
moment
not to...
Three Love Chants
By Rachel Tzvia Back
1

Dark cedars of dark lebanon.
the ash, the oak.
the elm. O,
the eucalyptus.

The apple (love) apple
(in the empty orchard)

(by the old graveyard)

2

Bone (like shell.
the colour of dry sand):
your breastbone (open
to touch. silver chain)
collar (twice broken.
where you are angles)
spine (a valley. damp.)

This...
- Love
- Heartache & Loss

Quick Tags

Explore Poems: Heartache & Loss

If Love Be Staunch

The Time Traveler Finally Falls in Love

Dirty Valentine

1 ["Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind"]

Case Study

My Love You Died in My Dream Last Night

Calling Things What They Are

I Love You, Love You Anyhow

god

M A S H

Confession

Fragment Thirty-six

A Bird in Bishopswood

A Bird in Bishopswood

Obituary

Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

Today

from “Lamentation”

Three Love Chants

poetry-magazineThe Time Traveler Finally Falls in Love

poetry-magazineCase Study

poetry-magazineMy Love You Died in My Dream Last Night

poetry-magazineI Love You, Love You Anyhow

poetry-magazineM A S H

poetry-magazineObituary

poetry-magazineToday

The Time Traveler Finally Falls in Love

Case Study

My Love You Died in My Dream Last Night

I Love You, Love You Anyhow

M A S H

Obituary

Today