Explore Poems: Occasions

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For my love at the time of our ceremony
By Alexis De Veaux
I pray for us
as evening glides over
implore the gods
pray for us         pray
for this breathing
planet the           milky way
dreams us
into galaxy
no need for heaven this
is how it started:
way out beyond         we
below
the sweet of your lips
dipped in promise
anxieties claim us
bark and skin
what we...
Respite
By Elane Kim
It’s New Year’s.
It’s New Year’s & the stars are white-hot & all your favorite dishes
are flushed warm on the island: tteokguk for fortune, knife-cut noodles
for longevity, persimmon pudding & a tin can of sardines.
The nectarines are in season in our...
Dear Ferocious Dreamer
By Patricia Smith
Dear ferocious dreamer. Dear maven of song and surveyor of every flung star. Dear meandering romantic, audacious witness, dear listener with the whole of your covetous heart. Dear listener to the air’s brutal and gorgeous music, soft dancer to ballads...
Unromantic Love
By J. V. Cunningham
There is no stillness in this wood.
The quiet of this clearing
Is the denial of my hearing
The sounds I should.

There is no vision in this glade.
This tower of sun revealing
The timbered scaffoldage is stealing
Essence from shade.

Only my love is love’s ideal....
The Metaphysical Amorist
By J. V. Cunningham
You are the problem I propose,
My dear, the text my musings glose:
I call you for convenience love.
By definition you’re a cause
Inferred by necessary laws—
You are so to the saints above.
But in this shadowy lower life
I sleep with a terrestrial wife
And...
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...
Elegy for My Friend Who Was, among Other Things, an Orchestra Conductor
By Ben Purkert
A week apart, our birthdays
formed a bridge. They always fell

at the best time: snow over flowers
like thoughts scattered suddenly

over the phone. You want to know
his name? He was the beautiful friend,

the loudmouth, the one whose voice
shook the walls until the...
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
By Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do...
won’t you celebrate with me
By Lucille Clifton
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
Voyages
By Hart Crane
I

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
Gaily digging and scattering.

And in answer to their treble interjections
The sun beats lightning...
Saturday’s Child
By Countee Cullen
Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
   With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black raccoon—
   For implements of battle.

Some are swaddled in silk and down,
   And heralded by a star;
They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown
   On...
A Brown Girl Dead
By Countee Cullen
With two white roses on her breasts,
   White candles at head and feet,
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
   Lord Death has found her sweet.

Her mother pawned her wedding ring
   To lay her out in white;
She’d be so proud she’d dance and sing
   To...
In Celebration of My Uterus
By Anne Sexton
Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating all my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
They said you were immeasurably empty
but you are not.
They said you were sick unto dying
but they were wrong.
You are singing like a...
- Living
- Health & Illness
- Gratitude & Apologies
- Meters
- Free Verse
- Techniques
- Confessional
- Types/Modes
- Ode
- + 2 more
Epithalamium
By Phillip B. Williams
A kiss. Train ride home from a late dinner,
City Hall and document signing. Wasn't cold
but we cuddled in an empty car, legal.
Last month a couple of guys left a gay bar
and were beaten with poles on the way
to their car....
Quiescence
By Alyse Knorr
Between us bobs the baby, solemn in her infant wet suit.
The pool is the only place where
screaming does not indicate terror.

The neighbor’s pansy beds—O to lie down in those beds
and doze. Greener than grass, says Sappho,
originator of envy.

My...
Perfect Orange
By Ching-In Chen
Because today our hands unravel a perfect orange
we each left our homes
drank ripening light before boarding
put our hands together into red soil

we each left home
to place new juice in our mouths
put our hands together into red soil
kept our eyes open...
The Truth the Dead Know
By Anne Sexton
Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the...
"You Don't Know What Love Is"
By Bill Zavatsky
That's what the first line says
of the song I've been playing all summer
at the keyboard—trying to get my hands
around its dark, melancholy chords,
its story line of a melody that twists
up like snakes from melodic minor scales
that I've also been trying...
A Blessing
By Luci Tapahonso
This morning we gather in gratitude for all aspects of sacredness:
the air, the warmth of fire, bodies of water, plants, the land,
and all animals and humankind.
We gather to honor our students who have achieved the extraordinary
accomplishment of earning doctoral or...
The Lilies
By Karenne Wood
When I learned I might have cancer,
I bought fifteen white lilies. Easter was gone:
the trumpets were wilted, plants crooked with roots
bound in pots. I dug them into the garden,
knowing they would not bloom for another year.
All summer, the stalks stood...

p1For my love at the time of our ceremony

p1Respite

p1Today

p1Elegy for My Friend Who Was, among Other Things, an Orchestra Conductor

p1Perfect Orange

For my love at the time of our ceremony

Respite

Today

Elegy for My Friend Who Was, among Other Things, an Orchestra Conductor

Perfect Orange