By Paula Bohince
Again, an ousted child or orphan happens onto a den.
It happens then. Invitation by faun or badger to…
It happens then. Invitation by faun or badger to…
Explore Poems: Reading & Books
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- By David HopsonWe land in the aisles of British fiction
to soak in the air conditioning. Your fingers
play the spines… - By Meredith StrickerI was thinking of some of the messages Rilke will never receive: — dentist called abt your appt tomorrow…
- By Lydia Harris1
Sunday vellum tongues with words of prayer
Monday messages from the unknown
Tuesday how to… - By Elizabeth WillisThe shipwrecked man creates a monarchy of one.
When he sees a footprint, he panics.
He has to keep… - By R. L. SwihartThe young man says, “Alan can
do anything he wants”
“Not fly,” I say
The young man returns
a puzzled look… - By Lenelle Moïseimmacula immigrant entrepreneur good with numbers my grandmother down comforter vendor five flights of stairs off flatbush illiterate well into her sixties can you believe it was a patient preacher taught her how to read the king james thickness newly...
- By Phillip B. WilliamsI realized I was Nel and wept
for the robins rotting inside me. I had not bore snakes
or roses made of cinders. I rose from bed
bored, snaking my way beneath
ashen men child-hungry
and respectful to thieves. I refused to fuck
because I was... - By Matthew RohrerReading a kind of laborious
poem about rural things
and a horse is shot
for breaking its leg.
I still don’t get it.
Surely there’s a way
to heal a horse.
I text my friend
who is a farrier
(you know—
someone who shoes horses)
I say surely there’s a way
to... - By Alison C. RollinsI am
a product
of my time.
Time is a body
that resembles
a sound without a scale.
Forever foreclosed fortitude.
In heaven, the dinner bell rings
as elegy. The porch-light stars turn
on their mothering moths. Betrayal
takes at least two, and wherever two
or more are gathered, I am... - By Tomás Q. MorínIn this life, there are stars
and there are stunt doubles.
Before I became one of those fathers
obsessed with memorizing his lines,
making peace with the Big Director
in the sky who doesn’t like ad libs,
before all that, I was the star
of my own... - By Cedric Tillmanyou know I ain’t mess w/you ’cause of yo’ friends
wouldn’t have you caught slummin’
know you hood 'cause you said
I look the same
and I said
you look the same
and I said “it don’t crack, doit?
and you said “Uh, OKAY?”
that’s that thing right... - By Kimiko Hahni.I am in the middle of “The Fourteen Poems" by Sun Bu-er (“Clear and Calm Free Human”), Taoist and one of the Seven Immortal Sisters who took up the Tao after she turned fifty-one, after her three children grew up,...
- By Kevin YoungThe heart, it hoards—
how I know this—
The small, strangled
shining room Keats lost
his life in—and to—
beyond the window sunlight
arranging itself
on the Spanish Steps
while the poet watches.
Outside, snapshots
of the tourists
& teenagers tired
of what they don’t
know yet. What will
become of us? Ash.
Unasking. The... - By Omar SakrI slip into my insolence, sleek as an eel.
I have walked so many ways around God I can tell you
Holiness is a roundabout
With a thousand exit points labeled doubt;
Like the boy who unzipped my pants
In my sleep, who broke the... - By Omar SakrA lover undresses, with permission.
Picture the body becoming real.
I picture becoming real intimate.
It is strange to think of legs as closed.
I open my legs for strangers. I widen,
stretch. What belongs here? Don’t say a door.
Instead of belonging, I eat the... - By Omar SakrI lift him out, whole and perfect.
Said told me he would be here, chained by Dante
To the eighth circle of hell, bettered only by the devil himself.
The Paris Review recapped this canto in 2014, saying
Read along! This week: Mohammed torn... - By Haki R. MadhubutiFrequently during my mornings of pain & reflection
when I can’t write
or articulate my thoughts
or locate the mindmusic needed
to complete the poems & essays
that are weeks plus days overdue
forcing me to stop, I cease
answering my phone, eating right, running my miles,
reading... - By Jamila Woodsi caught my breath & called that life
i cannot be comprehended
it is better to write
spit out words into small cans
prepare knives for the cutting
of orange peels and doorways
i arrive at a space that no longer needs
autumn or spring, this forest
of... - By T. S. EliotI. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest monthApril is the cruellest month The Waste Land begins with a subversion of the first lines of the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. He paints April...