“Alone” BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

  “Alone”

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

Lineage Anagrams II Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

 

Lineage Anagrams II

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

I sit hard down, write down rules, an age of alg- ebra I will not renounce for any good shake of god’s ale or angle or some other father. Here’s my noes I mouth to no one but two flies alining, amounting, in air clear between them is my sliver of grace, élan for no one, the di pteron fold and again my sliver, this grass, genial grass I’ve known my whole long life this grass, this green gee glen: cupping my proclamations I will I will I will, lag and nag, weren’t those the magic words when cupped, my hands glean this earth, this earth retraced me my unlearned effort, gin of nil it wills it wills it wills. Claimant am I who turns turns away, ail- ing away until the edge is a place I home until I am alien, a line at the edge of a line, a nile.

Copyright © 2022 by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 13, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

On Loving by Forugh Farrokhzad, Translated by Sholeh Wolpé

 

On Loving

Tonight from your eyes’ sky
stars rain on my poem,
my fingers spark, set ablaze
the muteness of these blank pages.

My fevered, raving poem shamed by its desires,
hurls itself once again into fire, the flames’ relentless craving.

Yes, so love begins,
and though the road’s end is out of sight, I do not think of the end.
It’s the loving that I love.

Why shun darkness?
The night abounds with diamond drops. Later, jasmine’s intoxicating scent lingers on the spent body of night.

Let me lose myself in you
till no one can find my trace. Let your dewy sigh’s fevered soul waft over the body of my songs.

Wrapped in sleep’s silk
let me grow wings of light,
fly through its open door
beyond the world’s fences and walls.

Do you know what I want of life?
That I can be with you, you, all of you, and if life repeated a thousand times, still you, you, and again, you.

Concealed in me is a sea: how could I hide it? How could I describe the typhoon inside?

I’m so filled with you
I want to run through meadows,
bash my head against mountain rocks, give myself to ocean waves.

I’m so filled with you
I want to crumble into myself like a speck of dust, to gently lay my head at your feet,
cling fast to your weightless shadow.

Yes, so love begins,
and though the road’s end is out of sight, I do not think of the end
for it’s the loving I so love.

No People in It Launch Audio in a New Window BY EMILY SKILLINGS

 No People in It 

BY EMILY SKILLINGS

                        for JA

 

I flutter in order

to enter

the phrase’s silver.

 

Jackdaws have launched nearby

this time, silk green and ripped,

the movement a kind of chafing thinking.

 

Oh he’s marking

terrain right there—

right there with his

 

unmade song. The shadow kids

whip fronds, froth air up

into heat, pure and simple

 

“violence of the eye.” Wild iris

ink, wet in the margin’s stage.

Well, hadn’t this testament begun

 

to carry its chime in stripes?

That’s when I knew he was going away

from me, towards the sound.

 

Like the ring on the table

it can’t be decentered.

Rim around the recent.

 

Ashes, ashes,

A bright tangled seeming.

Girls Online BY EMILY SKILLINGS

 Girls Online

BY EMILY SKILLINGS

The first line is a row of girls,

twenty-five of them, almost

a painting, shoulders overlapping,

angled slightly toward you.

One says: I’m myself here.

The others shudder and laugh

through the ribbon core that strings

them. They make a tone tighter

by drumming on their thighs and

opening their mouths. The girls

are cells. The girls are a fence,

a fibrous network. One by one

they describe their grievances.

Large hot malfunctioning

machines lie obediently at their sides.

Their shirts are various shades

of ease in the surrounding air,

which is littered with small cuts.

One will choose you, press you

into the ground. You may never

recover. The second-to-last line

has a fold in it. The last line is

the steady pour of their names.

Caged Bird BY MAYA ANGELOU

 Caged Bird

BY MAYA ANGELOU

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind   

and floats downstream   

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and   

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn

and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

I, Too BY LANGSTON HUGHES

 I, Too

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

A Wish by Joshua Henry Jones, Jr.

 

A Wish

Joshua Henry Jones, Jr.

When your joys are of the sweetest     And your heart is light and free;  When your griefs are skimming fleetest,      Love, one moment think of me.  I’d not ask you to remember      Me when life is dull and drear; When your hopes are but an ember     From a cold and vanished year;  Sorrow’s far too bleak a burden     To retain in mem’ry’s hall.  Friendship has no greater guerdon     Than to happiness recall.  So, when roses scent the twilight     Air with ling’ring dew damp breath,  Please remember me as eye-bright     Faith remembers until death.

Character Being a Different Thing from Beauty, Describe the Difference by Carl Phillips

Character Being a Different Thing from Beauty, Describe the Difference

Carl Phillips

And sometimes, yes, I’d beg for it—            he’d make me beg: Shy moon,                        why shy tonight?  I heard the geese before I saw them again this morning— this time, flying north. Above them, thunderheads like doomed  zeppelins, like whales when sounding, though they brought  no rain. That’s how I used to write, insisting on ordinary things  being somehow more than that, that they had to mean something,  the way disruption can punctuate with meaning an established  pattern, or as when finding out one’s silence has been mistaken  for arrogance or, worse, indifference, when all you meant  was to be kind—retreat, not exile; less the monsters, than  how we lived beside them, our lives not leaves not trash on an  updraft that at random carries them then refuses them, can a wind  refuse. And yet…                          Shy moon -- As if doing what we’d always done were enough to be grateful for,  as if to keep doing it were itself to be grateful. You just forgot,  that’s all. It’s harder not to forget. How the yard gave way  like a ragged imperative to a forest of scrub-pines and oak, mostly,  how a stand of ferns there almost looked, from above, like a boat  of shadows, coming at last unmoored, and the forest a sea—that  endless-seeming, that steeped in night-dark, beg for it, why shy tonight?

Copyright © 2021 by Carl Phillips. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 1, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

 

Dada poem3

 The expansion of the fates is so beautiful.

You need to get a new game.

It was in the first time.

If the person is 0.

It's not tattoos but I care about the whole thing.

I'm missing you Bobby!

I care to see what the years old are eternal.

It was in the first one of Narnia and the first time.

You child just have to be together.

Dada poem 2

 And have you ever been to a new one?

I care about the fates allow for a new one.

The expansion of Narnia is 0.

You need 4 or more.

It is 0.

It's a new one to a new one to a new one to see your great grand parents.

This is 2 years old.

I care about the fates of Narnia and pearl jam!

You child can put them in a different country.

It sounds like faeries and sally Mann!

It sounds like a new game to a team that means scarf I cation.

Dada poem

 Really good to see the lion and jump to the lion King!

I am so sorry for the lion man but you are awesome!

It sounds like a dick.

You are amazing!

It's amazing!

If I am so sleepy😪 I'll have tunes stuck in their mouth and jump to the lion King!

The only thing that on greeting is that on greeting is that on the snake at the end of the day.

It doesn't matter if you are awesome!

This isn't a dick.

The first time I am so sorry for the lion man but you are awesome!

You broke my mind.

It seems like a dick.

How to Disappear BY RAE ARMANTROUT

 How to Disappear

BY RAE ARMANTROUT

1

You had been swinging restlessly

between the appearance of spontaneity

and the appearance of serious thought.

You had been changing lanes

after a glance

in a mirror honest about

its tendency to distort.

What choice did you have?

It was soothing to watch

wisps of smoke

from a nearby chimney

disappearing

one by one.

2

Do you like pulses,

ridges, ripples

stretching into obscurity?

Would you prefer a flicker

to a steady light source?

This one stutters

slightly,

hesitant,

as if it could hold something

in reserve

Source: Poetry (July/August 2020)

A Proclamation Ashaki M. Jackson

 

A Proclamation

Ashaki M. Jackson

Our bodies give into the ocean rolling      us beneath its tongues     How do we sing our loss with water brimming our throats? Oh Sea, You are greedy and transform us—      our faces soft and opening You do not wash but strike and shove   You rinse babies from our arms     leave husbands waiting      We spin in your disregard   You upend this body We praise your ruin                                           Our monuments rooting bones in all shores

Copyright © 2020 by Ashaki M. Jackson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 11, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

My hero bares his nerves Dylan Thomas - 1914-1953

 

My hero bares his nerves

Dylan Thomas - 1914-1953

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

My hero bares his nerves along my wrist
That rules from wrist to shoulder,
Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,
Leans on my mortal ruler,
The proud spine spurning turn and twist.

And these poor nerves so wired to the skull
Ache on the lovelorn paper
I hug to love with my unruly scrawl
That utters all love hunger
And tells the page the empty ill.

My hero bares my side and sees his heart
Tread, like a naked Venus,
The beach of flesh, and wind her bloodred plait;
Stripping my loin of promise,
He promises a secret heat.

He holds the wire from the box of nerves
Praising the mortal error
Of birth and death, the two sad knaves of thieves,
And the hunger's emperor;
He pulls the chain, the cistern moves.

[th(e)reat] → siege engine Trace Howard DePass

 

[th(e)reat] → siege engine

Trace Howard DePass

in my own body ← here i am a siege                                 overthrowing a home where no one lives                                 but me. i’m too big for my too big head                                 too barely anything for want, my love                                 built me from a nail in the wall galloped                                 to meet the socks on the floor → now a hole                                 in the wall i would peek thru & run some                                 cable thru so we all could watch cable.                    now, there’s a good amount of good reasons                    why no one lives here, no one lives with me.                    my cat even tries to leave. he jumps out                    the window, off the roof, & waits for me                    to catch him with the neighbors. & i too                    trynna be beautiful & loved this way. i  ←  suppose: perching for life to begin is this flatline moving me, failed, forward, feathered closer to grace each time; going mother after mother i wake up as a dove picking lilies from her black i suppose i love so i know i ain’t know                 brevity without withholding a breath  ←                 loved those flying ants,  infiltrating  thru  all  fronts’                 doors til i (w)as a room entered watching                 for  bites tender thicker  than all-time’s                 to consume ← consistency dragged → this long                 makes me  wanna bite bird feet  ← too   baby                 cat  i love you too,...   ache in my bones you                 remind me of  what is it(?) to be  picked ←

Copyright © 2020 by Trace Howard DePass. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 19, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.