After the Attack, by John Calvin Rezmerski (1942-) When they crawled out of the cellars of the burned houses, and came dirty and dripping out of the sloughs, and saw how many of the dead were their children, and saw how bright the children’s blood was next to the dull adult blood, and when they […]
Postcard From The Heartbreak Hotel, by John Brehm (1955-) Wish you were here instead of me. It has a fantastic view of the unconscious ocean, into which a few of the guests will no doubt fling themselves before their day is through. The rooms are so spacious and so clean you’d think you were […]
poem at thirty, by Sonia Sanchez (1934-) it is midnight no magical bewitching hour for me i know only that i am here waiting remembering that once as a child i walked two miles in my sleep. did i know then where i was going? traveling. i’m always traveling. i want to tell you about […]
Grieve Not, by Walter Clyde Curry (1887-1967) Grieve not that winter masks the yet quick earth, Nor still that summer walks the hills no more; That fickle spring has doffed the plaid she wore To swathe herself in napkins till rebirth. These buddings, flowerings, are nothing worth; This ermine cloud stretched […]
Beirut Tank, by Tom Sleigh (1953-) Staring up into the tank’s belly lit by a bare bulb hanging down off the exhaust, a mechanic’s hands are up inside the dark metallic innards doing something that looks personal, private. This tank is nothing like the ones the Americans deploy. Those have uranium piercing shells that […]
The Girls Next Door, by Thom Gunn (1929-2004) Laughter of sisters, mingling, separating, but so alike you sometimes couldn’t tell which was which, as in a part-song. I could hear them from outdoors over the wall that separated two gardens, where the lilac bush on our side was tattered by the passage of domestic cats, […]
The Mother, by May Herschel-Clarke (1850-1950) If you should die, think only this of me In that still quietness where is space for thought, Where parting, loss and bloodshed shall not be, And men may rest themselves and dream of nought: That in some place a mystic mile away One whom you loved has drained […]
The Soldier, by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways […]
Above the Dock, by T.E. Hulme (1883-1917) Above the quiet dock in midnight, Tangled in the tall mast’s corded height, Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away Is but a child’s balloon, forgotten after play.
Driving in Oklahoma, by Carter Revard (1931-) On humming rubber along this white concrete, lighthearted between the gravities of source and destination like a man halfway to the moon in this bubble of tuneless whistling at seventy miles an hour from the windvents, over prairie swells rising and falling, over the quick offramp that drops […]