The Campera, the Foreigner y el Novio by Marjorie Kanter
The Campera, the Foreigner y el Novio by Marjorie Kanter I was with him when she asked me if I had the same moon where I was from. I said yes and she said how romantic. End of the poem 15 random poems Poetry by subject Some external links: The Bat’s Own Poetry Cave […]
The Boy by Marilyn Hacker
The Boy by Marilyn Hacker It is the boy in me who’s looking out the window, while someone across the street mends a pillowcase, clouds shift, the gutter spout pours rain, someone else lights a cigarette? (Because he flinched, because he didn’t whirl around, face them, because he didn’t hurl the challenge back—”Fascists?”—not “Faggots”—Swine! he […]
The Aegean by Maria Luisa Spaziani
The Aegean by Maria Luisa Spaziani This music has lasted since the world began. A rock was born among the waters while tiny waves chatted in a soft universal tongue. The shell of a se-turtle would not have foretold the guitar. Your music has always risen to the sky, green taproot, Mother Sea, first of […]
The Gate by Marie Howe
The Gate by Marie Howe I had no idea that the gate I would step through to finally enter this world would be the space my brother’s body made. He was a little taller than me: a young man but grown, himself by then, done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet, rinsed every glass he […]
The Copper Beech by Marie Howe
The Copper Beech by Marie Howe Immense, entirely itself, it wore that yard like a dress, with limbs low enough for me to enter it and climb the crooked ladder to where I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone. One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell darkening […]
Synchronicity by Marina Cecilia Kohon
I The lights from the past have turned acephalous II They trigger images that should be forgotten III Evanescent breath from a freeze frame without bar codes IV They get welded on the chest with wave synchronicity V Mock at the singularity of the moment and bifurcations of the road VI And stamp your impassive […]
Subjective Genocide by Marie Starr
Why is it you can buy your kids buckets of Cowboys and Indians to play with? But you could never, would never, even if you could, buy them buckets of Jews and Nazis, of Serbs and Croatians, of Tutsi and Hutu. Copyright ©: 2003 End of the poem 15 random poems Poetry by subject […]
Subject to Change by Marilyn L. Taylor
They are so beautiful, and so very young they seem almost to glitter with perfection, these creatures that I briefly move among. I never get to stay with them for long, but even so, I view them with affection: they are so beautiful, and so very young. Poised or clumsy, placid or high-strung, they’re expert […]
Spenser’s Ireland by Marianne Moore
has not altered;– a place as kind as it is green, the greenest place I’ve never seen. Every name is a tune. Denunciations do not affect the culprit; nor blows, but it is torture to him to not be spoken to. They’re natural,– the coat, like Venus’ mantle lined with stars, buttoned close at the […]
Song by Margaret Widdemer
Song by Margaret Widdemer The Spring will come when the year turns, As if no Winter had been, But what shall I do with a locked heart That lets no new year in? The birds will go when the Fall goes, The leaves will fade in the field, But what shall I do with an […]
Silence by Marianne Moore
My father used to say, “Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellow’s grave nor the glass flowers at Harvard. Self reliant like the cat — that takes its prey to privacy, the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth — they sometimes enjoy solitude, and can be robbed […]
Scars on Paper by Marilyn Hacker
Scars on Paper by Marilyn Hacker An unwrapped icon, too potent to touch, she freed my breasts from the camp Empire dress. Now one of them’s the shadow of a breast with a lost object’s half-life, with as much life as an anecdotal photograph: me, Kim and Iva, all stripped to the waist, hiking near […]
Rosemary by Marianne Moore
Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary; Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly – born of the sea supposedly, at Christmas each, in company, braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary; since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, its flowers; white originally; turned blue. The herb […]
Release by Marie Starr
unglue your tongue talk to wind … talk to trees … talk to streams flowing over pebbles … talk to single blades of grass … talk to me … say anything … say everything … say nothing at all … just turn your head toward the sound of sunlight … rest your eyes on the […]
Reading Runes by Marina Cecilia Kohon
I The Oracle foresees: Dreams demand a truce. II Love is an ivy plant that demands, The rebellion will lit up the fire (it’s that my voices have gotten tired) III Your adaptability will undo the charms Look for shelter in the white sheets (but my hands bleed without the verses) IV Go back to […]
Portrait in Black and White by Marjorie Kanter
a fly is standing at the bar on a lady in a white dress, drinking. End of the poem 15 random poems Poetry by subject Some external links: The Bat’s Own Poetry Cave Talking Writing Monster. Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, […]
Poetry by Marianne Moore
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because […]
Peter by Marianne Moore
Strong and slippery, built for the midnight grass-party confronted by four cats, he sleeps his time away– the detached first claw on the foreleg corresponding to the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds or katydid-legs above each eye numbering all units in each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth […]
Passion by Sera Jacob
What I chose among the pearls, Where I stopped by the horizon, Why I paused to look at the roaring waves, When the raindrops kissed my cheek, Soil succumbed the shells turning grey, Debris waltzed beneath the moisture, Letting sands tick-tock the beat, Rapt droplets on the petals glistened, Leaves were strewn over the trodden […]
Paragraphs from a Day-Book by Marilyn Hacker
Paragraphs from a Day-Book by Marilyn Hacker Cherry-ripe: dark sweet burlats, scarlet reverchons firm-fleshed and tart in the mouth bigarreaux, peach-and-white napoléons as the harvest moves north from Provence to the banks of the Yonne (they grow napoléons in Washington State now). Before that, garriguettes, from Périgord, in wooden punnets afterwards, peaches: yellow-fleshed, white, moss-skinned […]
Not out of the running by Margaret Marie Hubbard
Beat down pushed around don’t count me out of the running not till the final call Cut and bled left for dead don’t count me out of the running not till the curtains fall If you thought for a single moment that I forgot your face If you thought about that moment when I left […]
Nevertheless by Marianne Moore
you’ve seen a strawberry that’s had a struggle; yet was, where the fragments met, a hedgehog or a star- fish for the multitude of seeds. What better food than apple seeds; the fruit within the fruit; locked in like counter-curved twin hazelnuts? Frost that kills the little rubber-plant – leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can’t harm the […]
Nearly A Valediction by Marilyn Hacker
Nearly A Valediction by Marilyn Hacker You happened to me. I was happened to like an abandoned building by a bull- dozer, like the van that missed my skull happened a two-inch gash across my chin. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse. A new- born […]
My Mother’s Body by Marge Piercy
1. The dark socket of the year the pit, the cave where the sun lies down and threatens never to rise, when despair descends softly as the snow covering all paths and choking roads: then hawkfaced pain seized you threw you so you fell with a sharp cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. […]
My Daughter at 14, Christmas Dance, 1981 by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Panic in your face, you write questions to ask him. When he arrives, you are serene, your fear unbetrayed. How unlike me you are. After the dance, I see your happiness; he holds your hand. Though you barely speak, your body pulses messages I can read all too well. He kisses you goodnight, his body […]
Morning News by Marilyn Hacker
Morning News by Marilyn Hacker Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread and fried potatoes, tips green on the branches, repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war. A cinder-block wall shared by two houses is new rubble. On one side was a kitchen sink and a cupboard, on the other was a bed, […]
Love Poem to My Husband of Thirty-one Years by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
I watch you walk up our front path, the entire right side of your body, stiff and unbending, your leg, dragging on the ground, your arm not moving. Six different times you ask me the date of our daughter’s wedding, seem surprised each time, forget who called, though you can name obscure desert animals, and […]
Locked Away by Margaret Marie Hubbard
I sail this sea that has bequeathed my mind upon this wooden door, still throughout time. The lymerics and lyrics lap at my feet as I reach for the note my fingertips meet. “Within the pocket lies the unlocking key.” I look in the hole and see only me. Perhaps I’ll unleash this ocean someday […]
Labyrinth by Sera Jacob
I stood at the junction, Not knowing which road to follow, One cluttered with leaves, While the other was purely laid out, Like a cloth, Hidden among the canopy was a brook, Replenishing life itself for thirst, Desire and lust felt by the nerves, Anguishing branches cuddled stems, As if my mind is drizzling, Over […]
Iva’s Pantoum by Marilyn Hacker
Iva’s Pantoum by Marilyn Hacker We pace each other for a long time. I packed my anger with the beef jerky. You are the baby on the mountain. I am in a cold stream where I led you. I packed my anger with the beef jerky. You are the woman sticking her tongue out in […]
Island-Hearth by M. Ivana Trevisani Bach
Island-Hearth by M. Ivana Trevisani Bach Island-Earth Island-Earth: tiny point lost in the Universe. Marble of light: sapphire of seas, emerald of woods. Pearl of life in the abysses of the Nothing. Precious jewel in vulgar, dirty and perverse hands. Ball of dirt, you’ll remain alone and different, a useless reject of the Universe. Isola-Terra: […]
Irish Love Song by Margaret Widdemer
Irish Love Song by Margaret Widdemer Well, if the thing is over, better it is for me, The lad was ever a rover, loving and laughing free, Far too clever a lover not to be having still A lass in the town and a lass by the road and a lass by the farther hill […]
Invocation by Marilyn Hacker
Invocation by Marilyn Hacker This is for Elsa, also known as Liz, an ample-bosomed gospel singer: five discrete malignancies in one full breast. This is for auburn Jacqueline, who is celebrating fifty years alive, one since she finished chemotherapy. with fireworks on the fifteenth of July. This is for June, whose words are lean and […]
If you should tire of loving me by Margaret Widdemer
If you should tire of loving me by Margaret Widdemer If you should tire of loving me Some one of our far days, Oh, never start to hide your heart Or cover thought with praise. For every word you would not say Be sure my heart has heard, So go from me all silently Without […]
I Dream of my Grandmother and Great-Grandmother by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
I imagine them walking down rocky paths toward me, strong, Italian women returning at dusk from fields where they worked all day on farms built like steps up the sides of steep mountains, graceful women carrying water in terra cotta jugs on their heads. What I know of these women, whom I never met, I […]
I Deserve It by Margaret Marie Hubbard
The devils of anger sit high on their thrones throwing their gavels and breaking my bones I revert to the place where to me it began Running and sinking my feet in the sand The same face takes on so many forms I seek peace in the wake of the storms This shadow of hate […]
Hurry by Marie Howe
Hurry by Marie Howe We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the gas station and the green market and Hurry up honey, I say, hurry, as she runs along two or three steps behind me her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down. Where do I want her to hurry […]
He Made This Screen by Marianne Moore
not of silver nor of coral, but of weatherbeaten laurel. Here, he introduced a sea uniform like tapestry; here, a fig-tree; there, a face; there, a dragon circling space — designating here, a bower; there, a pointed passion-flower. End of the poem 15 random poems Poetry by subject Some external links: The Bat’s Own […]
Forever Closed by Margaret Marie Hubbard
Forsworn and ravaged your heart among the masses of the ones within your past. You clothe yourself in false talents to hide from me but alas, I witness your pain and pull apart the many webs containing you within. I weep as I see your suffrage and reach for your soul drenched in sin. It […]
For the Young Who Want To by Marge Piercy
Talent is what they say you have after the novel is published and favorably reviewed. Beforehand what you have is a tedious delusion, a hobby like knitting. Work is what you have done after the play is produced and the audience claps. Before that friends keep asking when you are planning to go out and […]