Dawn Potter: Heat Wave
a squirrel is hurling insults, and beneath his screeches the cicadas
insist and sigh, insist and sigh, unmoved by his grandiloquent snit.
Rachel Hadas: What do the classics teach us about hope?
How do we weather this welter of bad news? How do we adapt?
Majid Naficy: Kabul
But larks have not forgotten to fly
And grass still sprouts from the earth of Kabul
And rivers are replenished by the snows of Pamirs
And the groves of Samangan are filled with sounds of birds.
William Blake: The Fly
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
Wislawa Szymborska: Utopia
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Edison Jennings: The Klansman
An uncle of mine was in the Klan,
but I was never told his name
because the Klan was trashy
Lindsey Royce: Purification And All That Fuckery
My hovel, my mess—surfaces like baseball mounds, my pubic mound—books papers piled, my checkbook math, an epic fail—cleanliness, godliness—washing the carpet, the body—a good Catholic girl I was scared of … Continue reading
Christopher Bursk: The Plague in Early Spring
The first week in the first year of the plague,
when we told ourselves there was no plague,
the flowers were more than willing
to confirm our opinion.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Complaint About Missing Friends after Ten Months of the Pandemic
Verlaine threw pail after pail after
cold water pail on the gravel under Rimbaud’s
windows, to cool the air as he slept.
Video: Astronaut Leland Melvin Reads Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Earth’s Forests
Anyone who hasn’t been in the Chilean forest doesn’t know this planet. I have come out of that landscape, that mud, that silence, to roam, to go singing through the world.
Michael Simms: Writing Prompt #7 | Jumping into the Mud
Here’s an exercise which I call Jumping into the Mud although it’s sometimes called by the more prosaic name automatic writing. The exercise helps to loosen my imagination, and sometimes a decent poem results as well.
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Love’s Philosophy
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
Lara Harb: The meaning of cowardly dogs and other puzzles of Arabic poetry
The evocation of wonder was the main goal of classical Arabic poetry.
Martha Silano: Nothing I Did
My father said no infinity times, said all As,
no A-minuses. In 6th grade I devised a plan:
if I was perfect, if I made no sound.
