Gerry LaFemina: Collection
In my life I’ve gathered maybe five perfect rocks. It isn’t that they were smooth or handsomely speckled with rare minerals. No, they were often misshapen, pitted, easily forgettable.
Jeffrey Harrison: The Light in the Marsh Grass
we gave up trying to explain it, gave ourselves
to it—as if we had ingested some hallucinogen
that opened our eyes to what was there all along
Michael Simms: The Turn
It’s the old dancers that fascinate me.
Training everyday as the body resists,
The spirit lifts them into clarity.
George Drew: I Know You’re in Detroit
Aretha, I apologize for having never written a poem
for or about you, not in all the Hit Parades of years
I’ve grooved to you…
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: I Am Waiting
I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
Stephen Dobyns: Leaf Blowers
That autumn morning he awoke to the crying
of lost souls that quickly changed to the roar
of leaf blowers up and down the street
Susan Kelly-DeWitt: Ode to Brother Roach
Slippery brother!
You are the secret bead
in the rosary of reviled
things.
Lu Aya: Poems to get out the vote
In times of unprecedented destruction, these poems encourage all people to get out the vote as an act of love.
Video: Radical Spoken Word | Eleanor Goldfield
Political poetry intertwined with powerful activist art.
W.S. Merwin: Another River
he arrived just as
an evening was beginning and toward the end
of summer when the converging surface
lay as a single vast mirror gazing
upward into the pearl light
Rachel Hadas: Do You Believe in Ghosts?
…now is the moment for this query,
when every encounter’s eerie
and we can only recognize
familiar faces by their eyes.
William Butler Yeats: The Wild Swans at Coole
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky…
Deborah Bogen: Risk
In Sappho, the spaces name nothing — but the emptiness still speaks.
