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.
Donald Krieger: Unveiling
I listened to the learned
seeking meaning, hundreds crowded
into the Beth Shalom basement,
police in armor at the entrance.
Jason Irwin: Giuseppe the Shoe-Maker
Giuseppe, a simple shoe-maker,
who never learned English, stood
banging his head against the wall,
cursing God in his native tongue
Judith Sanders: A Mourner’s Kaddish
We must have forgotten thee,
o Jerusalem,
because our tongues cleave
to the roofs of our mouths
and our right hands
have lost their cunning.
