Buddies by Richard Schiffman
I called you after you died to hear again your ducky voice on the answering machine. For weeks you continued: “This is Will at Bathrooms Restored, please leave a message after the beep.” But I never did. What was there to say? Even before– what was there to say? You used to call first thing […]
Buddha at Kamakura by Rudyard Kipling
O ye who tread the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day, Be gentle when “the heathen” pray To Buddha at Kamakura! To him the Way, the Law, apart, Whom Maya held beneath her heart, Ananda’s Lord, the Bodhisat, The Buddha of Kamakura. For though he neither burns nor sees, Nor hears ye thank your […]
Beyond Darkness And Despair by Renu Ayyar
Abysmal, that’s the life she leads; In a filthy lane, is her ‘Abode’. Beasts come knocking on her door, Every day and every night, To fulfill their carnivorous appetite ! Torn between vulnerability & defenselessness; Mortified, she is of her own ‘Nakedness’. The vultures dwelling inside men, Brutally tears up her bruised mass Before vanishing […]
Before you go a little way prospecting by T. Wignesan
for F. A. You, in going a little way from yourself Have gone a long way from my gullible ilk. « I’m trying hard not to like you, » you said The breaths of several men surging in your nostrils And the stench abraded in your flesh : « You are unshaven. » You took […]
Are You a Thinking Man? by Rifat Ilgaz
Doom-birds shuttling back and forth seem to weave in the air the rug of despair. Positions have been taken up, there’s gunfire back there, Cannon-balls darkly shake the earth under your feet Can’t you hear? Lift up your head you’ve slept enough, If you call this a heart, these arteries Let them not beat or […]
A Lost Friend, I Never Had by Renu Ayyar
Amidst plastic faces & concrete jungles, A sedentary lifestyle & corporate bungles I thought I got lucky to find; A sparkling Gem one day, in life! A Gem not just precious; but I thought, was so rare To whom my heart, soul & mind; I could bare Someone who could touch my heart with a […]
A Goddess by Tanisha Avarsekar
Unprecedented force. Bewitching beauty. Mysterious tenor. Fiery bearing. Gleaming temper. Daunting gaze. Amaranthine power. Inconceivable grace. Call it Durga, call it Kali. Call it Artemis, call it Athene. It’s all just the same energy. It’s what a Goddess is, for a devotee. Poetry In Englishwww.poetry.monster
Vacation by Rita Dove
I love the hour before takeoff, that stretch of no time, no home but the gray vinyl seats linked like unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall be summoned to the gate, soon enough there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers and perforated stubs—but for now I can look at these ragtag nuclear families with […]
Tonight she remembers by Rita Odessa Villaruel
It happened. Although her mother told her it did not, she knows by the way the wind speaks to her tonight that it did. She feels by the way the shadows of darkness echo the secrets of her past, how the barks of her dog remind her of one rainy evening when she was running […]
There Came a Soul by Rita Dove
She arrived as near to virginal as girls got in those days—i.e., young, the requisite dewy cheek flushed at its own daring. He had hoped for a little more edge. But she held the newspaper rolled like a scepter, his advertisement turned up to prove she was there solely at his bidding—and yet the gold […]
The Emotion Line by Rita Odessa Villaruel
This could be the right pulsate of emotion — the one found between too much happiness and a little grief, the space where a smile is shaped out of satisfaction. The measuring device of sentiments my often destructive but self-proclaimed adulthood have created in my head resembles the Number Line: the negative-numbers side being the […]
The Bistro Styx by Rita Dove
She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness as she paused just inside the double glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape billowing dramatically behind her.What’s this, I thought, lifting a hand until she nodded and started across the parquet; that’s when I saw she was dressed all in gray, from a kittenish cashmere skirt […]
The Secret Garden by Rita Dove
I was ill, lying on my bed of old papers, when you came with white rabbits in your arms; and the doves scattered upwards, flying to mothers, and the snails sighed under their baggage of stone . . . Now your tongue grows like celery between us: Because of our love-cries, cabbage darkens in its […]
The Great Palaces Of Versailles by Rita Dove
Nothing nastier than a white person! She mutters as she irons alterations in the backroom of Charlotte’s Dress Shoppe. The steam rising from a cranberry wool comes alive with perspiration and stale Evening of Paris. Swamp she born from, swamp she swallow, swamp she got to sink again. The iron shoves gently into a gusset, […]
Teach Us To Number Our Days by Rita Dove
In the old neighborhood, each funeral parlor is more elaborate than the last. The alleys smell of cops, pistols bumping their thighs, each chamber steeled with a slim blue bullet. Low-rent balconies stacked to the sky. A boy plays tic-tac-toe on a moon crossed by TV antennae, dreams he has swallowed a blue bean. It […]
Primer by Rita Dove
In the sixth grade I was chased home by the Gatlin kids, three skinny sisters in rolled-down bobby socks. Hissing Brainiac! and Mrs. Stringbean!, they trod my heel. I knew my body was no big deal but never thought to retort: who’s calling who skinny? (Besides, I knew they’d beat me up.) I survived their […]
Persephone, Falling by Rita Dove
One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled, stooped to pull harder— when, sprung out of the earth on his glittering terrible carriage, he claimed his due. It is finished. No one heard her. No one! She had strayed from the herd. (Remember: go straight to school. This is […]
Mushrooms by Rina Ferrarelli
Mushrooms by Rina Ferrarelli A strange efflorescence on the lawn where hidden roots and stumps lie below the surface. Was it the rain, the sun after rain, the red moon that caused such profusion? They glow in the morning in the silver blue of dusk, open, and turn inside out in the bright midday sun– […]
Ludwig Von Beethoven’s Return To Vienna by Rita Dove
So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts, I reentered; she burned a greater, constant light. Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly- I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent and deep, the lightest touch awakens it – it is impossible to care enough. […]
Lines Composed on the Body Politic by Rita Dove
Less than the charting of each dawn’s resolutions, less than each evening’s trickle of doubt, less than a crown’s weight in silver, a diamond’s scratch against glass, less than the touted ill luck of my rich beginnings—and yet more than Eve’s silence, my mute ingratitude. More than music’s safe passage, its rapturous net, more than […]
Lady Freedom Among Us by Rita Dove
Don’t lower your eyes or stare straight ahead to where you think you ought to be going don’t mutter oh no not another one get a job fly a kite go bury a bone with her oldfashioned sandals with her leaden skirts with her stained cheeks and whiskers and heaped up trinkets she has risen […]
I hear the roar of a Harley… by River Urke
I hear the roar of a Harley… by River Urke My days blend with abstract strokes marking my canvas of yesterday. A painting with darks of red and green broken hearts and shreds of torn dreams ripples of ebbs and flows of mourning. Our Orchid wilts in smears of gray as Cardinals sing their afternoon […]
Heart To Heart by Rita Dove
It’s neither red nor sweet. It doesn’t melt or turn over, break or harden, so it can’t feel pain, yearning, regret. It doesn’t have a tip to spin on, it isn’t even shapely— just a thick clutch of muscle, lopsided, mute. Still, I feel it inside its cage sounding a dull tattoo: I want, I […]
Hades’ Pitch by Rita Dove
If I could just touch your ankle, he whispers, there on the inside, above the bone—leans closer, breath of lime and pepper—I know I could make love to you. She considers this, secretly thrilled, though she wasn’t quite sure what he meant. He was good with words, words that went straight to the liver. Was […]
Fifth Grade Autobiography by Rita Dove
I was four in this photograph fishing with my grandparents at a lake in Michigan. My brother squats in poison ivy. His Davy Crockett cap sits squared on his head so the raccoon tail flounces down the back of his sailor suit. My grandfather sits to the far right in a folding chair, and I […]
Exit by Rita Dove
Just when hope withers, the visa is granted. The door opens to a street like in the movies, clean of people, of cats; except it is your street you are leaving. A visa has been granted, ‘provisionally’-a fretful word. The windows you have closed behind you are turning pink, doing what they do every dawn. […]
Dawn Revisited by Rita Dove
Imagine you wake up with a second chance: The blue jay hawks his pretty wares and the oak still stands, spreading glorious shade. If you don’t look back, the future never happens. How good to rise in sunlight, in the prodigal smell of biscuits – eggs and sausage on the grill. The whole sky is […]
Chocolate by Rita Dove
Velvet fruit, exquisite square I hold up to sniff between finger and thumb – how you numb me with your rich attentions! If I don’t eat you quickly, you’ll melt in my palm. Pleasure seeker, if i let you you’d liquefy everywhere. Knotted smoke, dark punch of earth and night and leaf, for a taste […]
Cavern in Paradise by Rita Odessa Villaruel
silly feet keep moving forward despite the burning coals on the ground why be hostile to the only thing that lights up the path? Copyright ©: Rita Odessa Villaruel 2011 ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of […]
Broccoli by Rina Ferrarelli
Broccoli by Rina Ferrarelli I like them best stir-fried, the bushy green tops, with oil and garlic and a blessing of salt. I feel I’m eating trees, hardwoods as seen from the air– marrow and sinew and the way they reach for light in any kind of weather. Poetry In Englishwww.poetry.monster
Birth Of A Flower by Riss Ryker
Birth Of A Flower by Riss Ryker ently grows the flower. Seeking petal perfection on the wings of a seed. Mating with the earth in dark richness, germinating transcendence. Evolution bursts free, spiraling ever upwards to greet a bright reality. Unfolding newborns, velvet in their sheaths of green. Begging the sky, they drink. Perfect petals […]
American Smooth by Rita Dove
We were dancing—it must have been a foxtrot or a waltz, something romantic but requiring restraint, rise and fall, precise execution as we moved into the next song without stopping, two chests heaving above a seven-league stride—such perfect agony, one learns to smile through, ecstatic mimicry being the sine qua non of American Smooth. And […]
Amarene by Rina Ferrarelli
Amarene by Rina Ferrarelli A stain like wine on the fresh Italian bread, and the small wild cherries glazed, shining like garnets. You pause, allow their beauty to fill your eyes. You count on the bread and jam to be fragrant and sweet, and a little bit tart, but the marmellata you like so much […]
Adolescence II by Rita Dove
Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting. Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert. Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips. Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as round As dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines. They bring the scent of […]
Adolescence I by Rita Dove
In water-heavy nights behind grandmother’s porch We knelt in the tickling grasses and whispered: Linda’s face hung before us, pale as a pecan, And it grew wise as she said: ‘A boy’s lips are soft, As soft as baby’s skin.’ The air closed over her words. A firefly whirred near my ear, and in the […]
They are Cruel by Rixa White
How many of us suffered to death? How many of them gained more wealth? How many of us mourned? How many of them earned? How many times we suffered such a pain? How many times they will do this again? They are Cruel but… We don’t have to be. Poetry In Englishwww.poetry.monster
The Polar Koala Bear by Robby Charters
in the land of hinter where it’s always winter there lived a ‘polar koala bear’ though he was fair dinkum feared the weather would sink’m he was none the worse for the wear worse for the ‘wear’? that’s funny, i swear! for the koala residing in hinter was only a koala but a tricky ol’ […]
The Lame Guy by Rob Leatherman Sr.
I’m lame Pretty fucking tame Don’t like when people use my head for games I’m a loser I’m a loner In High school I was a stoner Now I got a fucked up head And these meds make it tough to get a boner So I’ll just be me. A lame ass loser loner. And […]
The Invisible by Rixa White
The Invisible is moving Softly and soothing I feel it inside It is you It is my feeling for you I want to give it life My whole life Poetry In Englishwww.poetry.monster
The Epic of Jack and Jill by Robby Charters
jack and jill went out to fetch the royal pail of water, but the only water in a mile radius flowed down the sewage gutter said jack to jill, ‘to reach the hill where the well is, we must move faster’ but jill nudged jack, he nudged her back, they broke out in a peal […]