Come by Sara Teasdale
Come, when the pale moon like a petal Floats in the pearly dusk of spring, Come with arms outstretched to take me, Come with lips pursed up to cling. Come, for life is a frail moth flying, Caught in the web of the years that pass, And soon we two, so warm and eager, Will […]
But Not To Me by Sara Teasdale
The April Night is still and sweet With flowers on every tree; Peace comes to them on quiet feet, But not to me. My Peace is hidden in his breast Where I shall never be; Love comes to-night to all the rest, But not to me. ————— The End And that’s the End of the […]
Buried Love by Sara Teasdale
I have come to bury Love Beneath a tree, In the forest tall and black Where none can see. I shall put no flowers at his head, Nor stone at his feet, For the mouth I loved so much Was bittersweet. I shall go no more to his grave, For the woods are cold. I […]
Blue Squills by Sara Teasdale
How many million Aprils came Before I ever knew How white a cherry bough could be, A bed of squills, how blue! And many a dancing April When life is done with me, Will lift the blue flame of the flower And the white flame of the tree. Oh burn me with your beauty, then, […]
Because by Sara Teasdale
Oh, because you never tried To bow my will or break my pride, And nothing of the cave-man made You want to keep me half afraid, Nor ever with a conquering air You thought to draw me unaware — Take me, for I love you more Than I ever loved before. And since the body’s […]
Barter by Sara Teasdale
Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things, Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And children’s faces looking up Holding wonder like a cup. Life has loveliness to sell, Music like a curve of gold, Scent of pine trees in the rain, Eyes that love you, arms […]
At Midnight by Sara Teasdale
Now at last I have come to see what life is, Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun, And the brave victories that seem so splendid Are never really won. Even love that I built my spirit’s house for, Comes like a brooding and a baffled guest, And music and men’s praise and even laughter […]
Alone by Sara Teasdale
I am alone, in spite of love, In spite of all I take and give— In spite of all your tenderness, Sometimes I am not glad to live. I am alone, as though I stood On the highest peak of the tired gray world, About me only swirling snow, Above me, endless space unfurled; With […]
After Parting by Sara Teasdale
Oh, I have sown my love so wide That he will find it everywhere; It will awake him in the night, It will enfold him in the air. I set my shadow in his sight And I have winged it with desire, That it may be a cloud by day, And in the Night a […]
After Love by Sara Teasdale
There is no magic any more, We meet as other people do, You work no miracle for me Nor I for you. You were the wind and I the sea — There is no splendor any more, I have grown listless as the pool Beside the shore. But though the pool is safe from storm […]
A November Night by Sara Teasdale
There! See the line of lights, A chain of stars down either side the street — Why can’t you lift the chain and give it to me, A necklace for my throat? I’d twist it round And you could play with it. You smile at me As though I were a little dreamy child Behind […]
A Cry by Sara Teasdale
Oh, there are eyes that he can see, And hands to make his hands rejoice, But to my lover I must be Only a voice. Oh, there are breasts to bear his head, And lips whereon his lips can lie, But I must be till I am dead Only a cry. ————— The End And […]
The Unborn by Sharon Olds
The Unborn by Sharon Olds Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads, Like gnats around a streetlight in summer, The children we could have, The glimmer of them. Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing In some antechamber; servants, half- Listening for the bell. Sometimes I see them lying like love letters In the Dead […]
The Space Heater by Sharon Olds
The Space Heater by Sharon Olds On the then-below-zero day, it was on, near the patients’ chair, the old heater kept by the analyst’s couch, at the end, like the infant’s headstone that was added near the foot of my father’s grave. And it was hot, with the almost laughing satire of a fire’s heat, […]
The Sash by Sharon Olds
The Sash by Sharon Olds The first ones were attached to my dress at the waist, one on either side, right at the point where hands could clasp you and pick you up, as if you were a hot squeeze bottle of tree syrup, and the sashes that emerged like axil buds from the angles […]
The Pact by Sharon Olds
The Pact by Sharon Olds We played dolls in that house where Father staggered with the Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her one ounce of cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to kill herself. We kneeled over the rubber bodies, gave them baths carefully, scrubbed their little orange hands, wrapped them […]
The Mortal One by Sharon Olds
The Mortal One by Sharon Olds Three months after he lies dead, that long yellow narrow body, not like Christ but like one of his saints, the naked ones in the paintings whose bodies are done in gilt, all knees and raw ribs, the ones who died of nettles, bile, the one who died roasted […]
The End by Sharon Olds
The End by Sharon Olds We decided to have the abortion, became killers together. The period that came changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple who had been for life. As we talked of it in bed, the crash was not a surprise. We went to the window, looked at the crushed cars and […]
The Daughter Goes To Camp by Sharon Olds
The Daughter Goes To Camp by Sharon Olds In the taxi alone, home from the airport, I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept creeping over the smooth plastic to find your strong meaty little hand and squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the noble ribbing of the corduroy, straight and regular […]
The Clasp by Sharon Olds
The Clasp by Sharon Olds She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds, we had been in the apartment two weeks straight, I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his face, again, and when I had her wrist in my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a […]
The Borders by Sharon Olds
The Borders by Sharon Olds To say that she came into me, from another world, is not true. Nothing comes into the universe and nothing leaves it. My mother—I mean my daughter did not enter me. She began to exist inside me—she appeared within me. And my mother did not enter me. When she lay […]
The Arrivals by Sharon Olds
The Arrivals by Sharon Olds I pull the bed slowly open, I open the lips of the bed, get the stack of fresh underpants out of the suitcase—peach, white, cherry, quince, pussy willow, I choose a color and put them on, I travel with the stack for the stack’s caress, dry and soft. I enter […]
Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds
Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other’s bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. […]
Primitive by Sharon Olds
Primitive by Sharon Olds I have heard about the civilized, the marriages run on talk, elegant and honest, rational. But you and I are savages. You come in with a bag, hold it out to me in silence. I know Moo Shu Pork when I smell it and understand the message: I have pleased you […]
One Year by Sharon Olds
One Year by Sharon Olds When I got to his marker, I sat on it, like sitting on the edge of someone’s bed and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite. I took some tears from my jaw and neck and started to wash a corner of his stone. Then a black and amber ant ran […]
Crab by Sharon Olds
Crab by Sharon Olds When I eat crab, slide the rosy rubbery claw across my tongue I think of my mother. She’d drive down to the edge of the Bay, tiny woman in a huge car, she’d ask the crab-man to crack it for her. She’d stand and wait as the pliers broke those chalky […]
A Week Later by Sharon Olds
A Week Later by Sharon Olds A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t think I could ever write about it. Maybe in a year I could write something. There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school. And […]
1954 by Sharon Olds
1954 by Sharon Olds Then dirt scared me, because of the dirt he had put on her face. And her training bra scared me—the newspapers, morning and evening, kept saying it, training bra, as if the cups of it had been calling the breasts up—he buried her in it, perhaps he had never bothered to […]
Winter by Shaunna Harper
She does not thaw in summer, her iced skeleton a visceral display of sapphire veins and pulses bolting in shock to the outskirts of her shores, splayed like a victim. She is perpetual frost, crying sharp diamond tears that leave chips across hard flesh like braille, like fallen teeth from a corpse; the sun bores […]
Twilight by Shaunna Harper
A prayer lifts itself from my mouth between tight teeth and soft lips, grows wings, leaves like a moth by the window trying to find the moon, sings, as the moist earth cools below. As always, twilight has come too soon. Lifted by light like a Chinese lantern, I watch the night sink, its star […]
The Other Half by Shaunna Harper
The Other Half by Shaunna Harper Your lips are still on my lipstick. Your eyes are still on my eyeshadow brush. You’re still wearing my favourite shirt; go on, keep it, if you must. The bags you unpacked are under your eyes; see that drawing? It’s tattooed on your skin. All those lies I heard […]
Saison Noir by Shaunna Harper
Is that Christmas falling in your hair? I can taste your past lover’s countdown kiss, I can smell the coming year; it smells like this. I drink this season’s red wine serenade; drunken romance is bliss. Your light spots me through falling feathers and snow; the instruments pick themselves up, tangle, reminisce; the songs say […]
River by Shaunna Harper
River by Shaunna Harper You can’t tell a river which way to run. Trees flank his cerulean depths like soldiers, armed with sticks and leaves, ever-reaching, seizing, only to be swept aside. A river has no place to hide. He is never the same when he comes back; a little older, a little darker, carrying […]
Prelude by Shaunna Harper
Prelude by Shaunna Harper Our bed screams red, gutted, split, under weight of wonderings in my head; bruised like a throat, crushed by hungry lips, gaping like a wound, stunning. The walls are indented and cannot be mended, colour of your temper in blotchy black and blue, handprints sink between spine and sinew, hollow concave, […]
Passing by Shaunna Harper
They’ve strung up your face on canvas carved in glass across the city’s overpass. Your eyes are bulging mole-hills. Your hair is sprouting grass. In the backdrop of a cheap shop’s parking lot, a broken sign curls around your head like a halo; when winter comes you will sparkle with snow. Each fractured letter blinks […]
My Modern Surrealist Mind by Shaunna Harper
The beer has drowned itself in the cask; I’m pulling brown air for punters. The fridge is baring its teeth to my throat; its inner cold works wonders. I’m falling out of love with myself and rising into bad karma, slipping in circles into wrong holes, the maelstrom enfolding this drama. The house is talking […]
Metamorphosis by Shaunna Harper
We jumped from the night and fell into the moon upside down in fractured dreams. He told me if I could picture it, I could live it. Reality is a broad market. He came with golden eyes, silver lips, quilted with satin like the finest-dressed mannequin. His puppet fingers dealt a card; a blow, hard. […]
La Fleur by Shaunna Harper
La Fleur by Shaunna Harper Shower rain settles on fine hair like dew, dying sunlight a halo aglow casting darkness in me, light over you. The evening is drifting with falling snow, pooling smooth marble into your pores, beautifying your every mistake, making miracles of your flaws. Autumn breathes its rustic applause as leaves once […]
Keeping the Dawn by Shaunna Harper
Keeping the Dawn by Shaunna Harper My mind’s eye sweats a tear. Solitary, it runs to the mouth, as though dying for a taste of its own bitter fluid. The emotional effort is a waste. We watch like two friends as the hand scrawls its script, full stop bringing the final act to an end. […]
In Measures by Shaunna Harper
He sleeps in the hammock of a silken, silver scar that curls around my arm like a chain; a creature comfort, a ghostly appendage, finer than a spider’s web and visible only to me. This is where he lives. Where snow half-falls in unreachable diamonds, becoming hardened rain that wants to wound. Where the sun […]