A Dream of Rodney King by Mary TallMountain
All we have in this country are police and women. You can’t complain to the police because they might arrest you. Your boyfriend is a police, your college professor, your reverend minister, boss, fireman… but they won’t tell you. This is the planet we live on. The police are like an explosion behind you always […]
You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop by Marge Piercy
You ask why sometimes I say stop why sometimes I cry no while I shake with pleasure. What do I fear, you ask, why don’t I always want to come and come again to that molten deep sea center where the nerves fuse open and the brain and body shine with a black wordless light […]
Yell of Pain by Maria Ivana Trevisani Bach
Yell of Pain by Maria Ivana Trevisani Bach Yell of pain From the millions of little, narrow, stacked cages, from the innocent fleshes, gashed for sport, by millions of gun shots, from the glowing trucks, travelling through the Earth’s roads, from the thousand iron chains, raises the sole, immense, awful yell of pain, of the […]
Year’s End by Marilyn Hacker
Year’s End by Marilyn Hacker for Audre Lorde and Sonny Wainwright Twice in my quickly disappearing forties someone called while someone I loved and I were making love to tell me another woman had died of cancer. Seven years apart, and two different lovers: underneath the numbers, how lives are braided, how those women’s death […]
Winter Promises by Marge Piercy
Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby’s buttocks, eggplants glossy as waxed fenders, purple neon flawless glistening peppers, pole beans fecund and fast growing as Jack’s Viagra-sped stalk, big as truck tire zinnias that mildew will never wilt, roses weighing down a bush never touched by black spot, brave little fruit trees shouldering up their spotless ornaments […]
What Are Big Girls Made Of? by Marge Piercy
The construction of a woman: a woman is not made of flesh of bone and sinew belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe. She is manufactured like a sports sedan. She is retooled, refitted and redesigned every decade. Cecile had been seduction itself in college. She wriggled through bars like a satin eel, her […]
Visiting a Dead Man on a Summer Day by Marge Piercy
In flat America, in Chicago, Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. Forty feet of Corinthian candle celebrate Pullman embedded lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. The Potter Palmers float in an island parthenon. Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat are postmarked with angels and lambs. But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned in […]
Upon Julia’s Breast by Marie Starr
His eyes did rest upon Julia’s breast as she spoke or questioned or sighed, until she shaved her head one day to spite his wandering eye; now when she speaks or quests or sighs his eyes rest on her barren brow, on the memory of her hairline and the fate that awaits him now. End […]
Unloved, unmoved by Maria Jastine Golo
The way is paved I dug my grave The shadows here And they surround me I’m not afraid I’m just scared My hands shake So’s the world around me There’s no light No escape And people wear Smiles are fake Here in a cage Now filled with rage Tears don’t break They fall; I fail […]
Twas’ the Night Before Christmas and Santa got Drunk by Margaret Marie Hubbard
Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the woods not a fireplace going, from the drought, no one could! The stockings had holes, but were hung with such care, In hopes that Saint Nick won’t forget them this year. The children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of Spongebob danced in […]
Traveling Dream by Marge Piercy
I am packing to go to the airport but somehow I am never packed. I keep remembering more things I keep forgetting. Secretly the clock is bolting forward ten minutes at a click instead of one. Each time I look away, it jumps. Now I remember I have to find the cats. I have four […]
Toad Dreams by Marge Piercy
That afternoon the dream of the toads rang through the elms by Little River and affected the thoughts of men, though they were not conscious that they heard it.–Henry Thoreau The dream of toads: we rarely credit what we consider lesser life with emotions big as ours, but we are easily distracted, abstracted. People sit […]
To the Pay Toilet by Marge Piercy
You strop my anger, especially when I find you in restaurant or bar and pay for the same liquid, coming and going. In bus depots and airports and turnpike plazas some woman is dragging in with three kids hung off her shrieking their simple urgency like gulls. She’s supposed to pay for each of them […]
To Be of Use by Marge Piercy
The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy […]
To a Steam Roller by Marianne Moore
The illustration is nothing to you without the application. You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them. Sparkling chips of rock are crushed down to the level of the parent block. Were not ‘impersonal judment in aesthetic matters, a metaphysical impossibility,’ you […]
To an Intra-mural Rat by Marianne Moore
You make me think of many men Once met, to be forgot again Or merely resurrected In a parenthesis of wit That found them hastening through it Too brisk to be inspected. End of the poem 15 random poems Poetry by subject Some external links: The Bat’s Own Poetry Cave Talking Writing Monster. Duckduckgo.com […]
The Woman in the Ordinary by Marge Piercy
The woman in the ordinary pudgy downcast girl is crouching with eyes and muscles clenched. Round and pebble smooth she effaces herself under ripples of conversation and debate. The woman in the block of ivory soap has massive thighs that neigh, great breasts that blare and strong arms that trumpet. The woman of the golden […]
The Steeple-Jack by Marianne Moore
Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this, with eight stranded whales to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish. One by one in two’s and three’s, the seagulls […]
The Seven Of Pentacles by Marge Piercy
Under a sky the color of pea soup she is looking at her work growing away there actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans as things grow in the real world, slowly enough. If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water, if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter […]
The Past is the Present by Marianne Moore
If external action is effete and rhyme is outmoded, I shall revert to you, Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse. He said; and I think I repeat his exact words; “Hebrew poetry is prose with a sort of heightened consciousness.” Ecstasy affords the occasion and expediency determines […]
The Paper Nautilus by Marianne Moore
For authorities whose hopes are shaped by mercenaries? Writers entrapped by teatime fame and by commuters’ comforts? Not for these the paper nautilus constructs her thin glass shell. Giving her perishable souvenir of hope, a dull white outside and smooth- edged inner surface glossy as the sea, the watchful maker of it guards it day […]
The Pangolin by Marianne Moore
Another armored animal–scale lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they form the uninterrupted central tail-row! This near artichoke with head and legs and grit-equipped gizzard, the night miniature artist engineer is, yes, Leonardo da Vinci’s replica– impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear. Armor seems extra. But for him, the closing ear-ridge– or […]
The Neighbor by Marge Piercy
Man stomping over my bed in boots carrying a large bronze church bell which you occasionally drop: gross man with iron heels who drags coffins to and fro at four in the morning, who hammers on scaffolding all night long, who entertains sumo wrestlers and fat acrobats– I pass you on the steps, we smile […]
The Morning Half-Life Blues by Marge Piercy
Girls buck the wind in the grooves toward work in fuzzy coats promised to be warm as fur. The shop windows snicker flashing them hurrying over dresses they cannot afford: you are not pretty enough, not pretty enough. Blown with yesterday’s papers through the boiled coffee morning we dream of the stop on the subway […]
The Moment I knew my Life had Changed by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
It was not until later that I knew, recognized the moment for what it was, my life before it, a gray landscape, shapeless and misty; my life after, flowering full and leafy as the cherry trees that only today have torn into bloom. Imagine: my cousin at 19, tall, slender. She worked in New York […]
The Friend by Marge Piercy
We sat across the table. he said, cut off your hands. they are always poking at things. they might touch me. I said yes. Food grew cold on the table. he said, burn your body. it is not clean and smells like sex. it rubs my mind sore. I said yes. I love you, I […]
The Fish by Marianne Moore
wade through black jade. Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps adjusting the ash-heaps; opening and shutting itself like an injured fan. The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave, cannot hide there for the submerged shafts of the sun, split like spun glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness into the crevices— in and out, […]
The Dark Cavalier by Margaret Widdemer
The Dark Cavalier by Margaret Widdemer I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover: My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired; I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness, Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired. I ask no merriment, no pretense of gladness, I can love heavy […]
The Colloquy Beneath by Margaret Marie Hubbard
The impetus of delirium, drills deep into my brain. The drifting shadow provokes, my opulence to strain. Impetuous choice of words, befuddle all mankind. Disentangle my intent, of the colloquy beneath the rhyme. Incontrovertibly I say to thee, I know thy true intent. Entrée oh aberration, because my mind is spent! Copyright ©: Margaret Marie […]
The Cat’s Song by Marge Piercy
Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts. Let us walk in the woods, says the cat. I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents, to fade […]
The Campera, the Foreigner y el Novio by Marjorie Kanter
The Campera, the Foreigner y el Novio by Marjorie Kanter I was with him when she asked me if I had the same moon where I was from. I said yes and she said how romantic. End of the poem 15 random poems Poetry by subject Some external links: The Bat’s Own Poetry Cave […]
The Boy by Marilyn Hacker
The Boy by Marilyn Hacker It is the boy in me who’s looking out the window, while someone across the street mends a pillowcase, clouds shift, the gutter spout pours rain, someone else lights a cigarette? (Because he flinched, because he didn’t whirl around, face them, because he didn’t hurl the challenge back—”Fascists?”—not “Faggots”—Swine! he […]
The Aegean by Maria Luisa Spaziani
The Aegean by Maria Luisa Spaziani This music has lasted since the world began. A rock was born among the waters while tiny waves chatted in a soft universal tongue. The shell of a se-turtle would not have foretold the guitar. Your music has always risen to the sky, green taproot, Mother Sea, first of […]
The Gate by Marie Howe
The Gate by Marie Howe I had no idea that the gate I would step through to finally enter this world would be the space my brother’s body made. He was a little taller than me: a young man but grown, himself by then, done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet, rinsed every glass he […]
The Copper Beech by Marie Howe
The Copper Beech by Marie Howe Immense, entirely itself, it wore that yard like a dress, with limbs low enough for me to enter it and climb the crooked ladder to where I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone. One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell darkening […]
Synchronicity by Marina Cecilia Kohon
I The lights from the past have turned acephalous II They trigger images that should be forgotten III Evanescent breath from a freeze frame without bar codes IV They get welded on the chest with wave synchronicity V Mock at the singularity of the moment and bifurcations of the road VI And stamp your impassive […]
Subjective Genocide by Marie Starr
Why is it you can buy your kids buckets of Cowboys and Indians to play with? But you could never, would never, even if you could, buy them buckets of Jews and Nazis, of Serbs and Croatians, of Tutsi and Hutu. Copyright ©: 2003 End of the poem 15 random poems Poetry by subject […]
Subject to Change by Marilyn L. Taylor
They are so beautiful, and so very young they seem almost to glitter with perfection, these creatures that I briefly move among. I never get to stay with them for long, but even so, I view them with affection: they are so beautiful, and so very young. Poised or clumsy, placid or high-strung, they’re expert […]
Spenser’s Ireland by Marianne Moore
has not altered;– a place as kind as it is green, the greenest place I’ve never seen. Every name is a tune. Denunciations do not affect the culprit; nor blows, but it is torture to him to not be spoken to. They’re natural,– the coat, like Venus’ mantle lined with stars, buttoned close at the […]
Song by Margaret Widdemer
Song by Margaret Widdemer The Spring will come when the year turns, As if no Winter had been, But what shall I do with a locked heart That lets no new year in? The birds will go when the Fall goes, The leaves will fade in the field, But what shall I do with an […]