Silence by Marianne Moore
My father used to say, “Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellow’s grave nor the glass flowers at Harvard. Self reliant like the cat — that takes its prey to privacy, the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth — they sometimes enjoy solitude, and can be robbed […]
Scars on Paper by Marilyn Hacker
Scars on Paper by Marilyn Hacker An unwrapped icon, too potent to touch, she freed my breasts from the camp Empire dress. Now one of them’s the shadow of a breast with a lost object’s half-life, with as much life as an anecdotal photograph: me, Kim and Iva, all stripped to the waist, hiking near […]
Rosemary by Marianne Moore
Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary; Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly – born of the sea supposedly, at Christmas each, in company, braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary; since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, its flowers; white originally; turned blue. The herb […]
Release by Marie Starr
unglue your tongue talk to wind … talk to trees … talk to streams flowing over pebbles … talk to single blades of grass … talk to me … say anything … say everything … say nothing at all … just turn your head toward the sound of sunlight … rest your eyes on the […]
Reading Runes by Marina Cecilia Kohon
I The Oracle foresees: Dreams demand a truce. II Love is an ivy plant that demands, The rebellion will lit up the fire (it’s that my voices have gotten tired) III Your adaptability will undo the charms Look for shelter in the white sheets (but my hands bleed without the verses) IV Go back to […]
Portrait in Black and White by Marjorie Kanter
a fly is standing at the bar on a lady in a white dress, drinking. 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 alternative in the US Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, […]
Poetry by Marianne Moore
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because […]
Peter by Marianne Moore
Strong and slippery, built for the midnight grass-party confronted by four cats, he sleeps his time away– the detached first claw on the foreleg corresponding to the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds or katydid-legs above each eye numbering all units in each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth […]
Passion by Sera Jacob
What I chose among the pearls, Where I stopped by the horizon, Why I paused to look at the roaring waves, When the raindrops kissed my cheek, Soil succumbed the shells turning grey, Debris waltzed beneath the moisture, Letting sands tick-tock the beat, Rapt droplets on the petals glistened, Leaves were strewn over the trodden […]
Paragraphs from a Day-Book by Marilyn Hacker
Paragraphs from a Day-Book by Marilyn Hacker Cherry-ripe: dark sweet burlats, scarlet reverchons firm-fleshed and tart in the mouth bigarreaux, peach-and-white napoléons as the harvest moves north from Provence to the banks of the Yonne (they grow napoléons in Washington State now). Before that, garriguettes, from Périgord, in wooden punnets afterwards, peaches: yellow-fleshed, white, moss-skinned […]
Not out of the running by Margaret Marie Hubbard
Beat down pushed around don’t count me out of the running not till the final call Cut and bled left for dead don’t count me out of the running not till the curtains fall If you thought for a single moment that I forgot your face If you thought about that moment when I left […]
Nevertheless by Marianne Moore
you’ve seen a strawberry that’s had a struggle; yet was, where the fragments met, a hedgehog or a star- fish for the multitude of seeds. What better food than apple seeds; the fruit within the fruit; locked in like counter-curved twin hazelnuts? Frost that kills the little rubber-plant – leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can’t harm the […]
Nearly A Valediction by Marilyn Hacker
Nearly A Valediction by Marilyn Hacker You happened to me. I was happened to like an abandoned building by a bull- dozer, like the van that missed my skull happened a two-inch gash across my chin. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse. A new- born […]
My Mother’s Body by Marge Piercy
1. The dark socket of the year the pit, the cave where the sun lies down and threatens never to rise, when despair descends softly as the snow covering all paths and choking roads: then hawkfaced pain seized you threw you so you fell with a sharp cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. […]
My Daughter at 14, Christmas Dance, 1981 by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Panic in your face, you write questions to ask him. When he arrives, you are serene, your fear unbetrayed. How unlike me you are. After the dance, I see your happiness; he holds your hand. Though you barely speak, your body pulses messages I can read all too well. He kisses you goodnight, his body […]
Morning News by Marilyn Hacker
Morning News by Marilyn Hacker Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread and fried potatoes, tips green on the branches, repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war. A cinder-block wall shared by two houses is new rubble. On one side was a kitchen sink and a cupboard, on the other was a bed, […]
Love Poem to My Husband of Thirty-one Years by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
I watch you walk up our front path, the entire right side of your body, stiff and unbending, your leg, dragging on the ground, your arm not moving. Six different times you ask me the date of our daughter’s wedding, seem surprised each time, forget who called, though you can name obscure desert animals, and […]
Locked Away by Margaret Marie Hubbard
I sail this sea that has bequeathed my mind upon this wooden door, still throughout time. The lymerics and lyrics lap at my feet as I reach for the note my fingertips meet. “Within the pocket lies the unlocking key.” I look in the hole and see only me. Perhaps I’ll unleash this ocean someday […]
Labyrinth by Sera Jacob
I stood at the junction, Not knowing which road to follow, One cluttered with leaves, While the other was purely laid out, Like a cloth, Hidden among the canopy was a brook, Replenishing life itself for thirst, Desire and lust felt by the nerves, Anguishing branches cuddled stems, As if my mind is drizzling, Over […]
Iva’s Pantoum by Marilyn Hacker
Iva’s Pantoum by Marilyn Hacker We pace each other for a long time. I packed my anger with the beef jerky. You are the baby on the mountain. I am in a cold stream where I led you. I packed my anger with the beef jerky. You are the woman sticking her tongue out in […]
Island-Hearth by M. Ivana Trevisani Bach
Island-Hearth by M. Ivana Trevisani Bach Island-Earth Island-Earth: tiny point lost in the Universe. Marble of light: sapphire of seas, emerald of woods. Pearl of life in the abysses of the Nothing. Precious jewel in vulgar, dirty and perverse hands. Ball of dirt, you’ll remain alone and different, a useless reject of the Universe. Isola-Terra: […]
Irish Love Song by Margaret Widdemer
Irish Love Song by Margaret Widdemer Well, if the thing is over, better it is for me, The lad was ever a rover, loving and laughing free, Far too clever a lover not to be having still A lass in the town and a lass by the road and a lass by the farther hill […]
Invocation by Marilyn Hacker
Invocation by Marilyn Hacker This is for Elsa, also known as Liz, an ample-bosomed gospel singer: five discrete malignancies in one full breast. This is for auburn Jacqueline, who is celebrating fifty years alive, one since she finished chemotherapy. with fireworks on the fifteenth of July. This is for June, whose words are lean and […]
If you should tire of loving me by Margaret Widdemer
If you should tire of loving me by Margaret Widdemer If you should tire of loving me Some one of our far days, Oh, never start to hide your heart Or cover thought with praise. For every word you would not say Be sure my heart has heard, So go from me all silently Without […]
I Dream of my Grandmother and Great-Grandmother by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
I imagine them walking down rocky paths toward me, strong, Italian women returning at dusk from fields where they worked all day on farms built like steps up the sides of steep mountains, graceful women carrying water in terra cotta jugs on their heads. What I know of these women, whom I never met, I […]
I Deserve It by Margaret Marie Hubbard
The devils of anger sit high on their thrones throwing their gavels and breaking my bones I revert to the place where to me it began Running and sinking my feet in the sand The same face takes on so many forms I seek peace in the wake of the storms This shadow of hate […]
Hurry by Marie Howe
Hurry by Marie Howe We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the gas station and the green market and Hurry up honey, I say, hurry, as she runs along two or three steps behind me her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down. Where do I want her to hurry […]
He Made This Screen by Marianne Moore
not of silver nor of coral, but of weatherbeaten laurel. Here, he introduced a sea uniform like tapestry; here, a fig-tree; there, a face; there, a dragon circling space — designating here, a bower; there, a pointed passion-flower. End of the poem 15 random poems Poetry by subject Some external links: The Bat’s Own […]
Forever Closed by Margaret Marie Hubbard
Forsworn and ravaged your heart among the masses of the ones within your past. You clothe yourself in false talents to hide from me but alas, I witness your pain and pull apart the many webs containing you within. I weep as I see your suffrage and reach for your soul drenched in sin. It […]
For the Young Who Want To by Marge Piercy
Talent is what they say you have after the novel is published and favorably reviewed. Beforehand what you have is a tedious delusion, a hobby like knitting. Work is what you have done after the play is produced and the audience claps. Before that friends keep asking when you are planning to go out and […]
For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back by Marilyn Hacker
For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back by Marilyn Hacker August First: it was a year ago we drove down from St.-Guilhem-le-Désert to open the house in St. Guiraud rented unseen. I’d stay; you’d go; that’s where our paths diverged. I’d settle down to work, you’d start the next month of your Wanderjahr. I turned […]
Exiles by Marilyn Hacker
Exiles by Marilyn Hacker Her brown falcon perches above the sink as steaming water forks over my hands. Below the wrists they shrivel and turn pink. I am in exile in my own land. Her half-grown cats scuffle across the floor trailing a slime of blood from where they fed. I lock the door. They […]
Desesperanto by Marilyn Hacker
Desesperanto by Marilyn Hacker After Joseph Roth Parce que c’était lui; parce que c’était moi. Montaigne, De L’amitië The dream’s forfeit was a night in jail and now the slant light is crepuscular. Papers or not, you are a foreigner whose name is always difficult to spell. You pack your one valise. You ring the […]
Dear Alzheimer’s by Maria Knox
You stole my name along with all her memories, You swiped her filter,logic and personality, You left the shell of her for nearly a decade, You took our everything from us including her last breath, And now that she’s gone, You still want what’s mine. Time for your advance to the other side of my […]
Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy
Purple as tulips in May, mauve into lush velvet, purple as the stain blackberries leave on the lips, on the hands, the purple of ripe grapes sunlit and warm as flesh. Every day I will give you a color, like a new flower in a bud vase on your desk. Every day I will paint […]
Children of My Own by Marie Starr
I wasn’t allowed to date outside my race when I was young. My mother believed it was okay, admirable even, to have friends who were not white but that you wouldn’t want to marry them. And if you did, then you shouldn’t have children with them because then your children would be discriminated against. As […]
Belly Good by Marge Piercy
A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs but I’ve never seen wheat in a pile. Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek as a seal hauled out in the winter sun. I can see you as a great goose egg or a single juicy and fully ripe […]
Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore
Fanaticism?No.Writing is exciting and baseball is like writing. You can never tell with either how it will go or what you will do; generating excitement– a fever in the victim– pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter. Victim in what category? Owlman watching from the press box? To whom does it apply? Who is excited?Might it be I? […]
Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy
This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy. Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat legs. She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant […]
Attack of the Squash People by Marge Piercy
And thus the people every year in the valley of humid July did sacrifice themselves to the long green phallic god and eat and eat and eat. They’re coming, they’re on us, the long striped gourds, the silky babies, the hairy adolescents, the lumpy vast adults like the trunks of green elephants. Recite fifty zucchini […]