Since There is No Escape by Sara Teasdale

Feb 12, 2014 | Aging, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds

Since there is no escape, since at the end My body will be utterly destroyed, This hand I love as I have loved a friend, This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed; Since there is no escape even for me Who love life with a love too sharp to bear: The scent of orchards...

Tomorrow Hunts: the worries of those passing their prime in idleness

Jul 22, 2013 | Aging, Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 2, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet

The crescent moon encroaches on the day, a pale trespasser in the realm of sun. She will not wait her turn, she will not stay until the golden reign is fully done. The gleaming future will not stand in front but lurks behind you with a loaded bow; she is moon-browed...

Yet Do I Marvel by Countee Cullen

Jun 1, 2013 | Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute...

In the Park on the First Clear Day of Spring

Mar 25, 2013 | Gus Stevens, Seasons, Sonnet, Spring, Victorian Sonnet, Winter

There’s something of Spring that makes us self-deceive, that makes-believe the world has never sinned. A dozen squinting Adams search for Eve through a sunlight that’s not yet warmed the wind. Weary of winter, the clearing is brim full of hairless legs...

A Dante Aches for Beatrice—a Woman not his Wife

Feb 10, 2013 | Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 1, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet

There is a soft and gentle wanting— to hold, even to touch, the painted hand. It is a shamed yet pleasant haunting— to reach, unseen to brush, the fallen strand. Her knee just shows between the boot and skirt and eyes flirt with the hemmed in edges of  a beautiful...

A Sound of War in the Camp

Jan 28, 2013 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 1, Victorian Sonnet

His finger carved a sentence from the stone and the command carved a people from the whole. But they spilled an ink that settles in the bone when they ignored the scribblings of the scroll. While people beneath were busy fouling souls, casting a god they could not...