Featured Topic: Dreams

Dream After Making 300 Valentines for Lifelong Aids Alliance: by Amy Doran

We sat, pasting crows from construction paper waiting for them to come to life. They did come to life, shuddering with breath, flapping cautiously, realizing. Jesus could be a camera watching over us when we're sick with letters sick with names, lying on a hospital...

Tooth by Rotten Tooth

Legs stirring before the alarm's tormenting beep, I wake from strange dreams in the autumn of my youth, and choke on broken promises I meant to keep-- a sludge that settles to the bottom with the truth where bottled thoughts belch the foam of cold fermented sleep and...

Spider Dream: a Limerick

I saw a spider fall into my bed right onto the pillow beside my head. Now I'm hunting him, like preachers hunt sin, and dare not sleep till he or I is dead.  

Ephemera: Beauty Lies

"It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live." "Beauty is unbearable, drives us...

All This Juice and All This Joy

Alive and heavy with health,      syrup swells the root, and sun-dappled fields are filled      with walking flowers: the blossoms of the body      and the promise of fruit. We know, and delight, and dream      away the hours; let us have sweet Summer's cream    ...

A Child’s Sleep

I wonder if the tearful child, not yet perceiving what it means to fall asleep, might believe she dies each night. Afraid to go alone, she chokes on her goodbyes, "Please don't forget me! O please leave the door ajar!" But the swallowing Unknown will not share her...

The Icebox

In my dream, I held too many things in my hands and my fingers grappled and fumbled with the load afraid I'd drop one as I stumbled down the road for I'd balanced several things atop an icebox and my dream-drunk brain was slow, weighted down with sand until I knelt to...

At Torrey Pines

A cruel salt wind molests the twisted pine who grovels on his gnarled knees for rain; his futile prayers won't mend his broken spine nor will he stand, as in his dreams, again. The cliffs themselves all crumble in the sea and the tumble-down rocks resent the mocking...

Sunday Morning Lethargy

It's Sunday morning; I don't make the bed. Somehow worn from an oversupply of sleep, I feel empty and overfed all at once. Should I eat or should I try a second cup of coffee, or the tea? I am too weary to decide and I tire of this mush of humid luxury. The night held...

Featured Product: Seasons

December 21: an Advent poem for the Winter Solstice

 Long lay the world in sin and error pining      Till he appeared and the soul felt it's worth. A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoicing      For yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn. -John Sullivan Dwight  All the nations grope about in the dark to find some...

Mother of the Storm

What is it about the sea, that heaving mass of endless grey, that stills and saddens me and bends my thoughts like clay? Upon the undulating mass the waves warp and glisten like a field of broken glass and call to all who'd listen, "I am the mother of the storm and...

Of Edmund and Aslan

There were a hundred years of snow before the human children came. Years of frost and chain and shadow when nights were long and only flame could keep away the grasping cold. The creatures hoped; but then the boy traded their hopes for promised gold and forfeit life...

Notes from the Quarantine

Day 1 You tell yourself that you are going to learn French. Instead you make coffee with milk and tell yourself it's okay because they've yet to close the grocery stores; no need to break into the shelf-stable supplies. You tell yourself lies—that you'll use the time...

In the Park on the First Clear Day of Spring

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 Closer Kind of Warm: a break-up-with-summer song

The tyrant sun with unforgiving light bends the boys and girls like the August wheat. He makes them strip their clothes and beg for night like mountains made immodest in the heat. Rustling in a windless night, they seethe and sweat in anguish—should they cut their...

Wizard Nap

This dull and wintry day is still a weeping grey. But with the turning of a dial perhaps I'll force a smile by conjuring the warmth of June against this gloomy afternoon. Like a bored cat, I linger. I boil water with my finger. Yet, despite this warlock power, I mope...

The View From Winter

By some unjust miracle I awoke again today. How? When the wasted days and hours accumulate like a grey cloak of soot-heavy snow; the sweet-sick malaise sticks and smothers me. Regret, my old friend, tucks me to sleep under these covers, while, minute-by-minute, the...

Cider by Rusten Walter Harris

Three rungs from the top of a rickety four legged ladder My entire body straining to grasp those clustered King apples Mostly green, with flecks of red on their skin facing the sun Reaching further than I ought I put a little weight on an old branch Knowing very well...

August’s End

The thorn branches are a knot of tangled capillaries. They quarter armies of spiders standing silent and sentinel over the blackest of the blackberries-- the last and heaviest summer sweet before the coming rot. These are the scouts and outriders of the advancing...

Featured Writer: poets better and more famous than me

It was a hard thing to undo this knot by Gerard Manley Hopkins

It was a hard thing to undo this knot. The rainbow shines but only in the thought Of him that looks. Yet not in that alone, For who makes rainbows by invention? And many standing round a waterfall See one bow each, yet not the same to all, But each a hand's breadth...

Ozymandius by Horace Smith

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,        Stands a gigantic leg, which far off throws        The only shadow that the desert knows:—      "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,        "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows      "The wonders of my hand."— The...

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (Excerpt) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Prelude. THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms....

Immortal Sails by Alfred Noyes

Now, in a breath, we’ll burst those gates of gold,     And ransack heaven before our moment fails. Now, in a breath, before we, too, grow old,     We’ll mount and sing and spread immortal sails. It is not time that makes...

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night – Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.Good...

Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as spring – When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree...

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,       Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves,       At rest in all this moving up and down! The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep       Wave their...

The Author to Her Book by Anne Bradstreet

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain, Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad, expos’d to public view, Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge, Where errors were not lessened...

Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun for a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it leaving...

Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is...

Featured Form: Rondel

Yes, I Was Once Afraid of Bees

Back when I was afraid of bees with a fear most grave and sober; I would flinch when they'd flyover, would shrink and beg my mother, "Please let me stay inside away from these!" Whining from May to October. Yes, I was once afraid of bees but now I see with eyes more...

You Violated Right-of-way: a rondel about how I hope you die in a fire.

You violated right-of-way when you cut in front of all of us-- a hundred drivers and a city bus-- to be the first car parked on the freeway. There were a few words I wanted to say but it's Lent and my wife growls when I cuss; you violated right-of-way when you cut in...

Where is the Boy? a Rondel for Stephaun

"Look at the picture.      Where is the boy?" "Use your finger, like this, and point right here." Some sounds come out of the scowling man, "We're wasting time. Better to let him enjoy himself, stare at the sun, fondle a toy." "When we talk, it's like he can't even...

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Iron Sky

Iron Sky

With a howl, October's winds shear the fiery hosts of their yellows and reds to leave the branches bare. Then the orphaned leaves are stained, like little brown ghosts, on the sidewalk before they're raised into the air again. A resurrecting tempest—they fall up and...

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Cider by Rusten Walter Harris

Cider by Rusten Walter Harris

Three rungs from the top of a rickety four legged ladder My entire body straining to grasp those clustered King apples Mostly green, with flecks of red on their skin facing the sun Reaching further than I ought I put a little weight on an old branch Knowing very well...

read more
La Petite Mort

La Petite Mort

The body delights in its own travail, both teased and tortured by a pulsing strain with claws of pleasure resembling pain. She prophesies but cannot pierce the veil; she approaches but cannot breach the pale. The end she sees and struggles to obtain with breathless...

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Yes, I Was Once Afraid of Bees

Yes, I Was Once Afraid of Bees

Back when I was afraid of bees with a fear most grave and sober; I would flinch when they'd flyover, would shrink and beg my mother, "Please let me stay inside away from these!" Whining from May to October. Yes, I was once afraid of bees but now I see with eyes more...

read more