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Season of Grief

My grandmother sat at the head of her oak table
one Labor Day afternoon & in a lull turned to me & said
all the people I knew are dead. When she fixed those two words, I knew,

I felt my heart in the world beat its blood through thin chambers. The constant
rush still interrupts the body I didn’t make, but keep breathing somehow
& functioning until I can’t, & the night before she died, I felt the easing of her spirit,

& the same when my aunt died the year before. I still say to my still-grieving
cousin I’m here—an echo of her mother’s absence, & we are left
together on this side of unknowing, stack like throwing bricks

all the finite seasons we have
& will spend without them. Up against my own lifetime
I wish for fog, early morning. Instead, unpredictable years keep emptying.

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Poems

15230 poems

In The Matter Of Two Men

One does such work as one will not,
And well each knows the right;
Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot,
The black must serve the white.
And it’s, oh, for the white man’s softening flesh,
While the black man’s muscles grow!
Well I know which grows the mightier,

James D. Corrothers

1922

Compensation

O, rich young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride.
Ride on, young lord, ride on!

James Edwin Campbell

1922

A Poem for My Wife

I’m in my room writing
speaking in myself
& I hear you
move down the hallway
to water your plants

I write truth on the page
I strike the word over & over
yet I worry you’ll pour too much water on the plants
& the water will overflow onto the books
ruining them

If I can’t speak out of myself
how can I tell you I don’t care about the plants?
how can I tell you I don’t care if the books get wet?

David Meltzer

2005

I Have Folded My Sorrows

I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn.
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday’s disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday’s pains.

Bob Kaufman

1965

Poets

4082 poets

Danez Smith

Danez Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017) and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014).

Jackie Wang

Jackie Wang is the author of the poetry collection The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void (Nightboat, 2021), which was longlisted for the National Book Award.

Janice Mirikitani

Janice Mirikitani was born on February 4, 1941, in Stockton, California.

Chen Chen

Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017).

Meg Day

Meg Day grew up in California’s Bay Area and received a BA from the University of California, San Diego, an MFA from Mills College, and a PhD from