The world is a beautiful place 
                                                           to be born into 
if you don’t mind happiness 
                                             not always being 
                                                                        so very much fun 
       if you don’t mind a touch of hell
                                                       now and then
                just when everything is fine
                                                             because even in heaven
                                they don’t sing 
                                                        all the time

             The world is a beautiful place
                                                           to be born into
       if you don’t mind some people dying
                                                                  all the time
                        or maybe only starving
                                                           some of the time
                 which isn’t half so bad
                                                      if it isn’t you

      Oh the world is a beautiful place
                                                          to be born into
               if you don’t much mind
                                                   a few dead minds
                    in the higher places
                                                    or a bomb or two
                            now and then
                                                  in your upturned faces
         or such other improprieties
                                                    as our Name Brand society
                                  is prey to
                                              with its men of distinction
             and its men of extinction
                                                   and its priests
                         and other patrolmen
                                                         and its various segregations
         and congressional investigations
                                                             and other constipations
                        that our fool flesh
                                                     is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
                                                           for a lot of such things as
         making the fun scene
                                                and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
                                         and singing low songs of having 
                                                                                      inspirations
and walking around 
                                looking at everything
                                                                  and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
                              and even thinking 
                                                         and kissing people and
     making babies and wearing pants
                                                         and waving hats and
                                     dancing
                                                and going swimming in rivers
                              on picnics
                                       in the middle of the summer
and just generally
                            ‘living it up’

Yes
   but then right in the middle of it
                                                    comes the smiling
                                                                                 mortician

                                           

From A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright © 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

after Pedro Pietri

We were      nocturnal players, 

Bats in ball,      & ever since Don Pedro said 

There are Puerto Ricans      on the moon 

The night is      my cousin      & the clustered stars 

My cousin      & Saturn’s little ring of smoke      my second cousin 

Though not the same ring      as a freshly snapped Medalla bottle      which

My abuelo      also named Pedro      apparently liked too much 

But back to the moon      the first rock      dollop of sugar  

& slinging hoop in the dark      which we learned was a game

      of approximation

Less math      more muscle memory      less Mozart      more Machito 

Like descarga      more riff      more wrist. 

We set our eyes      on not seeing      but feeling a thing through, indeed

From elbow to hip      wherever the orange lip might lead

Copyright © 2022 by Denice Frohman. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 6, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

for Reuben

When he looks at the edges,
The covers of books and records,
He remembers when and where
He got them, how it felt.
Everything’s a testament
To life lived on the fringe
Of some sense of sanity.

All the vehicles for imbibing
These treasures are obsolete.
Even his eyes and ears, as their
Function fades under each year’s
Mud and tussle to stay alive

The damned fine few who know
Try not to lose the memories,
Talk as if each was there
For the other, laughter supplants tears.
If he can, a story gets written
About each song, how a chord
A lyric, the last line of a book

Make more sense, the same as the
Warnings his mother threw
at fledgling feet like seeds in soil.
He wishes he could buy them all again,
Heed the messages, grow as if
Each signpost was a vitamin
Make what became a recollection
A catalyst for pathfinding and strength.

Copyright © 2022 by Brandon D. Johnson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 17, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

Past years are figures in old glass
wobbly in a lake
wrinkled by a stone.

The lake will settle down
a face will reappear
in a scent of evergreen.

Years are present as noon as now
or in a rippled moonglade night;
they summon shadow as in fragile memory
easy as stepping into a lake
breaking the present mirror.

It is the way events are stored,
they come back twisted
in wrinkles of water

blurred inscapes into today.

From Writing the Silences (University of California Press, 2010) by Richard O. Moore. Copyright © 2010 by the Regents of the University of California. Used with permission of University of California Press Books. 

I once made a diorama from a shoebox
for a man I loved. I was never a crafty person,

but found tiny items at an art store and did my best
to display the beginning bud of our little love,

a scene recreating our first kiss in his basement
apartment, origin story of an eight-year marriage.

In the dollhouse section, I bought a small ceiling fan.
Recreated his black leather couch, even found miniscule

soda cans for the cardboard counters that I cut and glued.
People get weird about divorce. Think it’s contagious.

Think it dirty. I don’t need to make it holy, but it purifies—
It’s clear. Sometimes the science is simple. Sometimes

people love each other but don’t need each other
anymore. Though, I think the tenderness can stay

(if you want it too). I forgive and keep forgiving,
mostly myself. People still ask, what happened?

I know you want a reason, a caution to avoid, but
life rarely tumbles out a cheat sheet. Sometimes

nobody is the monster. I keep seeing him for the first
time at the restaurant off of West End where we met

and worked and giggled at the micros. I keep seeing
his crooked smile and open server book fanned with cash

before we would discover and enter another world
and come back barreling to this one, astronauts

for the better and for the worse, but still spectacular
as we burned back inside this atmosphere to live

separate lives inside other shadow boxes we cannot see.
I remember I said I hate you once when we were driving

back to Nashville, our last long distance. I didn’t mean it.
I said it to hurt him, and it did. I regret that I was capable

of causing pain. I think it’s important to implicate
the self. The knife shouldn’t exit the cake clean.

There is still some residue, some proof of puncture,
some scars you graze to remember the risk.

Copyright © 2021 by Tiana Clark. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 14, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Haven’t found anyone 
From the old gang.
They must be still in hiding,
Holding their breaths
And trying not to laugh.

Our street is down on its luck
With windows broken
Where on summer nights 
One heard couples arguing,
Or saw them dancing to the radio.

The redhead we were 
All in love with,
Who sat on the fire escape,
Smoking late into the night, 
Must be in hiding too.

The skinny boy 
On crutches
Who always carried a book,
May not have 
Gotten very far.

Darkness comes early 
This time of year
Making it hard 
To recognize familiar faces 
In those of strangers.

 

Copyright © 2018 by Charles Simic. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 13, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets

I ask about what falls away.
I ask about where water sings.  
Here is surplus of sun, ocean  
of excess, remaindered song.  
Whose hands wash this sky?  
Who drains this sun against worry?  
Whose mighty ache makes history?  
This is where water drains,  
where gardens grow against  
worry, against the crisis of capital,  
& capital knows nothing but the  
veil hiding hand from profit. Here  
is leftover rice. & the wild imaginary  
of hunger. Here is a canal in  
the crook of the earth. & here is  
where water sings. & this, this  
is water singing us elsewhere. 



Copyright © 2023 by Jason Magabo Perez. This poem first appeared in the virtual exhibition “Profits Enslave the World: Philip Vera Cruz, the Manong Generation, and the Migrant Laborer Experience” by Welga Archive/Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies, Fall 2020. Used with permission of the author.

To live without the one you love
an empty dream never known
true happiness except as such youth

watching snow at window
listening to old music through morning.
Riding down that deserted street

by evening in a lonely cab
     past a blighted theatre
oh god yes, I missed the chance of my life

     when I gasped, when I got up and
        rushed out the room
          away from you.

From Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners, edited by Joshua Beckman, CAConrad, and Robert Dewhurst © 2015 John Wieners Literary Trust, Raymond Foye, Administrator. Reprinted with the permission of The John Wieners Literary Trust. 

Indian-summer-sun
With crimson feathers whips away the mists,—
Dives through the filter of trellises
And gilds the silver on the blotched arbor-seats.
 
Now gold and purple scintillate
On trees that seem dancing
In delirium;
Then the moon
In a mad orange flare 
Floods the grape-hung night.
 

This poem is in the public domain.

You ask me again this evening
          at what price

Does wisdom finally come
          in any life

Or at any age & now I think
          I know

The answer swear to me that
          when I tell you   

It is only everything you believe 

You will travel as far from this city
          as you can before

The streets grow smeared & lost
          to the smug

& promiscuous coming of the day




Copyright © 2018 by David St. John. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 23, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.