I don’t know the Latin names of flowers.
I know that there are cities wherein stars
Will labor to appear in bursts of as
Or under, will command the color green
To work with from or of or in in staves
And paragraphs, will demarcate the limits
Of the sky. I recognize the colors
Of acacia from paintings and poems.
I know a high wind carries rhyme across
The ocean. That smoke, it coaxes signals
From the fire. What words you speak I too
Have spoken of: of of, the turning back,
The opening beyond and up above us,
The movement forward and the reasoning
Behind. I know that the horizon falls out
Of perspective, that toward music the sea
Will harken back and find in language
No beauty save impermanence, a minor awe.
Copyright © 2016 by Sara Nicholson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 9, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
I won’t ever tell you how it ended.
But it ended. I was told not to act
Like it was some big dramatic moment.
She swiveled on her heels like she twirled just
The other day on a bar stool, the joy
Gone out of it now. Then she walked away.
I called out to her once. She slightly turned.
But she didn’t stop. I called out again.
And that was when, well, that’s just when
You know: You will always be what you were
On that small street at that small time, right when
She left and Pluto sudsed your throat and said,
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche
Tú la quisiste, y a veces ella también te quiso.
Copyright © 2016 by Rowan Ricardo Phillips. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 22, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
I have a dream
to fill the golden sheath
of a remembered day . . . .
(Air
heavy and massed and blue
as the vapor of opium . . .
domes
fired in sulphurous mist . . .
sea
quiescent as a gray seal . . .
and the emerging sun
spurting up gold
over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay . . . . )
But the day is an up-turned cup
and its sun a junk of red iron
guttering in sluggish-green water
where shall I pour my dream?
This poem is in the public domain.
All day on all my days,
the lives I’m not to process wash in;
anxieties lullaby on
and quite like to be gotten among;
but now—and now—one old,
abundant flower just screws up the room.
Copyright © 2016 by Graham Foust. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 4, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
Because I am a boy, the untouchability of beauty
is my subject already, the book of statues
open in my lap, the middle of October, leaves
foiling the wet ground
in soft copper. “A statue
must be beautiful
from all sides,” Cellini wrote in 1558.
When I close the book,
the bodies touch. In the west,
they are tying a boy to a fence and leaving him to die,
his face unrecognizable behind a mask
of blood. His body, icon
of loss, growing meaningful
against his will.
Copyright © 2016 by Richie Hofmann. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 12, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
I wake myself imagining the shape
of the day and where I will find
myself within it. Language is not often
in that shape,
but sentences survive somehow
through the islands of dark matter,
the negative space often more important
than the positive.
Imagine finding you look at the world
completely different upon waking one day.
You do not know if this is permanent.
Anything can change, after all,
for how else would you find yourself
in this predicament or this opportunity,
depending on the frame? A single thought
can make loneliness seem frighteningly new.
We destroy the paths of rivers to make room for the sea.
Copyright © 2016 by Adam Clay. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 24, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
Because today we did not leave this world,
We now embody a prominence within it,
Even amidst its indifference to our actions,
Whether they be noiseless or not.
After all, nonsense is its own type of silence,
Lasting as long as the snow on your
Tongue. You wonder why each evening
Must be filled with a turning away, eyes to the lines
Of the hardwood floor as if to regret the lack
Of movement in a single day, our callous hope
For another wish put to bed with the others in a slow
Single-file line. I used to be amazed at the weight
An ant could carry. I used to be surprised by
Survival. But now I know the mind can carry
Itself to the infinite power. Like the way snow
Covers trauma to the land below it, we only
Believe the narrative of what the eye can see.
Copyright © 2016 by Adam Clay. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 28, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
—walking along a ridge of white sand—
it’s cooler below the surface—
we stop and, gazing at an expanse
of dunes to the west,
watch a yellow yolk of sun drop to the mountains—
an hour earlier, we rolled down a dune,
white sand flecked your eyelids and hair—
a claret cup cactus blooms,
and soaptree yuccas
move as a dune moves—
so many years later, on a coast, waves rolling to shore,
wave after wave,
I see how our lives have unfolded,
a sheen of
wave after whitening wave—
and we are stepping barefoot,
rolling down a dune, white flecks on our lips,
on our eyelids: we are lying in a warm dune
as a full moon
lifts against an ocean of sky—
Copyright © 2016 by Arthur Sze. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 8, 2016, this poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
From The Complete Poems 1927–1979 by Elizabeth Bishop, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Used with permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
Moon that is linking our daughters’
Choices, and still more beginnings,
Threaded alive with our shadows,
These are our bodies’ own voices,
Powers of each of our bodies,
Threading, unbroken, begetting
Flowers from each of our bodies.
These are our spiraling borders
Carrying on your beginnings,
Chaining through shadows to daughters,
Moving beyond our beginnings,
Moon of our daughters, and mothers.
Copyright © 2016 by Annie Finch. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 9, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
This poem is in the public domain.
Macbeth speaks to Seyton, his servant, after learning of Lady Macbeth's death
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
This poem is in the public domain.
Yesterday’s newspaper becomes last week’s
Newspapers spread out like a hand-held fan
In front of the face of the apartment
Door. A dog does the Argos-thing inside,
Waiting beside O as though his body
Is but an Ithaca waiting the soul’s
Return. Neil the Super will soon come up
With the key but only in time to find
Doreen, the on-the-down-low-friend-with-perks,
There already, kneeling between the two,
Stroking the hair of both O and the dog,
Wondering who had been walking the dog.
Copyright © 2015 by Rowan Ricardo Phillips. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 28, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.