All poetry is about hope.

A scarecrow walks into a bar.

An abandoned space station falls to earth.

When probing the monster’s brain,

you’re probably probing your own.

A beautiful woman becomes a ghost.

I hope I never miscalculate the dosage

that led to the infarction

of my lab rabbit again.

All poetry is a form of hope.

Not certain, just actual

like love and other traffic circles.

I cried on that airplane too,

midwest patchwork below

like a board game on which

mighty forces kick apart the avatars.

I always wanted to be the racecar

but usually ended up a thumbtack.

When I was young, sitting in a tree

counted as preparation and later

maybe a little whoopie in the morgue.

So go ahead, thaw the alien, break

the pentagram but watch out for

the institutional hood ornaments.

It’s not a museum, it’s a hive.

The blood may be fake

but the bleeding’s not.

Copyright © 2019 by Dean Young. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 22, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

translated from the Japanese by William George Aston

The cry of the cicada

Gives us no sign

That presently it will die.

From A History of Japanese Literature (William Heinemann, 1899) by W. G. Aston. This poem is in the public domain.

is a field 

             as long as the butterflies say 

                                                                       it is a field 

 
with their flight

 
                                         it takes a long time 

to see

                         like light or sound or language

                                                                                      to arrive

and keep 
                         arriving

 
 
                                       we have more

than six sense dialect

                                                                      and i

am still

              adjusting to time

 
                              the distance and its permanence

 
i have found my shortcuts

 
                             and landmarks

                                                          to place

 
where i first took form

                                                                                           in the field

Copyright © 2022 by Marwa Helal. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 3, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.