At the funeral, his other former girlfriend gives the eulogy. I sit in the pew.
Sitting in front of me, and behind me, and also to both sides, are more other former girlfriends.
Something heartfelt shared by Ex on the Mic sets off a chorus of sniffles among the Exes in Rows. They tuck their hair behind their little ears.
There are so many different people to hate, so I keep things simple and hate everyone.
I know why he picked me, a novelty.
I wore Mary Janes and high-neck dresses and labeled the shelves “Tuna and Nuts” and “Breakfast Items, Soup.” My hair was always squeaky clean.
Now I am someone entirely new.
A black dog, a broken heart.
I revel in being more like him now.
At home, I put on my sunglasses and turn off the lights.
Sitting on the toilet where light can’t peek through, I pretend the plunger’s a white cane. My chin held too high and to the side, I run through gruesome imitations of anger, contempt, disgust, sadness, surprise.
The world will be unsettled.
I will unsettle them.
Copyright © 2023 by Leigh Lucas. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 3, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
If you could know the empty ache of loneliness,
Masked well behind the calm indifferent face
Of us who pass you by in studied hurriedness,
Intent upon our way, lest in the little space
Of one forgetful moment hungry eyes implore
You to be kind, to open up your heart a little more,
I’m sure you’d smile a little kindlier, sometimes,
To those of us you’ve never seen before.
If you could know the eagerness we’d grasp
The hand you’d give to us in friendliness;
What vast, potential friendship in that clasp
We’d press, and love you for your gentleness;
If you could know the wide, wide reach
Of love that simple friendliness could teach,
I’m sure you’d say “Hello, my friend,” sometimes,
And now and then extend a hand in friendliness to each.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 7, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
I saw you as I passed last night,
Framed in a sky of gold;
And through the sun’s fast paling light
You seemed a queen of old,
Whose smile was light to all the world
Against the crowding dark.
And in my soul a song there purled—
Re-echoed by the lark.
I saw you as I passed last night,
Your tresses burnished gold,
While in your eyes a happy bright
Gleam of your friendship told.
And I went singing on my way;
On, on into the dark.
But in my heart still shone the day,
And still—still sang the lark.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 25, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself;
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.
And next in value, which thy kindness lends,
That I may greatly disappoint my friends,
Howe’er they think or hope that it may be,
They may not dream how thou’st distinguished me.
That my weak hand may equal my firm faith,
And my life practise more than my tongue saith;
That my low conduct may not show,
Nor my relenting lines,
That I thy purpose did not know,
Or overrated thy designs.
From Poems of Nature (The Bodley Head, 1895) by Henry David Thoreau. Copyright © 1895 by Henry David Thoreau. This poem is in the public domain. This poem is in the public domain.
by HAUNTIE
That I could be this human at this time
breathing, looking, seeing, smelling
That I could be this moment at this time
resting, calmly moving, feeling
That I could be this excellence at this time
sudden, changed, peaceful, & woke
To all my friends who have been with me in weakness
when water falls rush down my two sides
To all my friends who have felt me in anguish
when this earthen back breaks between the crack of two blades
To all my friends who have held me in rage
when fire tears through swallows behind tight grins
I know you
I see you
I hear you
Although the world is silent around you
I know you
I see you
I hear you
From To Whitey & the Cracker Jack (Anhinga Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by May Yang. Reprinted by permission of Anhinga Press.
Scrolling through the at-the-limit list of names,
I’m caught unaware: my phone displays a friend
I’ll never be able to call again.
Now that all that’s left of her are memories
I can’t delete her entry, it seems too final,
as if it would erase our entire past together.
Phones are democratic: jumbled together
are lovers and colleagues, name after name
in alphabetical order. It was she who finally
convinced me to get a phone; the day my friend
and I went to buy it is still a vivid memory:
I was having one of those lapses of memory;
not long before, he and I had spent the night together.
We run into him on the street; both he and my friend
expect an introduction, but I’ve forgotten his name.
I’ve now forgotten so many boys; only their names
remain, stored in my phone’s memory.
Those I can delete, but not my friend’s.
It’s as if all that remains of our friend-
ship is this metonymy of her name
on a SIM-card full of memories and names.
From Deleted Names (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2013). Copyright © 2013 by Lawrence Schimel. Used with the permission of the author.
‘Tis the last rose of Summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
Or give sigh for sigh!
I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o’er the bed
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love’s shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
This poem is in the public domain.
All night our room was outer-walled with rain.
Drops fell and flattened on the tin roof,
And rang like little disks of metal.
Ping!—Ping!—and there was not a pin-point of silence between
them.
The rain rattled and clashed,
And the slats of the shutters danced and glittered.
But to me the darkness was red-gold and crocus-colored
With your brightness,
And the words you whispered to me
Sprang up and flamed—orange torches against the rain.
Torches against the wall of cool, silver rain!
This poem is in the public domain.Published in Poem-a-Day on August 2, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide,
Like all created things, secrets from me,
And stand a barrier to eternity.
And I, how can I praise thee well and wide
From where I dwell—upon the hither side?
Thou little veil for so great mystery,
When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide,
Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled
Literally between me and the world.
Then shall I drink from in beneath a spring,
And from a poet’s side shall read his book.
O daisy mine, what will it be to look
From God’s side even of such a simple thing?
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 25, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
You’ve just died in my arms,
But suddenly it seems we’re eternal
Cali boys, Afro-haired cohorts in crime,
Racing through intricate lattices
Of quince and lemon tree shadows,
Corridors of Queen Anne’s lace—
On the skip-church Sunday you dubbed me
“Sir Serious” instead of Cyrus—
Then, swift as a deer’s leap, we’re devotees
Of goatees and showy Guatemalan shirts,
Intoxicated lovers for a month
On the northwest coast of Spain—
Praising the irrepressible sounds
Of a crusty Galician bagpiper
On La Coruña’s gripping finisterre,
Then gossiping and climbing
(Like the giddy Argonauts we were)
The lofty, ancient Roman lighthouse,
All the way—Keep on truckin’, we sang—
To the top of the Tower of Hercules—
Copyright © 2019 by Cyrus Cassells. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 30, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
When did I know that I’d have to carry it around
in order to have it when I need it, say in a pocket,
the dark itself not dark enough but needing to be
added to, handful by handful if necessary, until
the way my mother would sit all night in a room
without the lights, smoking, until she disappeared?
Where would she go, because I would go there.
In the morning, nothing but a blanket and all her
absence and the feeling in the air of happiness.
And so much loneliness, a kind of purity of being
and emptiness, no one you are or could ever be,
my mother like another me in another life, gone
where I will go, night now likely dark enough
I can be alone as I’ve never been alone before.
Copyright © 2019 by Stanley Plumly. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 7, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
translated from the Spanish by Agnes Blake Poor
Sadly mourns the fair princess, while her golden bees,
Clustering together in the stillness of the sun,
Murmur faintly like the waves of enchanted seas.
Knight and Squire around her are striving, every one,
Vainly striving to awake on her cheek the blush,
Soft as on an evening cloud the last sunset flush.
Sadly mourns the centaur troop from the classic lands,
Suddenly arrested on some distant shore,
By the cadence of the waves, like a funeral band,
Till they cover all the marge, and are heard no more.
Till the last faint ripple, with a sobbing breath,
Dies away in silence, and all is still as death.
Sacred swans of poesy, snow-white and snow-soft,
Floating heaps of slumber on waveless lakes afar;
Royal train of peacocks, with crested heads aloft,
Such as pace majestic, linked to Juno’s car.
Or in Versailles gardens step slowly one by one,
Past the steps of Pompadour’s rose-heaped, rose-hung throne.
Floating vapors slowly rise and wreathe, wind-swept and pale;
Hiding arching necks of snow, shining crests of blue;
Sad and sweet the murmurs through the misty veil,
Till the poet’s song resounds, the flowerless desert through;
And but for a moment rings the Sonatina’s lay,
Roaring winds and thunder peals sweep it far away.
* * * * * *
The spectral Archer of the Northern sky,
Bends his great bow across the sphere on high;
Through the unmeasured realms of night and day,
Speeds his black arrow on its destined way.
It strikes, but pierces not, the poet’s breast,
His empty quiver near him lies at rest,
And over him sinks slowly in the West
The Archer Boy.
Let no loud weeping chill the budding bloom,
That elves and nymphs have wreathed about his tomb,
The gentle Syrinx mourns his shortened years,
And on his laurels Pan sheds quiet tears;
In the cathedral raise the exile’s Psalm,
That through the transepts breathes like sorrow’s balm,
And in the tinted window rises calm
The Archer Boy
And now the band of those who loved him best
Follows him slowly to his place of rest.
To the slow beating of the muffled drum
With heads bowed down and measured tread they come.
Pale and serene, fixed in triumphant peace,
His noble face bids lamentation cease,
His only fitting requiem shall be
The pealing Psalm that tells of victory.
The blazoned banners float above his bier,
And from blue far-off waters rises clear
The swan-song on the ear!
From Pan-American Poems: An Anthology (The Gorham Press, 1918) by Agnes Blake Poor. This poem is in the public domain.
—after a photograph by Alvin Baltrop
He looks through the wound of my life like it’s light. So I let him. The last cube of ice. Outside the tray. Where I found him. My lover. Melts atop this brick, as if it’s our last whiskey together. His brown, more fragrant, more dangerous than whiskey. You couldn’t miss him. Nothing lasts. Of promise. Such is the promise of light. Not even day breaks between us. Black joy, cresting over and over the summer sun. Kept a spiral of his hair, in a box, like a favour. His favourite pair of trainers. The taste of his lips where we first kissed. Where we first blissed. I couldn’t— though I tried. To keep him. Wouldn’t keep. Still. Nor true. Keep up. How could he keep me, when he refused to keep time? Didn’t keep me in compliments. Was I supposed to keep sweet? Look. We discovered day like it was fire. Flesh, like empire. Touch like bloodlight. Yes. Count me down like a missile. As of tomorrow and the day after. As of this darkening gelatin and silver. As of the moon and the monsoon rain. As of these piers. As of America and all its splendour. As of the alleyway and the archive. As of this F-stop. And this fuck. And the next. As of this click and shutter. As of the daffodil and every queer thing that obliterates winter.
Copyright © 2021 by Omotara James. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 4, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
The stream runs clear to its stones; the fish swim in sharp outline. Girl, turn your face for me to draw. Tomorrow, if we should drift apart, I shall find you by this picture.
From Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry translated by John Balaban. Translation copyright © 2003 by John Balaban. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press. All right reserved.