We—Detroit girls, Daughters of Motown—
knew before we saw the bronze casket
that Aretha would be dressed down;
some—Non-believers, Outsiders—
called it frivolous: two-day
viewing; eight-hour long service;
four outfit changes, each dress
more elaborate than the last.
Beautiful, beautiful gowns—accessorized
from jewels to pointed heels. I half-
expect her to break out a side eye
belt out a hymn to remind us
who the Queen is. There is,
of course, no such performance,
though we all huddle like crows,
waiting to see if she still looks
like herself. There is a protocol to this,
a right way to send
someone back to the lap of God.
Wearing their Sunday best.
So fancy they can be
mistaken for a bride.
Copyright © 2025 by Brittany Rogers. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 9, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
Students of movement play in front of mirrors all day
Students of movement revel in tranquil river babblings daydreaming how they can make those patterns their own
Students of movement have a love-hate relationship with floors, walls, and gravity
Students of movement study pigeons, worms, dogs, turtles, fishes, snakes, swans...
Students of movement strive to understand their bodies and how their muscles and limbs can transform raw emotion into physical expression
Students of movement respect all genres of dance, martial arts, meditations, and interpretations
Students of movement
Nod to rhythms echoing through hollow stairways
envisioning
fluid patterns
and gravity-defying poses...
...training to each
Subway bus passing
Leaves rattling
Book pages flapping
Audience clapping...
Searching their souls
for the spontaneous
sequence that will
set them free
subsequently
freeing others
fascinating in
the freedom set forth
By
syncopated high-hats
stage shaking stomps
three-second jumps
frictionless spins
and the sheer
beauty of
pure
Movement...
Used with permission of the poet.
Moon dance,
you were not to blame.
Nor you,
lovely white moth.
But I saw you together.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 22, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
This poem is in the public domain.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.
(War Time)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
From The Language of Spring, edited by Robert Atwan, published by Beacon Press, 2003.
translated from the Ukrainian by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky
Emptiness lives inside a radio
and newspapers are now printed without letters.
I walk up the street
but I don’t (do I?) hear my own steps.
I notice an acquaintance across the street,
and call out to him to say
hello, but bullets of silence fly from my mouth.
I start shouting with my hands
but my fingers are bent, crooked at my fingers.
But it’s just (or is it?) a dream, just a dream
which pretends it is an emptiness, inside a radio.
ТІЛЬКИБ СОН
Радіо всередині пусте і чорне
і газети тепер друкують без букв
Іду вулицею
але не чую власних кроків
помічаю знайомого з іншого боку вулиці
і гукаю його щоб привітатись
але з мого рота вилітають кулі мовчання
які чомусь не схожі на кулі тиші
Починаю кричати йому руками
але мої пальці вигнуті
мої пальці криві й покручені
Та це тільки сон
тільки сон
Copyright © 2025 by Katie Farris, Ilya Kaminsky, and Lesyk Panasiuk. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 31, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
Little soul lost, little shining ghost, prepare yourself to descend
into the small chambers that flicker like fireflies. Prepare cattle
& rapid fire which should be the pallor, tenderness of patient flowers.
I want to tell you about my childhood, ten times the nerve, which is
stitching darkness, which is mine alone tattooed, black as the black
craters in an isthmus, worse than the worst mind during the war
deranged, always the strange order of smoke, always in praise
of the elder tongue, which I’d like to think, is afraid of the dark forest
of trees. But never mind all that, how it mocks what is & what is not.
All the while I didn’t know when I claimed you my apostrophe
I meant an adagio with ink, meant dead ringer in the wind, but worst.
What remains is this deer at the edge of the woods, my dappled antlers
my toiled meaning & no meaning making music like a heretic. After all
what is a soul crawling out of the black dirt if it has no teeth or nails.
Copyright © 2025 by William Archila. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 1, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
one can repeat anything they like
it’s just dead now and beaten
there’s a wire
in the belt of my brain
and don’t smoke
you difficult person
there’s a wire
picking up missiles on the strip
breaking space and time with
an iron sound iron sound
I can’t go to sleep or unsee life ,
time makes change possible and
is currently menacing . in this way ,
one learns the simple , vertiginous
depth of problems , the dead weight
of forms and the hyenic laughter
of matthew miller which all meaning
requires one to reject – the content of life
is essentially general , not actually . a little fear of god ,
and the heat currents shutting down ,
all shot through with the arrows of slavery
and white phosphorus . it’s a total
global project . the fish are still full of mercury –
he said it cuz he didn’t like it ,
and now we have to dislike it forward ,
with all the implications bursting . I can’t shut my eyes ,
babies with flies on they face – and writing
with the song cuz conditions have not
given the means to surpass it .
this is the end of something . these are the words ,
I’m serious , of serious people ,
awake unsustainably
Copyright © 2025 by Benjamin Krusling. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 18, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
No, we are not going to die.
The sounds you hear
knocking the windows and chipping the paint
from the ceiling, that is a game
the world is playing.
Our task is to crouch in the dark as long as we can
and count the beats of our own hearts.
Good. Like that. Lay your hand
on my heart and I’ll lay mine on yours.
Which one of us wins
is the one who loves the game the most
while it lasts.
Yes, it is going to last.
You can use your ear instead of your hand.
Here, on my heart.
Why is it beating faster? For you. That’s all.
I always wanted you to be born
and so did the world.
No, those aren’t a stranger’s bootsteps in the house.
Yes, I’m here. We’re safe.
Remember chess? Remember
hide-and-seek?
The song your mother sang? Let’s sing that one.
She’s still with us, yes. But you have to sing
without making a sound. She’d like that.
No, those aren’t bootsteps.
Sing. Sing louder.
Those aren’t bootsteps.
Let me show you how I cried when you were born.
Those aren’t bootsteps.
Those aren’t sirens.
Those aren’t flames.
Close your eyes. Like chess. Like hide-and-seek.
When the game is done you get another life.
From The Last Song of the World (BOA Editions, 2024) by Joseph Fasano. Copyright © 2024 Joseph Fasano. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of BOA Editions.
I take the train to Auschwitz from the white
Kraków of Mongols and Copernicus
to the extermination camp, and night
of nights for souls herded by Brownshirt soulless.
Soon after the war, the train’s almost empty.
I step on the rust platform where SS
Schutzstaffel doctor Josef Mengele,
for lined-up Jews, chose barracks or gas shower.
Baby shoes, ovens. Gallows for the unruly.
The Arbeit Macht frei gate. I leave the tower-
ing smokestacks, trudge back to the platform. Truly
gruesome. Bored, stunned by time, a workman
drops a coin in the jukebox just above
us: “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band.”
The beat’s so strong we tap our feet, and kiss
the poisoned air with “All You Need Is Love.”
From Mexico In My Heart: New And Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2015) by Willis Barnstone. Copyright © 2015 by Willis Barnstone. Used with the permission of the poet.
i
it is a terror
in the closet her knees
are limp eyes straining to see
every object glows with a
private halo pulling down
her skirt the trickle
of urine along her thigh and calf
she wipes it carelessly with her hand
biting her lips she fixates on
pebbles and rusty nails along
the path to the truck it is an oblivion
seen in matter-of-fact gestures
wiping the child’s nose with her fingers
she says blow his eyes shine as she
feels the pressure of the doorknob palms
wet slipping out of her grasp she whispers
not now not yet we’ve been so careful
he’s a good child just a little more time
she pleads with them we will not be
careless anymore this time the knob falls
into the glare of lights voices scream
orders she does not understand but obeys
blow she tells him pulling down her skirt
and wiping his nose with her fingers later
it is still over has been over
since the knob slipped from her hand
like the wet fish that jumped while she tried
to scale it later after the not yet
not now the walk nude across the yard
she glimpses the meaning of the order
allows her eyes to widen for one
moment and see the path it is a coldness
never before felt or imagined she clutches
her hands tearing at her thighs wailing
to the others she tries to lean on them
to explain the mistake the small error
nothing is irrevocable she screams nothing
to them trying to lean they push her away
and her hands cup the knob for a better hold
to keep out the light her world is cement
stone iron
ii
listening to conversations over brandy
i am always amazed at their certainty
about the past how it could have been
different could have been turned around
with what ease they transport themselves
to another time/place taking the comfort
confidence of an after-dinner drink
it would be too impolite
of me to say my mother hid with me
for two years among ignorant peasants who
would have turned us in almost at once had
they known who we were who would have watched
with glee while we were carted off even though
grandad had bounced me on his knees and fed me
from his own spoon and my mother is a frightened
woman
it would be too impolite
to say you do not know yourselves you do not know
others
"perspectives on the second world war" from Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021 © 2022 by Irena Klepfisz. Published by Wesleyan University Press. Used by permission.
“With our despised immigrant clothing, we shed also our impossible Hebrew names.” —Mary Antin, The Promised Land (1912)
My great-uncle Vincent, son of the Milk Street tailor,
threw some fairy dust into the air and changed,
making it easy for me to go to the prom,
to grow up in Indiana and bite my tongue
when a hick would cuss at the bastard who tried
to Jew me down on the price for home-grown pot.
Like wool pants for blue jeans, Moshe, Shmuel and Lazar
traded in their names, and in exchange were changed
from cabbage-eaters into Americans, and why not?
“I never was a pumpkin!,” cries the carriage.
“I never was a pauper!,” shouts the prince.
In this fairy tale all the steins turn into stones, straw turns
to gold, stars warp into crosses, and the pauper trades up
and leaves the trades to the star-crossed Jews.
I’m a lousy Jew, ignorant of nearly everything
except that in another time the Klan would lynch me,
the Nazis flay me into yellow lampshades.
My white hide hides me, my baseball cap keeps greasy ash
out of my hair, and I’m glad for my nice name.
Who needs a life so grim? In the shtetl, the old Jews
would change their names so the Angel of Death
flying on black crape wings above the town,
fatal list in hand, would pass over them
—but not the ones who stayed behind
and kept their names, the Adelsteins, Eisensteins
or the one I’ll never know, some cousin twice removed
born in Poland, some Maurice Bernstein. No way to gather
smoke out of the sky and give him flesh again.
I imagine him, with eyes like mine, intent
and studious, staring at the rusted cattle-car wall
in the rattling stink of packed bodies, trying not to breathe.
He’ll get that wish soon enough.
Slender, bookish children aren’t good workers
and it’s too much trouble to take away their names
and write numbers in their skin.
They’re gassed like fleas.
I’m a lousy Jew, but I’d like to disturb the grass,
unearth him from the crowded grave, and let his damp fingers
write this story, while his eyes like clouded marble roll.
I’d like to roll the story back to the dead boy
swaying in the train, to see him there imagining the sky
he hasn’t seen for days, the white winter sky, like a page
he could write on again and again, practicing his name.
From Beast in the Apartment (Sheep Meadow Press, 2014) by Tony Barnstone. Copyright © 2014 by Tony Barnstone. Used with the permission of the author.