Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
From Sentences by Howard Nemerov, published by the University of Chicago Press. Copyright © 1980 by Howard Nemerov. Reprinted with the permission of Margaret Nemerov. All rights reserved.
Odd how you entered my house quietly,
Quietly left again.
While you stayed you ate at my table,
Slept in my bed.
There was much sweetness,
Yet little was done, little said.
After you left there was pain,
Now there is no more pain.
But the door of a certain room in my house
Will be always shut.
Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from,
The music you played,
Are in that room
With the pillow where last your head was laid.
And there is one place in my garden
Where it’s best that I set no foot.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on June 5, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
Did she know
there was more to life
than lions licking the furred
ears of lambs,
fruit trees dropping
their fat bounty,
the years droning on
without argument?
Too much quiet
is never a good sign.
Isn’t there always
something itching
beneath the surface?
But what could she say?
The larder was full
and they were beautiful,
their bodies new
as the day they were made.
Each morning the same
flowers broke through
the rich soil, the birds sang,
again, in perfect pitch.
It was only at night,
when they lay together in the dark
that it was almost palpable—
the vague sadness, unnamed.
Foolishness, betrayal,
—call it what you will. What a relief
to feel the weight
fall into her palm. And after,
not to pretend anymore
that the terrible calm
was Paradise.
Copyright © 2013 Danusha Laméris. “Eve, After” originally appeared in The Sun Magazine. Used with permission of the author.
It is easy to erase it—a touch of the delete key on this keyboard. Barely moving my finger. Versus how much intention it took to use the eraser on a pencil, to flip the pencil around my thumb and scrub out the lead etched on the paper.
Stone and rain laugh at me. The amount of time it takes to get marks out of stone (gouges, rough edges, grooves) by rubbing them with water.
Copyright © 2019 by Todd Fredson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 29, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired! She sat across the desk from me, squirming. It was stifling. My suite runs hot but most days it is bearable. This student has turned in nothing, rarely comes to class. When she does, her eyes bore into me with a disdain born long before either of us. She doesn’t trust anything I say. She can’t respect my station, the words coming out of these lips, this face. My breathing is an affront. It’s me, she says. I never was this student’s professor— her immediate reaction seeing me at the smart board. But I have a calling to complete & she has to finish college, return to a town where she doesn’t have to look at, listen to or respect anyone like me—forever tall, large & brown in her dagger eyes, though it’s clear she looks down on me. She can return— if not to her hometown, another enclave, so many others, where she can brush a dog’s golden coat, be vegan & call herself a good person. Are you having difficulty with your other classes? No. Go, I say, tenderly. Loaded as a cop’s gun, she blurts point-blank that she’s afraid of me. Twice. My soft syllables rattle something planted deep, so I tell her to go where she'd feel more comfortable as if she were my niece or godchild, even wish her a good day. If she stays, the ways this could backfire! Where is my Kevlar shield from her shame? There’s no way to tell when these breasts will evoke solace or terror. I hate that she surprises me, that I lull myself to think her ilk is gone despite knowing so much more, and better. I can’t proselytize my worth all semester, exhaust us for the greater good. I can’t let her make me a monster to myself— I’m running out of time & pity the extent of her impoverished heart. She’s from New England, I’m from the Mid-South. Far from elderly, someone just raised her like this with love. I have essays to grade but words warp on the white page, dart just out of reach. I blink two hours away, find it hard to lift my legs, my voice, my head precious to my parents now being held in my own hands. How did they survive so much worse, the millions with all of their scars! What would these rivers be without their weeping, these streets without their faith & sweat? Fannie Lou Hamer thundered what they felt, we feel, into DNC microphones on black and white TV years before I was a notion. She doesn’t know who Fannie Lou Hamer is, and never has to.
Copyright © 2018 by Kamilah Aisha Moon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 4, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
a poem in seven parts 1 convent my knees recall the pockets worn into the stone floor, my hands, tracing against the wall their original name, remember the cold brush of brick, and the smell of the brick powdery and wet and the light finding its way in through the high bars. and also the sisters singing at matins, their sweet music the voice of the universe at peace and the candles their light the light at the beginning of creation and the wonderful simplicity of prayer smooth along the wooden beads and certainly attended. 2 someone inside me remembers that my knees must be hidden away that my hair must be shorn so that vanity will not test me that my fingers are places of prayer and are holy that my body is promised to something more certain than myself 3 again born in the year of war on the day of perpetual help. come from the house of stillness through the soft gate of a silent mother. come to a betraying father. come to a husband who would one day rise and enter a holy house. come to wrestle with you again, passion, old disobedient friend, through the secular days and nights of another life. 4 trying to understand this life who did i fail, who did i cease to protect that i should wake each morning facing the cold north? perhaps there is a cart somewhere in history of children crying “sister save us” as she walks away. the woman walks into my dreams dragging her old habit. i turn from her, shivering, to begin another afternoon of rescue, rescue. 5 sinnerman horizontal one evening on the cold stone, my cross burning into my breast, did i dream through my veil of his fingers digging and is this the dream again, him, collarless over me, calling me back to the stones of this world and my own whispered hosanna? 6 karma the habit is heavy. you feel its weight pulling around your ankles for a hundred years. the broken vows hang against your breasts, each bead a word that beats you. even now to hear the words defend protect goodbye lost or alone is to be washed in sorrow. and in this life there is no retreat no sanctuary no whole abiding sister. 7 gloria mundi so knowing, what is known? that we carry our baggage in our cupped hands when we burst through the waters of our mother. that some are born and some are brought to the glory of this world. that it is more difficult than faith to serve only one calling one commitment one devotion in one life.
Lucille Clifton, "far memory" from Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 1991 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd., boaeditions.org.
It is not good to think
of everything as a mistake. I asked
for bacon in my sandwich, and then
I asked for more. Mistake.
I told you the truth about my scar:
I did not use a knife. I lied
about what he did to my faith
in loneliness. Both mistakes.
That there is always a you. Mistake.
Faith in loneliness, my mother proclaimed,
is faith in self. My instinct, a poor polaris.
Not a mistake is the blue boredom
of a summer lake. O mud, sun, and algae!
We swim in glittering murk.
I tread, you tread. There are children
testing the deep end, shriek and stroke,
the lifeguard perilously close to diving.
I tried diving once. I dove like a brick.
It was a mistake to ask the $30 prophet
for a $20 prophecy. A mistake to believe.
I was young and broke. I swam
in a stolen reservoir then, not even a lake.
Her prophesy: from my vagrant exertion
I'll die at 42. Our dog totters across the lake,
kicks the ripple. I tread, you tread.
What does it even mean to write a poem?
It means today
I'm correcting my mistakes.
It means I don't want to be lonely.
Copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Chang. Used with permission of the author.
Bright Girl Sally
Mulatto Sally
Well Dressed Sally
Sally With the Pretty Hair
Sally With the Irish Cotton Dress
Sally With the Smallpox Vaccine
Sally, Smelling of Clean White Soap
Sally Never Farmed A Day In Her Life
Available Sally
Nursemaid Sally
Sally, Filled with Milk
Sally Gone to Paris with Master’s Daughter
Sally in the Chamber with the President
Sally in the Chamber with the President’s Brother
Illiterate Sally
Capable Sally
Unmarried Sally
Sally, Mother of Madison, Harriet, Beverly, Eston
Sally, Mother of Eston Who Changed His Name
Sally, Mother of Eston Hemings Jefferson
Eston, Who Made Cabinets
Eston, Who Made Music
Eston, Who Moved to Wisconsin
Eston, Whose Children Were Jeffersons
Eston, Who Died A White Man
Grandmother Sally of the White Hemingses
Infamous Sally
Silent Sally
Sally, Kept at Monticello Until Jefferson’s Death
Sally, Whose Children Were Freed Without Her
Copyright © 2016 by Ashley M. Jones. From Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2016). Used with permission of the author.
Between Babylon
and the sea, I’ve built a home
with the sea’s whispers.
Copyright © 2024 by Geoffrey Philp. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 5, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
let me be yo wil
derness let me be yo wind
blowing you all day.
From Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums. Copyright © 1998 by Sonia Sanchez. Used with the permission of Beacon Press.
i am moving in
air amazon woman bare
foot thunderbound bells.
From Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums. Copyright © 1998 by Sonia Sanchez. Used with the permission of Beacon Press.