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Poem-a-Day

The only daily poetry series publishing new work by today’s poets.

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Poem-a-day

We Be Ludere

The root-tune of our being being this nightsweltering in the boybunks.

 

Owl-absonant sensesurround of sweatshine and moonklieg insomnia both.

 

The mustangy (shin-shank) clash of us hopped-up spiral-eyed on sun-tea and the sugars.

 

« en garde your ownself you I could kill you again easy »

 

Unsweet unsmotherable systole-diastole (and back again) (and so forth)

 

of the instigator v. the aggravoked; unbridleable-arterial
 


brotherbeat

 

of kick-poke (and pester-choke and parry) play at play.

Copyright © 2025 by Atsuro Riley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 28, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Atsuro Riley

Atsuro Riley
Photo credit: Sven Wiederholt
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Randall Mann is the Guest Editor of August. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mann about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
Let Me Begin Again Major Jackson 04/26/2021
Japanese Hokku Lewis Grandison Alexander 04/25/2021
Insomniami Ariel Francisco 04/24/2021
My Father’s Accent Kaveh Akbar 04/23/2021
The Little Book of Cheerful Thoughts Jeffrey Harrison 04/22/2021
After Reading Kobayashi Issa’s The Spring of My Life On My 49th Birthday Dobby Gibson 04/21/2021
In her mostly white town, an hour from Rocky Mountain National Park, a black poet considers centuries of protests against racialized violence Camille T. Dungy 04/20/2021
Bobolink Didi Jackson 04/19/2021
Near the End of April William Stanley Braithwaite 04/18/2021
Venetian Siesta Joseph Millar 04/17/2021

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