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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

The Meaning of Trees

Split the trunk of an ancient one.  
Count the rings like hidden weddings brought to light.  
Know I’ve been wanting to come to die here,  
for the longest while. My brown limbs as roots.

White men I’ve longed for have walked face-first  
into the rainforest and misunderstood it so 
beautifully. Sonnets to the otherness they find dripping  
from the stems of their long fingers.

After I fuck them, will you eat them raw? 

Trees, I want to die and die in you. No other arms. 
No other branches coroneting the sky.  
No other aviaries for corbeau and kiskadee. Kiss me. 

Before I was awaiting death in the life I hold now,  
plump and feral as a grass-fed lamb, I was 

Yours. I planned how I would construct my funerary bower  
in your arms, gird myself all over 
with liana, a blanket of sphagnum moss plucked from  
your bedroom floor. My eyelids green.

Copyright © 2025 by Shivanee Ramlochan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 18, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Shivanee Ramlochan

Shivanee Ramlochan
Photo credit: Elechi Todd
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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Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year.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
Amto remembers Hussein, Aljibbayn 1983 Kamelya Omayma Youssef 02/28/2025
DEAR GABRIELLE, Andrea Abi-Karam 02/27/2025
Symptoms that May Be Signs of Some Things Poupeh Missaghi 02/26/2025
Last Sky World Burn Fargo Nissim Tbakhi 02/25/2025
Spring Rachel Kyung-Joo Shin 02/24/2025
The Rivals Mark Van Doren 02/23/2025
Harlem: The Black City Fenton Johnson 02/22/2025
And So Many Are Dear Diana Marie Delgado 02/21/2025
Institutional(ized) Political Poem, or Poem for Disputed Territories Justin Rovillos Monson 02/20/2025
Solip Cystic Raquel Gutiérrez 02/19/2025

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