Perdu • National Poetry Month

Perdu  

I no longer appear

in photos. No one pictures me

in the moment. Poolside, red

plastic cup in hand, smiling faces,

a dripping child on a grandmother’s

damp lap, squinting into the sun. Bride

and groom in white, surrounded by

well-dressed pastel-flocked crowd

on the dark parquet dance floor. Groaning

picnic table, red and white checkered

tablecloth, tanned patriarch flanked by

children and grandchildren biting into

crispy black hot dogs, crunchy pickles,

sticky pink watermelon. Around

the dining table, goofing in the mashed

potatoes, a selfie with Dad. Adorable,
adoring stealth shots: watching tv, nothing

special, Happy Days reruns, teens in

identical superhero t-shirts, stuck in time.

There are no gaps, no holes,

no negative space unfilled.

I am not redacted.

I am naught.

by Chris Fow Cohen

with permission of the author

Spoken Word Poetry: I Think She was a She • National Poetry Month

I Think She Was a She by Leyla Josephine

Tattered Kaddish • National Poetry Month

Tattered Kaddish


Taurean reaper of the wild apple field
messenger from earthmire gleaning
transcripts of fog
in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month
speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides:

Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel
on ones we knew and loved

Praise to life though its windows blew shut
on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved

Praise to life though ones we knew and loved
loved it badly, too well, and not enough

Praise to life though it tightened like a knot
on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us

Praise to life giving room and reason
to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable

Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.

by Adrienne Rich
courtesy exceptindreams

How to Leave the World that Worships Should • National Poetry Month

How to Leave the World that Worships Should 


Let faxes butter-curl on dusty shelves.
Let junkmail build its castles in the hush
of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst
and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else.
As hours go softly by, let others curse
the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep.
Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds.
Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.

Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,
immense and wordless, simply understood:
you’ve made your mark like birdtracks in the sand -
now make the air in your lungs your livelihood.
See how each wave arrives at last to heave
itself upon the beach and vanish. Breathe.


by Ros Barber
courtesy RosBarber.com
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A Visual Poem in Honor of Arbor Day • National Poetry Day

A Visual Poem in Honor of Arbor Day

The Wound Before the Tomb of Walt Whitman • National Poetry Month

The Wound Before the Tomb of Walt Whitman


You who saw the vast oceans
and the peaks of the mountains,
who communed with all the sailors of the world
and you who saw Christ eat the bread of his last supper among the young
and the elders,
you who saw the executioner of Europe
with his ax soaked with blood,
You stepped on the scaffold
and the fields in which mothers cried to their dead children.

Tell me if it is still
possible to announce triumphant justice
and deliver the lessons of the new world.

I’m going to kiss your lips,
they are cold and taste like the word America.


by Fernando Valverde
 Translated by Carolyn Forché
courtesy poets.org

Coming • National Poetry Month

Coming



Coming : 


On longer evenings, 

Light, chill and yellow, 

Bathes the serene

Foreheads of houses. 

A thrush sings, 

Laurel-surrounded

In the deep bare garden, 

Its fresh-peeled voice

Astonishing the brickwork. 

It will be spring soon, 

It will be spring soon—

And I, whose childhood

Is a forgotten boredom, 

Feel like a child

Who comes on a scene

Of adult reconciling, 

And can understand nothing

But the unusual laughter, 

And starts to be happy. 



by Philip Larkin
courtesy English for Students