Free Verse

A Story from Easter: He Has Risen

There is a mouse under the sink

Little mouse turds around in the kitchen drawers

It is raining, storming

The refrigerator

has gone to the dump

Donald's back

has brought him to bed for several months

He can't move

The war is skidding to an 'end'

Who wants to kill anything.

Buy two mousetraps

...

Joanne Kyger
1934-2017

Moon of the Returning Sun

A view from two sides of Polaris, it is said:

the living awaits destined relatives to retort.

These people go around waking the sleeping ones

when the weather is good: they wait for those

...

dg nanouk okpik

I've Dreamt of You So Often

I've dreamt of you so often that you become unreal.

Is there still time to reach this living body and to kiss on its mouth the birth of

the voice so dear to me?

I've dreamt of you so often that my arms used to embracing your shadow and

only crossing on my own chest might no longer meet your body's...

Robert Desnos
1900-1945

31

We’re all aware that human hair is dead

Yet we spend thousands taking care of it.

It’s like an endless funeral.

The moment your hair hits air, it’s toast.

It only lives inside the follicle.

That we twist and burn and fry it,

Straighten it and dye it, does not surprise.

What’s it gonna do, spit out your cheap...

Sarah Tolmie
b. 1971

Lake Michigan, Scene 3

The bodies are on the beach

And the bodies keep breaking

And the fight is over

But the bodies aren't dead

And the mayor keeps saying I will bring back the bodies

I will bring back the bodies that were broken

The broken bodies speak slowly

They walk slowly onto a beach that hangs over a fire

Into a fire that hangs...

Daniel Borzutzky
b. 1974

Icicle Glasses

Day thirty-nine

The thing that death gave you —

your face leaks

your face overflows

Your face is the grave of your nose

your face is the grave of your ears

your face is the grave of your face

once again your face overflows uncontrollably

The subzero temperature grows on your face then...

Kim Hyesoon

Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris

When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car

the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.

I use the past tense though this is irrelevant

in Daniel's language, which is sign.

Sign has no future or past; it is a present language.

You are never more present than when a gun

is pointed at you. What language says this...

Raymond Antrobus

On High

There was busy air there, air

seething through the leaves so,

from farther up, the tree-line shone

like a single scintillating polyhedron.

Still, though ravens and wrens flaked off the top,

the woods held, solid as a mall

or a rally or a lake — really anything

at all when seen from a ways. But

we'd...

Neil Surkan
b. 1989

On Antiphon Island

— “mu” twenty-eighth part —

On Antiphon Island they lowered

the bar and we bent back. It

wasn't limbo we were in albeit

we limbo'd. Everywhere we

went we

limbo' d, legs bent, shoulder

blades grazing the...

Nathaniel Mackey
1947

Poem for My Body

No one else rescued me. Not my father

or my brother or, years later, the gentle man

who became my husband. Not my mother

or my best friend or any of the women

who listened to me tell my story

and told me their own stories as we drank

cups of hot chocolate in cafés in Vancouver

while outside the rain poured and fallen leaves

...

Ruth Daniell
1987

Tractatus

The sun gave our shoulder blades ulu-shaped burns, and the sun gives nothing to our sort

I sleep now, and furiously

Clouds excreted shadows on the shoreline, and there were no clouds

His body a train ride away, and nearby

There are organs I have never used before, and they are pale from overuse

The sand had turned to pearls in our folds, and that...

Ben Ladouceur

You can't be an NDN person in today's world

and write a nature poem. I swore to myself I would never write a nature

poem. Let's be clear, I hate nature — hate its guts

I say to my audience. There is something smaller I say to myself:

I don't hate nature at all. Places have thoughts — hills have backs that...

Tommy Pico

Wishing Well

My fist holds as many coins

as I can carry. All are stamped with the Queen's effigy;

Elizabeth, D.G. Regina, the resident of pockets,

a woman I've never met though I always know

her whereabouts. Each face pressed

into another person's palm before mine.

The stink of sweat and metal. The waste of it.

I wish for a return...

Sachiko Murakami

Northern Light

Stepping off the plane in Whitehorse

the last thing I expect to feel

is home

not quite alone

but close enough

here in this great black north.

As we drive away from the airport

Chris points out the window

That's Antoinette's, Caribbean food

if you're feeling in need of a pick-me-up.

She's from Tobago....

Jillian Christmas

monday thaw

On TV it looked like a high-speed photo of a milk drop

the dying leader of the Pana Wave laboratory cult smack in the

centre.

Acres of white cloth streamered his followers, who

circled him like crown jewels.

More and more I'm responding to stark white on black,

letting the morning frost finish for me.

...

Weyman Chan
b. 1963

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the...

Langston Hughes
1902-1967

Turtle Island Poem Number Fourteen

once i left turtle island and i

rejoined la and doubleU and see

to savai‘i on a hunting trip

on the fairy from upolu

la picked up a day trick

blew him during lunch

on the beach under a tree

in front of some australian girls

and an old couple from germany

who politely ignored us

while doubleU and see and...

Dan Taulapapa McMullin

pimîhkân

Here's how you make pemmican

1. wiyâs

2. pânisâwân

3. kâhkêwak

4. yîwahikanak

5. pimîhkân

Here's how you make pemmican

1. meat

2. meat that's been sliced for drying

3. dried meat

4. pounded dried meat

5. mix with pimiy and mînisa to make pemmican

...

Jessie Loyer

big ghosts

big ghosts contra

band my diction war

korea's north sees red as

america flags china's chopped limb

british crowns hong kong

cut for duplicity more capitalist than capitalist

trades commie goods

slant contagion

door slam hello hunger

remember japan's occupation

desperate flee inland...

Larissa Lai

Top

After learning “me” and “I”

but well before my father learns

a restraining order's

between him and our home,

we share some good times.

Remember the back of his bicycle.

I sit on a seat secured over the tire.

Our laughter lolls like exhaust

as we drive over bumps in the lawn,

dandelions...

Kevin Spenst

When the stranger bumps his shoulder into me, hard, without an ounce of concern, I can feel the fire bubbling inside of me. The heat from the concrete rising up, through my feet, reverberating like electricity about to erupt magma through every orifice of my body. Lava that will oxidize every atom and molecule of his body on contact. The city as embodied trauma. The trauma of settlement. I...

Lindsay Nixon

Adam Father

He wakes up naked and drunk as a bear

on sun-fermented garbage.

Hungover and queasy and riled up by

bees.

Nothing going well today, he moans,

life being short and the craft, ah, long.

Still, might as well take a stab at it,

lording it over misrule and tending the

shame

that transforms a garden into...

Méira Cook

New Year

Out of their torments men carved a flower

which they perched on the high plateaus of their faces

hunger makes a canopy for them

an image dissolves in their last tear

they drank foam rhythmed monsters

to the point of ferocious horror

In those days

there was an

...

Aimé Césaire
1913-2008

In Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven

and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love

and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking...

Mahmoud Darwish
1941-2008

the ghosts of women once girls

somewhere a little girl is reading aloud

in the middle of a dirt road. she smiles

at the sound of her own voice escaping

the spine of a book. she feeds on her hunger

to know herself. she has not yet been taught

to dim, she sits with the stars beneath her feet,

a constellation of things to come.

as if a swallowed moon, she...

Aja Monet

area boys

brash talk on sidewalk

brethren to irreverence

short teeth long stories

aspirations high

rolling tape decks tweeters six

by nine speakers deep

joyride profiles boom

down sto:lo street thump lean ass

out brwrwaa car window

...

Hari Alluri

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,

which knew it would inherit the earth

before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close...

Naomi Shihab Nye
b. 1952

Alone

I never thought Michiko would come back

after she died. But if she did, I knew

it would be as a lady in a long white dress.

It is strange that she has returned

as somebody's dalmatian. I meet

the man walking her on a leash

almost every week. He says good morning

and I stoop down to calm her. He said

once that she was...

Jack Gilbert
1925-2012

Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong

Ocean, don’t be afraid.

The end of the road is so far ahead

it is already behind us.

Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

won’t remember its wings

no matter how many times our knees

kiss the pavement. Ocean,

are you listening? The most beautiful part

of your...

Ocean Vuong
b. 1988

January 1, Dawn

After the celebrations,

people, TV channels, telephones,

the year’s recently-corrected digit

finally falls asleep.

Between the final night and the first dawn

a jagged piece of sky

as if viewed from the open mouth of a whale.

Inside her belly and inside the belly of time,

there’s no point worrying.

You...

Luljeta Lleshanaku
b. 1968

That feeling of my soul getting yanked

I wonder where my soul hides when I’m sick

My heart feels as if it’s getting beat up

Is it because the restless ocean is clumping up?

My heart beats regardless of the pain

It beats spewing out red thread like a red spider

A sinkful of red thread gets submerged in water

My heart beats like a...

Kim Hyesoon

Parable of the Eagle

An eagle egg fell into a farmer’s chicken shed

and when it hatched the farmer gave it chicken feed

even though he was the king of birds. The farmer

clipped the eaglet’s princely beak and raised him

as a chicken. When he grew large, wildlife control

called on the farm. “It has the heart of an eagle,”

said the public...

David Alexander

How to Triumph Like a Girl

I like the lady horses best,

how they make it all look easy,

like running 40 miles per hour

is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.

I like their lady horse swagger,

after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!

But mainly, let's be honest, I like

that they're ladies. As if this big

dangerous animal is also a part of me,

...

Ada Limón

We Lived Happily during the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house —

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month...

Ilya Kaminsky

The Young Poets of Winnipeg

scurried around a classroom papered with poems.

Even the ceiling, pink and orange quilts of phrase...

they introduced one another, perched on a tiny stage

to read their work, blessed their teacher who

encouraged them to stretch, wouldn’t let their parents

attend the reading because parents might criticize,

believed in the third and fourth...

Naomi Shihab Nye
b. 1952

Theme for English B

The instructor said,

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you —

Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-...

Langston Hughes
1902-1967

You knock on the door

You knock on the door but nobody answers. Cupping your hands around your face you peer through the side-panel of frosted glass. A kettle is whistling, a woman singing as she sets the table. This is a familiar house. You knock again. Inside, the sounds are festive. Glasses clink and a band starts up. Pressing your ear to the door, you hear the sound of your own laughter. This is the house you...

Eve Joseph

Happy Birthday Moon

Dad reads aloud. I follow his finger across the page.

Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.

He makes the Moon say something new every night

to his deaf son who slurs his speech.

Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.

Tonight he gives the Moon my name, but I can’t say it,

his deaf son...

Raymond Antrobus

Too Negative

I was a kid other kids’

parents gossiped about.

They told their children

what I was: too negative.

I get it. Fair to fear

contagion of bad attitudes,

to think naming a thing

can be an inoculation.

Of course my friends

filled me in. Of course

...

Suzannah Showler
b. 1986

On Seeing a Photograph of My Mother at St. Joseph Residential School for Girls

A black and white picture

The sun is shining through a window behind you

Your hair black short Your small brown hands folded neatly on a tiny wooden desk

Some of the girls in the picture are smiling You are not Your eyes staring into the camera Seem a million miles away

That stare I will see seldom and one day...

David Groulx

Bad Brown Girl

i can barely speak in my mother tongues stutter

my accent is bad

i hate jalebi

but i like aloo samosa

i'm a bad brown

girl i didn't join the

SAA or the ISA

i just didn't know

whether i was desi or irani

i said turmeric

before i said haldi

i go to white-people karaoke bars

i...

Hana Shafi

Wow! You've Changed

You’ve changed.

You used to be so

and now you’re all

like, you’ve transformed

I don’t know how to describe

it’s like

you don’t like canasta anymore

you text IN ALL CAPS

your selfies are so

animalistic

like, are you out to prove something

you’re a lion

you’re a bear

you’re a...

Dina Del Bucchia

Ex Libris

I come from the land of

Where You From?

My people dispossessed of their stories

and who have died again and again

in a minstrelsy of afterlives, wakes,

the dead who walk, waiting and

furrowed, like ivy crawling up

All those museums and mausoleums,

lifting languages from rivers.

But I cannot leave them...

Adebe D. A.

Walking with Walt Whitman Through Calgary's Eastside on a Winter Day

Blue-white afternoon. The Bow river churns and smokes

as the city rumbles, economy chokes and bundled homeless

build cardboard homes in the snow. Yes, Walt, this is the new

world, and how often has your huge, burled form lengthened

beside me as we strode through parking lots, the filth and ice

of streets? Great seer, I listen for your relentless...

Rosemary Griebel

My Brother at 3 A.M.

He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps

when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.

O God, he said. O God.

He wants to kill me, Mom.

When Mom unlocked and opened the front door

at 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown, Dad was asleep.

He wants to kill me, he...

Natalie Diaz

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

To be a good

ex/current friend for R. To be one last

inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship

advice for L. To be advice

for my mother. To be a more comfortable

hospital bed for my mother. To be

no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time,

America for my uncle, who wants to be China...

Chen Chen
b. 1989

grass

grass is unusual

it was invented by the Romans

unlike most people grass stays where it grows

if grass had gone to the moon it would be there today

because grass looks luxurious

people put it wherever they can

a wedge of grass can split a sidewalk

city block, manhattan skyscraper

make a dog sick

step on grass; it...

Ward Maxwell

the second time

i ask mama

about residential school

she says no

i ask her again

she says no

the third time

i stop listen

to her silence

ask about her diabetes

her hip achy back

her sore knees

did she get her hearing aid fixed

whether...

Rosanna Deerchild

But I’m No One

for M. Maylor

Dear Anne Carson:

My friend read me the poem where your mom

said that the dead walk backwards.

You thought this myth arose from poor translation.

I can attest to your misapprehension.

My social studies teacher in grade 8, Ms. Rogers,

believed it was customary for the Chinese

to walk...

Weyman Chan
b. 1963

Full Metal Oji-Cree

this is the transsensorium

there are indo-robo-women fighting cowboys on the frontier

& winning finally

the premodern is a foundation for the postmodern

wintermute, tessier-ashpool, armitage

theyve revived us via neuromancy

but i am the necromancer

when i tell my mother i need kin

she sends me ten

weve all...

Joshua Whitehead
b. 1989

Trillium

the animal in me

is constant.

thirst starts,

hunger answers.

sleep is uncertain,

restless limbs.

in the night,

I hear footsteps.

warnings appear,

all signs say death.

still I crave

cigarettes, coffee.

exhaustion brings...

Gwen Benaway
1987

With the Dying of the Light

I recited to him,

Now as I was young and easy,

and in the cough-afflicted wheeze that was left of my father’s voice,

he answered, under the apple boughs,

and so it went between us

in the days I waited for him to...

Richard Harrison
1957

Not Horses

What I adore is not horses, with their modern

domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore

is a bug that lives only one day, especially if

it’s a terrible day, a day of train derailment or

chemical lake or cop admits to cover-up, a day

when no one thinks of anything else, least of all

that bug. I know how it feels, born as I’ve been

...

Natalie Shapero
b. 1982

From Titian Air Vent

A work of art is a world of signs, at least to the poet’s

nursery bookshelf sheltered behind the artist’s ear.

I recall each little motto howling its ins and outs

to those of us who might as well be on the moon

illu illu illu

Beacon

A tiny artificial theater of the world. I am here to slay the

dragon in the ready-made...

Susan Howe
b. 1937

For My Best Friend

We are losing the intensive care unit waiting room war

We were doing so well

So well we got sleepy

So sleepy the institution returned

In the 8th adjoined room sleeping on the 8th adjoined chair

The last five minutes just like the first

Hands...

Tongo Eisen-Martin

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of...

Wallace Stevens
1879-1955

Regardless

If I am judged

If I am punished

If I am dismissed

If I am misunderstood

If I am celebrated

If I am envied

If I am competed with

If I am slandered against

If I am seen

If I am soft

If I am stupid

If I get it

If I surpass

If I intimidate

If I confound

If I...

Aisha Sasha John
b. 1980

you aren't going to like what i have to say

before i start i want to say you shouldn’t blame yourself

there’s no point in beating around the bush

there’s something we need to talk about

this is the most difficult thing i’ve ever had to tell anyone

the longer i wait the harder it’s going to be

it’s best if we face this right now

what i’m about to tell you won’t be easy to hear

...

Donato Mancini

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the...

Wallace Stevens
1879-1955

From Whereas

Whereas my eyes land on the shoreline of “the arrival of Europeans in North America

opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.” Because in others, I hate the act

of laughing when hurt injured or in cases of danger. That bitter hiding. My daughter picks up

new habits from friends. She’d been running, tripped, slid on knees and palms onto...

Layli Long Soldier

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my...

Sylvia Plath
1932–1963

From World of Made and Unmade

In my dream my mother comes with me.

We are in the meadows we call

The Flats, walking the dogs.

Walk straight past the water trough,

she says, do not engage the moss.

Go back to the top of the page,

the dream says, and leave out the suicides.

In my dream I walk and...

Jane Mead
b. 1958

Application Form

Please read all the instructions carefully before proceeding.

Use only permanent blue or black ink.

If you have special needs that require accommodation,

please explain.

The information you provide should not be limited

by the space allowed.

If you require more space, append another sheet of paper.

In the blanks below please...

Phoebe Wang

I Have Something to Tell You

I’ve come to talk to you about shaving cuts

I was waiting across the road

right over there

for the light to turn

and you were on the other side

fumbling with change at the newspaper box

don’t buy this one buy this one

I said

pointing to identical newspapers

look here

I cut myself shaving

and...

Stuart Ross
b. 1959

From Silvija

If you can’t speak / write in a fissured / alter-language

Of nerve-matter / dura mater / orbit of the central axis

By a crevice / scattered / venous lacunae / lamina code

Cambered whisp to a fold / a tremor / (footfall) / rustle

Shudder leaves / whelming the surface / sleep / no and

No / resumed in doubling /...

Sandra Ridley
b. 1973

A History of Houses Built Out of Spite

none of us know Amy personally, but she’s here & she’s singing / rising above our sodden heads bowed in something like prayer / maybe // most of us are trying to move enough to pretend she doesn’t remind us of our mothers & Sunday morning spring cleans / the sharp bleached smell of it, the shrill peak of their voices demanding something far less beautiful // we’re trying not / to...

Chimwemwe Undi
1994

Two Hours on the Train

During two hours on the train

I rerun the film of my life

Two minutes per year on average

Half an hour for childhood

Another half-hour for prison

Love, books, wandering

take up the rest

the hand of my companion

gradually melts into mine

and her head on my shoulder

is as light as a dove

When we...

Abdellatif Laâbi
b. 1942

Last Visit

Now I set out across a minefield,

space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over

from a point where every pebble may explode

beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up

behind my body as I gasp for air,

although in this world I’ve never known

either flames or dragons or the fury of war

in these lands where the sky was always calm...

Pierre Nepveu
b. 1946

Letters

I threw away your letters.

Years ago, just like that.

The tight black swirls,

circles and strokes

filling fine sheets —

I would not see them again.

The last items I had left.

The dates. The phrases.

The things you said. Forfeited.

Snowflake patterns.

Leaf diagrams.

Crushed. Melted. Dissolved....

Russell Thornton
b. 1959

Poor Speaker

I understand you.

I get what you’re trying to say.

What you’re trying to say is you want me to get it.

I get it. You want me

to understand. You want me to know

not the words, but what’s behind them. Got it.

You’re trying to tell me

what you want me to hear. What I

hear is all words, but that’s not...

Sonnet L'Abbé

I Lost My Talk

I lost my talk

The talk you took away.

When I was a little girl

At Shubenacadie school.

You snatched it away:

I speak like you

I think like you

I create like you

The scrambled ballad, about my word.

Two ways I talk

Both ways I say,

Your way is more powerful.

...

Rita Joe
1932–2007

Hail

Hello from inside

the albatross

with a windproof lighter

and Japanese police tape.

Hello from staghorn

coral beds

waving at the beaked whale’s

mistake,

all six square metres

of fertilizer bags.

...

Adam Dickinson
b. 1974

You’d Have to Pay Me Could You Pay Me Enough

You’d have to pay us

Could you pay us enough

To live for a stretch

Again in that house

Rippling through rooms

Papered with boys

Papered with dogs

As a means of escape imagining

Ourselves into every bad painting

...

Sara Peters
b. 1982

The limpness of a bird's legs in flight.

The place, the question, the question.

The place, the interest, the question.

There is the place.

There is what you do in the place.

There is your belief.

There is the faith in a knowing.

There is your instruction

by the gods.

There is your instruction as you are told.

There is your relief...

Aisha Sasha John
b. 1980

Deto(nation)

There’s a joke that ends with — huh?

It’s the bomb saying here is your father.

Now here is your father inside

your lungs. Look how lighter

the earth is — afterward.

To even write father

is to carve a portion of the day

out of a bomb-bright page.

There’s enough...

Ocean Vuong
b. 1988

Say the Names

— say the names say the names

and listen to yourself

an echo in the mountains

Tulameen Tulameen

say them like your soul

was listening and overhearing

and you dreamed you dreamed

you were a river

and you were a river

Tulameen Tulameen

— not the flat borrowed imitations

of foreign names...

Al Purdy
1918-2000

Smooth Horizon of the Verb Love

an urban image from the eighties

when we hung out at Chez Madame Arthur

and at the back of the room

women wrapped their arms around

nights of ink and dawn

calendar of murmurs

vague caresses about the planet and its water

we could have...

Nicole Brossard
b. 1943

4 Marked by Claws and Cloudburst...

The calendar marred with birds and you are kik-kik-kik-kicking all the way into June.

180 days scratched with black X’s and crow’s feet: bird-of-two minds (goodandevil

goodandevil);

single-minded bird (plotting the sky).

...

Sylvia Legris
b. 1966

I Feel the Sun

Down a long, long corridor

I keep walking…

—A window straight ahead so bright it hurts the eyes,

reflective walls on both sides.

Sunlight, me,

I stand with the sunlight.

—The sunlight is so intense!

So warm people stop in their tracks,

so bright people hold their breath.

All the light in...

Wang Xiaoni
b. 1955

mixed tape

side a:

1. 18 and Life

her friend takes her to

the guidance counselor

she doesn’t see the point

but her friend won’t go

without her

2. Patience

...

Katherena Vermette
b. 1977

Sun Bear

yesterday at the Oakland zoo

I was walking alone for a moment

past the enclosure holding the sun bear

also known as beruang madu

it looked at me without interest

it has powerful jaws and truly loves honey

it sleeps in a high hammock

its claws look made out of wood

and if it dreams at all it is of Malaysia

...

Matthew Zapruder
b. 1967

i am graffiti

i am writing to tell you

that yes, indeed,

we have noticed

you have a new big pink eraser

we are well aware

you are trying to use it.

erasing indians is a good idea

of course

the bleeding-heart liberals

and communists

can stop feeling bad

for the stealing

and raping

and...

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
b. 1971

Modestine

We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James, who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

I was there, in the first of the long-term care centres, when he finished the story,

And we all shared the narrator’s sadness about giving up his donkey,

Not having...

Lynn Crosbie

Five Postcards from Jericho

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of

stone, age old, my burnished and bruised, hair lingering, hand

caked, spongy as November, my dear Relentless, my dear Aging,

...

Sina Queyras
b. 1963

Badlands

Your father worked Drumheller while you ate and slept at home.

He travelled the badlands, squatted below rocks, read books

you never knew he read. He sat until his eyes strained to know

what the prairie insisted he must see. Once he found a hoodoo,

toppled after centuries of reaching beyond the flattened earth

we all become and remembering that,...

Mathew Henderson
b. 1985

From Red Doc

GOODLOOKING BOY wasn’t he / yes/ blond /

yes / I do vaguely

/ you never liked

him / bit of a

rebel / so you

said / he’s the

one wore lizard

pants and

...

Anne Carson
b. 1950

From Correspondences

Sometimes we are led through the doorway

by a child, sometimes

by a stranger, always a matter of grace changing

the past, for if there is anything we must change

it is the past. To look back

and see another map.

Love enough to fill

a shoe, a suitcase, a bit of ink,

a painting, a child’s eyes at a chalkboard,...

Anne Michaels

Saskatchewan Indians Were Dancing

60s pulled us from starvation into government jobs

antiquated Indians in Saskatchewan danced for rain

Manitoba Indian doings were hidden for a jealous me

all I had was a 50s rock’n’roll step to copy from

not shy you danced for strangers from deep defiance

full regalia hid...

Marie Annharte Baker
b. 1942

My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962

Very loud a mad frenzy The wooden

barrel she rode would have roared

(I first wrote “road”)

Left home to join the circus: 15 years old

You enter at the bottom and wind upwards

in spirals the bike climbing the sides

You enter the barrel on a Peugeot

with automatic tied down handles

...

Hoa Nguyen
b. 1967

Equinox Ritual with Ravens & Pines

— so we said to the somewhat: Be born —

& the shadow kept arriving in segments,

cold currents pushed minerals

up from the sea floor, up through

coral & labels of Diet Coke blame shame

bottles down there —

it is so much work to appear!

unreadable zeroes drop lamps

...

Brenda Hillman
b. 1951

Let the Ponies Out

oh papa, to have you drift up, some part of you drift up through

water through

fresh water into the teal plate of sky soaking foothills, papa,

to have your breath leave, escape you, escape the

weight of bone, muscle and organ, escape you, to rise up, to loft,

till you are all breath filling the room, rising, escaping the white...

Marilyn Dumont
b. 1955

the knowing

the re-invention of oneself

through the tongues of whispering mountains

the re-arrangement of the universe

because a spider wrapped her legs around a star

the knowing

the remembering of stone’s story

while walking down a dried riverbed

being serenaded by crickets singing the blues

because everyone except them has...

Connie Fife
1961-2017

Salmon Courage

Here at Woodlands, Moriah,

these thirty-five years later,

still I could smell her fear.

Then, the huddled hills would not have

calmed her, now as they do me.

Then, the view did not snatch

the panting breath, now, as it does

these thirty-five years later, to the day,

I relive the journey of my salmon mother.

...

M. NourbeSe Philip
b. 1947

Sometimes I Find Myself Weeping at the Oddest Moment

sometimes I find myself

weeping

at the oddest moment

an unexpected voice

mon oncle André

calling Christmas Day

wishing me

a Merry Christmas

and I am

that little girl

walking across the lake

with her grandfather

to check on the snares

and traps he...

Rita Bouvier
b. 1950

Interesting People of Newfoundland

Newfoundland is, or was, full of interesting people.

Like Larry, who would make a fool of himself on street corners

for a nickel. There was the Russian who called himself

the Grand Duke, and who was said to be a real duke from somewhere,

...

John Ashbery
1927 - 2017

Dear Updike

I dreaded those future aeons when I would not be present —

an endless succession of days I would miss, with their own

news and songs and styles of machine.

— John Updike, “On Being a Self Forever”

No, nothing much has changed.

A year later, the world is still one you’d recognize...

Evelyn Lau
b. 1971

I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries

I have not lingered in European monasteries

and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights

who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell;

I have not parted the grasses

or purposefully left them thatched....

Leonard Cohen
1934-2016

From thirsty

This city is beauty

unbreakable and amorous as eyelids,

in the streets, pressed with fierce departures,

submerged landings,

I am innocent as thresholds

and smashed night birds, lovesick,

as empty elevators

let me declare doorways,

corners, pursuit, let me say

standing here in eyelashes, in

...

Dionne Brand
b. 1953

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night!...

Allen Ginsberg
1926-1997

Sweet Like a Crow

For Hetti Corea, 8 years old

‘The Sinhalese are beyond a doubt one of the least musical

people in the world. It would be quite impossible to have

less sense of...

Michael Ondaatje
b. 1943

These Poems, She Said

These poems, these poems,

these poems, she said, are poems

with no love in them. These are the poems of a man

who would leave his wife and child because

they made noise in his study. These are the poems   ...

Robert Bringhurst
b. 1946

Self-Portrait

He wants to be

a brutal old man,

an aggressive old man,

as dull, as brutal

as the emptiness around him,

He doesn’t want compromise,
...

Robert Creeley
1926-2005

Image-Nation 21 (territory

wandering to the other, wandering

the spiritual realities, skilled in all

ways of contending, he did not search

out death or courage, did not

found something, a country,

or...

Robin Blaser
1925-2009

Hall of Mirrors

To Kristin Lems

We miss something now

as we think about it

Let’s see: eat, sleep & dream, read

A good book, by Robert Stone
...

Ted Berrigan
1934-1983

The Day Lady Died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
...

Frank O’Hara
1926-1966

The Lonely Land

Cedar and jagged fir

uplift sharp barbs

against the gray

and cloud-piled sky;

and in the bay

blown spume and windrift

and thin, bitter spray...

A. J. M. Smith
1902-1980

Re: Happiness, in pursuit thereof

            It is 2005, just before landfall.

Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess.

I am located at the corner of Waterway

and Bluff. I need your help. You will find me

to the left of the graveyard, where the...

C. D. Wright
1949-2016

400: Coming Home

You are still on the highway and the great light of

noon comes over the asphalt, the gravelled

shoulders. You are on the highway, there is a kind of

laughter, the cars pound

south. Over your shoulder the scrub-grass, the fences,

the fields wait patiently as though someone

believed in them. The light has laid it

upon them. One...

Dennis Lee
b. 1939

The Cariboo Horses

At 100 Mile House the cowboys ride in rolling

stagey cigarettes with one hand reining

half-tame bronco rebels on a morning grey as stone

— so much like riding dangerous women

          with whiskey coloured eyes...

Al Purdy
1918-2000

fluorine

arsenic in calculators, mercury in felt

hats, mad as a poisoned hatter

pyrophoric undercurrent in mundane

acts assume poison unless otherwise

informed crowded alloys detect no
...

Rita Wong
b. 1968

Wolf Lake

It was down that road he brought me, still

in the trunk of his car. I won’t say it felt right,

but it did feel expected. The way you know

your blood can spring like a hydrant.

That September, the horseflies were...

Elizabeth Bachinsky
b. 1976

Fear of Snakes

The snake can separate itself

from its shadow, move on ribbons of light,

taste the air, the morning and the evening,

the darkness at the heart of things. I remember

when my fear of snakes left for good,
...

Lorna Crozier
b. 1948

At the Centre

Today doves flew from my head

and my hair grew

the longing is gone from my body

and I’m filled with peace, perfect peace

No longer shall I speak of electrocuted poets
...

Afua Cooper
b. 1957

A Stone Diary

At the beginning I noticed

the huge stones on my path

I knew instinctively

why they were there

breathing as naturally

as animals

I moved...

Pat Lowther
1935-1975

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a...

Billy Collins
b. 1941

Lagoons, Hanlan’s Point

Mornings

before the sun’s liquid

spilled gradually, flooding

the island’s cool cellar,

there was the boat

and the still lagoons,

the...

Raymond Souster
1921 - 2012

A Breakfast for Barbarians

my friends, my sweet barbarians,

there is that hunger which is not for food —

but an eye at the navel turns the appetite

round

with visions of some fabulous sandwich,

the brain’s...

Gwendolyn MacEwen
1941-1987

Where There’s a Wall

Where there’s a wall

there’s a way through a

gate or door. There’s even

a ladder perhaps and a

sentinel who sometimes sleeps.

There are secret passwords you
...

Joy Kogawa
b. 1935

dont worry yr hair

   dont worry yr eyes

   dont worry yr brain man th snow is

   cummin th bright burds flyin highr, th

sun is already all ovr yu,

   all th words...

bill bissett
b. 1939

Danse Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

and the sun is a flame-white disc

in silken mists

above shining trees, —

if I in my north room

dance naked, grotesquely

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head

and singing softly to myself:

“I am lonely, lonely.
...

William Carlos Wiliams
1883-1963

Mean Drunk Poem

Backward & down into inbetween as Vicki says. Or as Robin teaches

the gap, from which all things emerge. A left

handed compliment. Bats, houses of parliament, giants, stones.

What woman, witness to such Thought, does not feel
...

Sharon Thesen
b. 1946

Susie Asado

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

Susie Asado.

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

Susie Asado.

Susie Asado which is a told tray sure.

A lean on the shoe this means...

Gertrude Stein
1874-1946

Tractor

More than a storey high and twice that long,

it looks igneous, the Buhler Versatile 2360,

possessed of the ecology of some hellacious

minor island on which options

are now standard. Cresting the sections
...

Karen Solie
b. 1966

Riprap

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

             placed solid, by hands

In choice of place, set

Before the body of the mind

             in space and time:
...

Gary Snyder
b. 1930

Laurentian Shield

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer,

This land stares at the sun in a huge silence

Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear.

Inarticulate, arctic,

Not written on by history, empty as paper,
...

F. R. Scott
1899-1985

A Glass Tube Ecstasy

For Hugo Ball

a glass tube

for my leg       says Hugo Ball

my hat a cylinder

in blue & white

the night the german ostriches       the sink

he pisses in

all these become his world

his dada song, begun there

holds the image

until it comes at us:

the image from its...

Jerome Rothenberg
b. 1931

The Bull Moose

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,

lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,

stumbling through tamarack swamps,

came the bull moose

to be stopped...

Alden Nowlan
1933-1983

Two Words: A Wedding

There are things you have words for, things you do not have words for. There are words that encompass all your feelings & words that encompass none. There are feelings you have that are like things to you, picked up & placed in the pocket, worn like the cloth the pocket is attached to, like a skin you live...

bp Nichol
1944-1988

Thou Poem

Thou poem of lost attention and half try,

do you fear more the inner world or outer?

I do not love the self less than the others,

my name is legion and my mouth one cry.
...

A. F. Moritz
b. 1947

Sometimes a Voice (1)

Sometimes a voice — have you heard this? —

wants not to be voice any longer, wants something

whispering between the words, some

rumour of its former life. Sometimes, even

in the midst of making sense or...

Don McKay
b. 1942

Insomnia

If I were to sleep, it would be on an iron bed,

bolted to the floor in a bomb-proof concrete room

with twelve locks on the door.

I wouldn’t ask for a mattress

or decorate. I wouldn’t ask for beautiful.
...

Kate Hall
b. 1977

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)

Constantly risking absurdity

                                          and death

            whenever he performs

                                       above the heads

                                                           of his audience...

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
b. 1919

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Sent to the ice after white coats,

rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,

they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,

slit them free of their spotless pelts.

The storm...

Michael Crummey
b. 1965

Plenty

The sky, lit up like a question or

an applause meter, is beautiful

like everything else today: the leaves

in the gutters, salt stains on shoes,

the girl at the IGA who looks just like
...

Kevin Connolly
b. 1962

The New Experience

I was ready for a new experience.

All the old ones had burned out.

They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside

And blew in drifts across the fairgrounds and fields.

...

Suzanne Buffam
b. 1972

From Summer Grass

The willows are thinking again about thickness,

slowness, lizard skin on hot rock,

and day by day this imaging transforms them

into what we see: dragons in leaf, draped scales

alongside the river of harried, spring-...

Roo Borson

Fire Watch

Hello, listen, I’m on a field phone, do not speak until I say “over.”

Repeat, don’t talk until I say “over.” Over. Do you understand,

or was your silence intentional? Over.

Northwest of The Seven

...

Ken Babstock
b. 1970

They are hostile nations

1

In view of the fading animals

the proliferation of sewers and fears

the sea clogging, the air

nearing extinction

we should be kind...

Margaret Atwood
b. 1939

Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice

So I’m an alcoholic Catholic mother-lover

yet there is no sweetish nectar no fuzzed-peach

thing no song sing but in the word

to which I’m starlessly unreachably faithful

you, pedant & you, politically righteous & you, alive

you think you can peel my sober word apart from my drunken word

my Buddhist word apart from my white sugar...

Alice Notley
b. 1945

The Fish

wade

through black jade.

   Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps

   adjusting the ash-heaps;

      opening and shutting itself like

...

Marianne Moore
1887-1972

Poetry

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.

   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it one discovers that there

is in

   it after all, a place for the genuine.
...

Marianne Moore
1887-1972

Guanahani, 11

like the beginnings — o odales o adagios — of islands

from under the clouds where I write the first poem

its brown warmth now that we recognize them
...

Kamau Brathwaite
1930-2020

Pale Blue Cover

In the middle of the night Matt would fly to Vancouver so he could take a walk on the sea wall the next day, then go home.

Wouldnt tell anyone, no telephone call, just run a scene through his peculiar Ontario head, no snow on that beach.

No one can imagine Matt teaching religion at...

George Bowering
b. 1935

From Chapter I

for Dick Higgins

Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink

this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism,

disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks — impish

hijinks which highlight stick sigils. Isn’t...

Christian Bök
b. 1966

The Swimmer’s Moment

For everyone

The swimmer’s moment at the whirlpool comes,

But many at that moment will not say

‘This is the whirlpool, then.’

By their refusal they are saved

From the black pit, and also from contesting

The deadly rapids, and emerging in

The mysterious, and more ample, further waters.

And so their bland-blank faces turn...

Margaret Avison
1918-2007

Gitanjali 35

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
...

Rabindranath Tagore
1861-1941

Come Up From the Fields Father

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn,

Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,

Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,

Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed...

Carl Sandburg
1878-1967

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

Stormy, husky, brawling,

City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted...

Carl Sandburg
1878-1967

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!

Through the windows — through doors — burst like a ruthless force,

Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,

Into the school where the scholar is studying;

Leave not the bridegroom quiet — no happiness must he have now with his bride,

Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,

A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,

Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,

Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,

We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,

’Tis a...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

The Poet

Out of the deep and the dark,

A sparkling mystery, a shape,

Something perfect,

Comes like the stir of the day:

One whose breath is an odor,

Whose eyes show the road to stars,

The breeze in his face,

The glory of heaven on his back.

He steps like a vision hung in air,

Diffusing the passion of eternity;

...

Yone Noguchi
1875-1947

Boy Remembers in the Field

What if the sun comes out

And the new furrows do not look smeared?

This is April, and the sumach candles

Have guttered long ago.

The crows in the twisted apple limbs

Are as moveless and dark.

Drops on the wires, cold cheeks,

The mist, the long snorts, silence…

The horses will steam when...

Raymond Knister
1899-1932

Mrs. Kessler

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,

And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,

And stood on the corner talking politics,

Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs;

And I supported the family by washing,

Learning the secrets of all the people

From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.

For things that are...

Edgar Lee Masters
1868-1950

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