Ecstatic | Poetry In Voice

Unspeakable Acts in Cars

It’s the first day of summer and we’re so happy

To see the sun and the satchel of colours it schleps

All those dark kilometres. The sky is so blue

And the sea is blue and the small islands in the sea

Are blue also. How our sun must love blue.

We have beachgrass and bull kelp and lion’s mane

And we love them all because we love the sea...

Matt Rader
b. 1978

Little Song

Both guitars run trebly. One noodles

Over a groove. The other slushes chords.

Then they switch. It’s quite an earnest affair.

They close my eyes. I close their eyes. A horn

Blares its inner air to brass. A girl shakes

Her ass. Some dude does the same. The music’s

Gone moot. Who doesn’t love it when the bass

Doesn’t hide? When...

Rowan Ricardo Phillips
b. 1974

Praise the Rain

Praise the rain, the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby...

Joy Harjo
b. 1951

I’ll Teach You Cree

with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki frog

your mouth will be the web

catching apihkêsis words, spider

a crawling-out ceremony

that cannot be translated.

hâw, pîkiskwê! Now, speak!

I’ll teach you Cree, nêhiyawêwin...

Gregory Scofield
b. 1966

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

Hip-Hop Ghazal

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,

decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,

inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.

Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ‘tween floorboards,

...

Patricia Smith
b. 1955

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

Cocteau Twins

I’ve heard the phrase between you

and me too many times to believe

it to be true, but between me and you

there was Cocteau, wagging his testimonial

finger, as usual, while flat out on the floor

with my arms in receipt of the flower

of thought, palms upwards, I envisaged

the...

Rachel Boast
b. 1975

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler

I would ride your bed

and leave the yellow bark dust

on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek

...

Michael Ondaatje
b. 1943

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

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

Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile — the Winds —

To a Heart in port —

Done with the Compass —

Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden —

Ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor — Tonight —

In Thee!

Emily Dickinson
1830-1886

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

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

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

Vancouver Lights

About me the night moonless wimples the mountains

wraps ocean land air and mounting

sucks at the stars The city throbbing below

webs the sable peninsula The golden

...

Earle Birney
1904-1995

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending...

William Wordsworth
1770-1850

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,

All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

Soaring fire that sways and sings,

And children’s faces looking up

Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,

Music like a curve of gold,

...

Sara Teasdale
1884-1933

To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have...

Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849

The Good-Morrow

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?

’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now...

John Donne
1572-1631

Adam Posed

Could our first father, at his toilsome plow,

Thorns in his path, and labor on his brow,

Clothed only in a rude, unpolished skin,

Could he a vain fantastic nymph have seen,

In all her airs, in all her antic graces,

Her various fashions, and more various faces;

How had it posed that skill, which late assigned

Just appellations to...

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea
1661-1720

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844-1889

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate’s...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844-1889

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things —

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844-1889

A Psalm of Life

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882

To Althea, from Prison

When Love with unconfinèd wings

Hovers within my Gates,

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the Grates;

When I lie tangled in her hair,

And fettered to her eye,

The Gods that wanton in the Air,

Know no such Liberty.

When...

Richard Lovelace
1618-1657

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

Kubla Khan

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1772-1834

Lord of My Heart’s Elation

Lord of my heart’s elation,

Spirit of things unseen,

Be thou my aspiration

Consuming and serene!

Bear up, bear out, bear onward

This mortal soul alone,

To selfhood or oblivion,

Incredibly thine own, —

As the foamheads are loosened

And blown along the sea,

Or sink and...

Bliss Carman
1861-1929

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

...

Lord (George Gordon) Byron
1788-1824

Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun

Ah! why, because the dazzling sun

Restored my earth to joy

Have you departed, every one,

And left a desert sky?

All through the night, your glorious eyes

Were gazing down in mine,

And with a full heart’s thankful sighs

I blessed that watch divine!

I was at peace, and drank your beams...

Emily Brontë
1818-1848