Search Categories - Any -25 Lines or FewerCanadaPre 21st Century21st Century Grade levels - Any -Grades 7-9 / Sec. 1-3Grades 10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1 Sort by RandomNewestMost popularA -> ZZ -> A Apply Paul Laurence Dunbar We Wear the Mask We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, — This debt we pay to human guile; Lee Maracle Language Do you speak your language? I stare — I just said: how are you? I thought English was my language apparently it isn’t I thought Halkomelem was gibberish the devil’s language that’s what the nuns said Anne Michaels From Correspondences Sometimes we are led through the doorway by a child, sometimes by a stranger, always a matter of grace changing Margaret Atwood Death of a Young Son by Drowning He, who navigated with success the dangerous river of his own birth once more set forth John Milton When I consider how my light is spent When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide E. J. Pratt From The Titanic: The Iceberg Calved from a glacier near Godhaven coast, It left the fiord for the sea — a host Of white flotillas gathering in its wake, Mathew Henderson Badlands Your father worked Drumheller while you ate and slept at home. He travelled the badlands, squatted below rocks, read books … Pamela Mordecai My sister cries the sea My sister is crying and crying her tears grow to salt stormy showers to rain and to rapids and rivers they run to the sea to the sea. My sister sobs softly she knows Yi Lei Between Strangers Stranger, who can measure the distance between us? Distance is the rumor of a never-before-seen sea. Distance the width of a layer of dust. Maybe we need only strike a match George Herbert The Pulley When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, “Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can. Mohja Kahf My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears My grandmother puts her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer, wudu, because she has to pray in the store or miss Naomi Shihab Nye 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 Edmund Waller Song Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, Walt Whitman 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, Paul Muldoon The Loaf When I put my finger to the hole they’ve cut for a dimmer switch in a wall of plaster stiffened with horsehair it seems I’ve scratched a… Aisha Sasha John 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. Claudia Rankine from Citizen The rain this morning pours from the gutters and everywhere else it is lost in the trees. You need your glasses to single out what you know is there because Emily Brontë Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun Ah! why, because the dazzling sun Restored my earth to joy Have you departed, every one, Rita Joe 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 Robert Burns A Red, Red Rose O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody Cicely Belle Blain London I some towers are made of cladding some made of ivory some burn in the night some built by slaves wind rushes through coarse hair body aches between vertebrae Billy Collins Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide Paul Laurence Dunbar Invitation to Love Come when the nights are bright with stars Or when the moon is mellow; Come when the sun his golden bars Drops on the hay-field yellow. Come in the twilight soft and gray, Elise Partridge Chemo Side Effects: Memory Where is the word I want? Groping in the thicket, Madhur Anand You Are Not Going to Come Trillium But I do come to Trillium. To the Cardiac Short Stay Unit where you’ve been sent for the second stent, where free sanitizer prevents the spread of panic. Wayde Compton Illegalese: Floodgate Dub (for the Chinese maroons, British Columbia, 1999–2001) if you arrive in the belly of a rusting imagination, there are grounds to outlaw you. but Canada is a remix B-side chorus in the globalization Langston Hughes Theme for English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you — Spencer Reece At Thomas Merton’s Grave We can never be with loss too long. Behind the warped door that sticks, the wood thrush calls to the monks, Sheree Fitch Do Your Best Under the Circumstances There is no land of perfect, child. There is no sea of ease. There is no candy apple trail. There’s broccoli and peas. There is no suit of armour, child. There’s arrows and there’s pain. Amy Uyematsu A Practical Mom can go to Bible study every Sunday and swear she’s still not convinced, but she likes to be around people who are. We have the same conversation every few years — I’ll ask her if she stops Mercedes Eng Mariah according to my yt mama when I try to talk to my mom about what it was like to grow up surrounded by yt people in the prairies in the 80s though it seemed like the 50s she tells me in a so-there tone Ezra Pound A Virginal No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately. I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness, For my surrounding air hath a new lightness; Molly CROSS-BLANCHARD Dear Dolphin The shaman at Broadway and Main with a plastic shaker and some sage says you’re my power animal. Says we both have big brains, like to chatter. I don’t know anything about dolphins, except Don Kerr Editing the Prairie Well, it’s too long for one thing and very repetitive. Remove half the fields. Then there are far too many fences interrupting the narrative flow. Get some cattlemen to cut down those fences. Tongo Eisen-Martin 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 John Dryden You charm’d me not with that fair face You charm’d me not with that fair face Though it was all divine: To be another’s is the grace, bp Nichol 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… Robert Herrick To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Joshua Jennifer Espinoza Comfort 11 am. Time to wake up. Muscles sore, jaw clenched, warm light scattering dreams of violence across the bedroom. I've chosen a self Earle Birney Vancouver Lights About me the night moonless wimples the mountains wraps ocean land air and mounting sucks at the… Language English