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 Pascale Petit The Lammergeier Daughter That night, I opened your wardrobe and found a trophy of vultures, their necks pierced by hanger hooks. I saw at once that you hunted everything I loved — Léopold Sédar Senghor The Young Sun's Greeting The young sun’s greeting On my bed, your letter’s glow All the sounds that burst from morning Blackbirds’ brassy calls, jingle of gonoleks Your smile on the grass, on the radiant dew. Raymond Knister 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 Tomasz Rózycki 11. Headwinds When I began to write, I didn’t know each of my words would bit by bit remove things from the world and in return leave blank Charlotte Smith Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes! How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn! For me wilt thou renew the withered rose, Anne Bradstreet The Author to Her Book Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain, Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Randy Lundy The Cactus You sit in the forgotten bone-dry hills surrounded by sand and sagebrush above Buffalo Pound Lake. A day and a night, and then three more days and nights. Matt Rader 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 William Shakespeare Spring When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Margaret Fuller Flaxman We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone, Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought, And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea 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, Herman Melville The Maldive Shark About the Shark, phlegmatical one, Pale sot of the Maldive sea, The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim, Kazim Ali Ramadan You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches, and have to choose between the starving month’s nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings. James Millhaven Closure On the night we dug up your father’s body (for reasons I can no longer remember) we took turns with the shovel as we passed a bottle of Whyte & Mackay back and forth. Elizabeth Bishop One Art The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. T. S. Eliot La Figlia che Piange O quam te memorem virgo... Stand on the highest pavement of the stair — Lean on a garden urn — Meghan Kemp-Gee A Newly Discovered Species of Lizard with Distinctive Triangular Scales I am Charles Darwin. I eat owlflesh at Cambridge University. I have discovered something, an entirely new species with tropical fever in its reptile fingers. I am busy with taxonomying its most peculiar and three-sided Patricia Smith 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, Sachiko Murakami 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 Robert Frost The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood Katherine Philips Epitaph On her Son H.P. at St. Syth’s Church where her body also lies interred What on Earth deserves our trust? Youth and Beauty both are dust. Tyler Pennock I have so many now. I have so many now. There’s one where we were giants, playing with our size by falling over houses and trees, laughing. There’s another where I was racing the old ones in a game, and we stopped Naomi Shihab Nye 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 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 William Blake The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” Donato Mancini 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 Ada Limón 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, Doyali Islam bhater mondo my mother used to make little rice balls for me. she steamed and clattered about the cramped mustard kitchen, filling a pot with water, swelling and salting and songing Tyler B. Perry FLOOD The hallway is an empty riverbed, smooth and barren. At three o’clock classroom doors open like dams. Gullies of teens stream out, to become one flowing body. A torrent Edna St. Vincent Millay I think I should have loved you presently I think I should have loved you presently, And given in earnest words I flung in jest; And lifted honest eyes for you to see, Marilyn Dumont 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, Ada Limón We Are Surprised Now, we take the moon into the middle of our brains so we look like roadside stray cats with bright flashlight-white eyes in our faces, but no real ideas of when or where to run. 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 Zhang Er from Cross River . Pick Lotus 9 How to describe sea To someone who’s never seen it? He lives to ninety-nine, he wants it, to see it To walk on its glass surface, to blow the seven trumpets. Pierre Nepveu 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, William Blake The Tyger Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Edgar Allan Poe “Alone” From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were — I have not seen As others saw — I could not bring Percy Bysshe Shelley England in 1819 An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring; Gerard Manley Hopkins As Kingfishers Catch Fire As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Abdellatif Laâbi 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 Language English