Recently Added Poems

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We seek permissions and add new poems during the summer and fall. Is there a poem you’d like to see on our site? Let us know: poems@poetryinvoice.com

2020

urban NDNs in the DTES

had a dozen foster parents

                                   tell me to run from my mother’s truth

                                   the track marks up her arm,

                                   shy away from the streets

                                                                           they said ate her alive.

 

...

jaye simpson


Inner Life

Those tweets I sent about Duke Ellington

While my mom was being evicted again

According to what ethics under the sun

Can I possibly have been speaking? A

Kind of private feeling I can’t even place here

Like a rock on a tomb or the thank-you

Gift of a guest whose plane leaves long

Before dawn

 

I feel the little...

Ariana Reines


Conversion

sam says you can’t name your book good boys without a dog

but sam doesn’t know that i am the dog

i am the ultimate mutt and i am telling him this story

at the bar called college hill tavern which looks like a front

for some operation where all the bar stools appear as if

they were staged in under ten minutes and

the girl with the...

Megan Fernandes


One fish, Two fish, Plastics, Dead fish

recycling Dr. Seuss

 

Some fish are sold for sashimi,

some are sold to canneries,

and some are caught by hungry slaves

to feed what wealthy tourists crave!

 

Farmed fish, Fish sticks, Frankenfish, Collapse

 

From the Pacific to the Atlantic,

from the Indian to the Arctic,

from here to...

Craig Santos Perez


The Ayes Have It

When I think of Trayvon Martin, I think of Emmett Till,

             when I think of Emmett Till, I think of young, black men in the South,

 

then I think of young, white men in the South.

              I think of my husband, who is white, born and raised in Franklin, TN.

 

I think of how when he tries to hold my hand,

...

Tiana Clark


I saw a perfect tree today

I saw a perfect tree today

From my cabin bed on a Via Rail train 

Through the North of Ontario

I saw a perfect tree today

It was tall and thin and scraggly and prim

Then I saw another just as perfect

Short and sturdy with branches and brambles 

And then another with a rugged fat trunk

Older than the rest, but just as...

Lillian Allen


Color Piece

Visual world not exactly shaped –

Sense of smell, anticipation, senses that

are not exactly shaped —

Dark shadows casted —

Rat colors with faint hairly smells and pale

dark spots like those on a transparent sheet

of celluloid —

Rose color with a glitter and softness that

is cool and motional —

The kind of color...

Yoko Ono
1933

Hanging Fire

I am fourteen

and my skin has betrayed me

the boy I cannot live without

still sucks his thumb

in secret

how come my knees are

always so ashy

what if I die

before morning

and momma’s in the bedroom

with the door closed.

 

I have to learn how to dance

in time for the next party...

Audre Lorde
1934

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.

 

At this joyous moment gigantic angel wings

Write prophecy all over the sky. How can I tell him 

 

About sea storms, the chocking...

Zhang Er
1960

Praying Herd: For Safe Journey

Draw a line through our scattered bodies. The pattern of fallen calves in this meadow will mirror

the constellation above. Look up. We whip our tails to a silent song:

 

We sing to the moon, ask for wings to lift our flock to heaven;

We plead to the moon, since she will take pity;

We beg of the moon since she changes, as our circumstance must also...

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal


Paying Attention

He is not doing well. She is not

“Doing well....

Noelle Kocot


Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes

The puck skates in on parted-snow ice.

It's the season’s last game, an encore

to stomach winter’s sliver, to shrug off

the townsfolk stares.

 

The moonlit night is advanced in years

and highlights frontline winds. Streaming

sky trails squall skeleton trees.

 

Blades carve the pond.

Their cursive glide...

Michael Fraser
1969

Men in the Gut

Scrape the inside of sleep the belly wall

tasting like yoghurt cooked broccoli

its emptiness leaving something

on the tongue. Escaping the body

that wants to quit from the inside.

It unlaces you all the tethers sliced

away. When I dream of this body ending

of opening the germ of the pain

I am on the side of the road. My...

Jason Purcell


It was in a boardroom

It was in a boardroom

that I witnessed the latest killing

 

A room filled with knowledgeable

white people

 

trying to understand

 

what we offer

shaking their heads

not grasping

          the method, our language

          asking - Would that be recognized by others?

...

Tyler Pennock
1977

Brother

Your wedding day was a hurricane; your bride in red was like a kiss on

on the dry prairie dirt. You actually never told me the story of how it went.

The wedding, I mean. In fact, you never told me about how you chose

a DJ, or if the flowers glistened in the sunlight. I don't think you've ever

told me about the places you would love to see, either, or the...

Arielle Twist
1994 -

How Not to Spill

Dad has creases on his hands so thick they could split with a

poke. He gestures for me to try so I do. His skin bends on a

hinge and out spills every good and bad thing: cattails from our

driveway in Peace River, oil underground, rocks too smooth to

be useful. It washes out the floor so I watch and wade in.

 

Mom would never spill her...

Jessica Johns


19

I triage the landscape. The prairies

are numb today and so am I.

I am too thin. Built

like I won't explode on hot

afternoons, a mirror

to the sky. My body is a hurt

where tall grasses grow, where

clouds pass, where rain sinks. It

aches where I touch

the ground. The prairies are split

into farmland...

Brandi Bird


America (I’m Putting My Queer Shoulder to the Wheel)

The night America took off her mask

we slept together poorly. I'd woken up early

that Tuesday, dragged myself to a gymnasium

in Jersey City to cast my vote into the void.

I came all the way out to Hampton Bays

to see her: her picking me up in that old

Mercury van, her bringing us back to her place.

As we watched the footage of...

John Elizabeth Stintzi


When I Become You

I'd like to close the distance between us:

where you end, where I begin,

 

but your skin stops me,

I can't find my way in.

 

If I could, I'd press every bit of me

against you

until I've slipped inside,

your skin, our tent.

 

I want to breathe through your mouth.

If I could just slip...

Teva Harrison
1976

From The First Water is the Body

2345*.

The river is my sister—I am its daughter.

It is my hands when I drink from it,

my own eye when I am weeping,

and my desire when I ache like a yucca bell

in the night. The river says, Open your mouth to me,

and I will make you more.

 

Because even a river can be lonely,

            ...

Natalie Diaz


The Trick

Let me be a ''poet of cripples" not

a patient etherized upon a table,

not a brain floating within a body.

In a moment I must be a body

in the place incision produces in a body,

previously intact. Inert, poor body,

inarticulate. Pain flees from the word "pain."

Between meaning and the unmeaningable

is the trick...

Roxanna Bennett
1971

Underworld Lit

XIV

Please print clearly and remember your name.

 

1) The river of fire, in ancient Greek thanatopography, feeds into the river of _____________.

 

2) From the river of pain spring two rivers—the river of _____________ and the river of _____________.

 

3) The river of _____________ runs a separate course entirely,...

Srikanth Reddy


In That Other Fantasy Where We Live Forever

we were never caught

 

we partied the southwest, smoked it from L.A. to El Dorado

worked odd jobs between delusions of escape

drunk on the admonitions of parents, parsons & professors

driving faster than the road or law allowed

our high-pitched laughter was young, heartless &

               disrespected

authority...

Wanda Coleman
1946

voyage, oh voyage!

voyage, oh voyage!

the final fire that ravages the air

unveils the soil on which

we walk aimlessly

and tirelessly

 

the hypocrisy of the strong protects us

from home. I prefer leaves

yellowed by the rain to false

victories

 

so I listen to the wind. It's good to live

where there's...

Etel Adnan
1925-

Qawanguq with Fox

I was walking up some stairs in a building

 

Inside parts of the building were new

but no one lived there anymore

 

I passed a lucky fox head on the stairs—

 

               But fox, where are your ears and your eyes and your tongue?

                             where is your body, your bushy tail? ...

Abigail Chabitnoy


Buen Esqueleto

Life is short & I tell this to mis hijas.

Life is short & I show them how to talk

to police without opening the door, how

to leave the social security number blank

on the exam, I tell this to mis hijas.

This world tells them I hate you every day

& I don't keep this from mis hijas

because of the bus driver who kicks...

Natalie Scenters-Zapico
1988 -

From the Window of My Home-Town Hotel

On the lee slope of the small coastal mountain

which conceals the sun the first hour after its rising,

in the dry, steep ravines, the live

mist of the heat is seething like dust

left over from an earlier world.

A crow with a swimmer's shoulders works

the air. And a little bird flies up into a

tree and closes its wings, like a...

Sharon Olds
1942 -

Veronica?

What's it like at the centre of the AGO?

Hmm. Imagine being coloured, drawn, and placed

 

in a wooden frame, another hung woman, positioned

just so in the middle of a landscape surrounded by rocks,

 

lakes, mountains, and trees, MacDonald to your right,

Carmichael to your left.  Imagine being forced to look,

 ...

Chantal Gibson


Mantra of No Return

my mother occupies the passenger seat. my brother and i

                     stick in the back.

   the radio babbles and sings between us. she is estranged, returning

           and we are revenants to a place                 inside a narration contrived

to read like non-fiction, a continuous telling since                                 one

mouth...

Kaie Kellough
1975 -

susiya

Doyali Islam
1984 -

Garbage Box with Black Loons

My father's speech was slurred most of my childhood — but it's a rite

of passage for many Maritime Canadians

'cause I heard from a friend of a friend that linguists say our accent

is the result of a speech impediment, yet I don't think much

of it. My father comes from people who learned to talk

the potato into growing more potatoes — a trick

...

Matthew Walsh


Filament

Always that spectral fragment. Filament of line cast back there.

Where open-mouthed fish rise to gulp down shiny lures.

 

I sang once in an auditorium to almost empty rows.

I looked for my people in the seats, under the seats, behind

the seats, but they weren’t there. I called the three people

who were there to come up and introduce...

Armand Garnet Ruffo


Mother Church #3

KIN KLETSO/YELLOW HOUSE

CHACO CANYON, SAN JUAN COUNTY, NEW MEXICO

ANASAZI RUINS, AD 1125-1130

For Henri, at 2

 

 

You step down into the Flat World

Then ask me to say it, to explain

 

How our name can mean...

Robin Coste-Lewis
1964 -

The Ringing Bell

I used to liken a poem to praying. Is that right? 

Not the woo and gratitude praying served by queer witches.

Childhood praying. As a girl I genuflected to the tabernacle

and insisted on sitting next to the stained glass window.

On the right kind of Sunday sun would send a slice of pink

light through the glass and down to the porcelain tile...

Amber Dawn


2019

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

Verso 3.1

At first there's no lake in the city, at first there are only

elevators, at first there are only constricting office desks;

there are small apartments and hamburger joints and

unpaid telephone bills. Then a few nightclubs appear and

eventually the lake disinters. At times there's a highway

and a car and friends in a snowstorm heading nowhere but...

Dionne Brand
b. 1953

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

Wind, Water, Stone

for Roger Caillois

 

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

 

Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

water escapes and is wind.

Stone, wind, water.

 

Wind sings in its whirling,

water murmurs going by...

Octavio Paz
1914-1998

Day 62

Unless you believe in the eye of the needle

this kind of poverty will never be about material

 

it won't be about ragged clothing

or mud huts with broken walls

or river blindness

or murram roads

or bad-humoured fields that hoard curses

& promises that there won't be a harvest

this year or next year or ever...

Juliane Okot Bitek
1966

Skeena Crossing

What is this         this crossing?

 

In the photo   just in front of the train with the crane at the edge of the    drop

                                      off from track into river

              stands a young man. 

 

              Truss truss.       From left.       

              Truss truss.       From right.

...

Sarah de Leeuw
1973

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

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.

 

In the innocent light, thousands of dragonflies

Quivering, like large black-winged golden bees

And like helicopters turning with gentle...

Léopold Sédar Senghor
1906-2001

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

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


Kome's Story

for auntie nagasaki

it's the same story

told again & again

 

the modulations

& the machinations

 

the maudlin

& the dream

 

schemes & data

a million documents

 

& a single story

kome's

 

she said she...

Roy Miki
b. 1942

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

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


Ella Josephine Campbell

Slim, slight. Sinew and bird bones.

Cords of her hands like spruce roots.

Came from Ship Cove to Crow Gulch

with little more than the child inside her,

 

landed in a small shack flanked by

an outhouse, train tracks. Made it work,

had to. No surviving a place like this

without some acceptance, some yield

to the...

Douglas Walbourne-Gough


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