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 Jason Purcell 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. Weyman Chan 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. Lillian Allen 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 Billy-Ray Belcourt If Our Bodies Could Rust, We Would Be Falling Apart the law mandates that a hate crime only be classified as such if there is ample evidence to show that one’s actions were motivated by prejudice toward an individual’s nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, etc. Tolu Oloruntoba Tinderbox We were a conflagration asking to be incarnated into the world. Mother, superstitious, kept us apart, two stones of the same igneous anger. Everyone saucered tears 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 El Jones Glass Hands: A Eulogy on the Anniversary of the Pandemic Hands pressed to glass On the fence across from the long-term care home families leave memorials for auntie, kokum, baba Ink runs in the rain and half-mast flags Denise Riley Under the Answering Sky I can manage being alone, can pace out convivial hope across my managing ground. Someone might call, later. What do the dead make of us that we’d flay ourselves trying Dominik Parisien Un Docteur Anglophone Traduit Les Inquiétudes De Son Patient Avec Google/An English Speaking Doctor Translates the Concerns of his Patient with Google écoute à quoi bon être poète beau dire ce mal semble dans la tête comme marteau feu enclume clou couteau ou l’éclat d’une baudroie ou des aurores boréales Nicole Lachat New Year’s If you want to travel run around the neighbourhood with an empty suitcase in hand. At least once, full circle. Wear yellow underwear for the 31st, lest fortune oversee your cup 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, Cedar Sigo Poems for Saints (1) Kamau Brathwaite 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 Ron Padgett Prose Poem (“The morning coffee.”) The morning coffee. I’m not sure why I drink it. Maybe it’s the ritual of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the Donika Kelly From the Catalogue of Cruelty Once, I slapped my sister with the back of my hand. We were so small, but I wanted to know how it felt: my hand raised high across the opposite shoulder, slicing down like a trapeze. Hari Alluri area boys brash talk on sidewalk brethren to irreverence short teeth long stories ~ aspirations high rolling tape decks tweeters six by nine speakers deep Adam Dickinson Hail Hello from inside the albatross with a windproof lighter Teva Harrison 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 Roo Borson From Summer Grass The willows are thinking again about thickness, slowness, lizard skin on hot rock, and day by day this imaging transforms them Sharon Olds My Poem Without Me in It My poem without me in it—would it be like my room when I had returned to it after my mother was done with me. Under my bed, only the outer space balls, of dust, only Ken Babstock 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. Stanley Kunitz The Portrait My mother never forgave my father for killing himself, especially at such an awkward time and in a public park, that spring when I was waiting to be born. She locked his name Elizabeth Bachinsky 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 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. Kaveh Akbar How Prayer Works Tucked away in our tiny bedroom so near each other the edge of my prayer rug covered the edge of his, my brother and I prayed. We were 18 and 11 maybe, or 19 and 12. He was back from college where he built his own Hoa Nguyen Blousy Guitar Blousy guitar I don’t want to count the beats Hey Hey My pen I have bed hair in the best way Daughter of sunlight and air and I’m glad you were born Harry Baker Paper People I like people. I’d like some paper people. They’d be purple paper people. Maybe pop-up purple paper people. Proper pop-up purple paper people. Etel Adnan absence. displacement. absence. displacement. waiting. then comes rejection. anger follows. shame makes the beds the shadows jostle between the walls of the scarcely visited cities. 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 Faith Arkorful Family Affair they say we are a family that is good at death / i make a decision to hold a seminar on how to live / i schedule this party for my uncles on the first Russell Atkins Coffee mornings have bulk and that saves them from immediate death— Spencer Butt Wrk this job hates me this job wouldn’t make me feel so shitty if it didn’t i’m nothing but nice to this job but when this job is done with me it always sneaks out while Tommy Pico 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 Afua Cooper Shots Rang Out on My Street Today Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Shots rang out on my street today Three Black yoots lay dead shot inna dem head Srikanth Reddy Underworld Lit XIV Please print clearly and remember your name. 1) The river of fire, in ancient Greek thanatopography, feeds into the river of _____________. Lynn Crosbie 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 Sally Ito God the Tea Master All the weapons we marshal to confront the day You ask to be left by the door before entering. The sword in its sheath must lie on the grass, the quiver and bow hung off a branch. CA Conrad from Sharking of the Birdcage ["the spirit of"] the spirit of your flowers is my favourite shelter RC Weslowski Let’s Not Get It Together The world has become corrupted from our hearts to the way our gods love us as if they know they’re already dying and they’re determined to drag us down with them Cecily Nicholson from “Road Shoulders” power lines held by birds of prey the hostile expanse above ditches teeming floral invasive wayside fleurs late summer the shoulder sang holds breeze by Language English