Toasts, Boasts & Roasts

Eclipse

In every which way, I am living

for potential. I’ve mined cadmium

enough to roulette with Death

and Mars, bloodshot brute,

is swollen in my honour.

My function is action —

to pummel through concrete

and machete hedges,

to shear the irresolute

with only wit and lichen-rich

perfume. Allow yourself...

Jessie Jones

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,

after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!

But mainly, let's be honest, I like

that they're ladies. As if this big

dangerous animal is also a part of me,

...

Ada Limón

Wow! You've Changed

You’ve changed.

You used to be so

and now you’re all

like, you’ve transformed

I don’t know how to describe

it’s like

you don’t like canasta anymore

you text IN ALL CAPS

your selfies are so

animalistic

like, are you out to prove something

you’re a lion

you’re a bear

you’re a...

Dina Del Bucchia
1979

it's rank, it cranks you up

it’s rank it cranks you up

crash you’re fracked you suck

shucks you’re wack you be

all you cracked up to be

 

dead on arrival

overdosed on whatever

excess of hate and love

I sleep alone

 

if you were there

then please come in

tell me what’s good

think up something

 ...

Harryette Mullen
b. 1953

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

   Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a...

Dylan Thomas
1914–1953

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

 

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring...

e.e. cummings
1894-1962

Black Sheroes

My Black heroes don’t drop names like Fendi Gucchi Prada

My Black sheroes rock afros like Angela Davis and Assata

But my sheroes are more than a trend and they’re bigger than a hairstyle

For their people they risk death, imprisonment, and exile

They’ll give you an education in gender, race, and class

So for real knowledge you need to honour...

El Jones

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

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.

We laugh. Everyone is half-naked in I-See-U.

Behind a grey curtain, a thump and quiet invoke

Code Blue. We uncover your bottom line, the Left Main

of a black-and-white heart, hand-drawn...

Madhur Anand
b. 1971

What Is Poetry

(a twelve-tone poem)

 

trite yap show

rosy twit heap

posterity haw

a wept history

it’s yawp rot, eh

a wisher potty

a power shitty

a whitey sport

 

poetry is what

whips yo tater

pets it awry, oh

oh, twisty pear

two hearts yip

it’s paw theory...

Susan Holbrook
b. 1967

A Thousand Martyrs

A thousand martyrs I have made,

All sacrific’d to my desire;

A thousand beauties have betray’d,

That languish in resistless fire.

The untam’d heart to hand I brought,

And fixed the wild and wandering thought.

 

I never vow’d nor sigh’d in vain

But both, tho’ false...

Aphra Behn
1640-1689

Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border

It is never easy

Walking with an invisible border

Separating my left and right foot

I feel like an illegitimate child

Forsaken by my parents

At least I can claim innocence

Since I did not ask to come

Into this world

 

...

Alootook Ipellie
1951–2007

All About My Grandmother

Wheat daughter, prisoner of sneaky pigweed, mother

to the five corners of the world and your three hectares,

beak-nosed carpenter’s wife and the potter’s lover,

queen of the aroma of grey soap, head covered

with a gold-trimmed kerchief, the glory of birds at dawn,

tired liege of furrowed fields, midwife to our breads,

magic purveyor of...

Wioletta Greg
b. 1974

Dream Jobs

Random Link Clicker.

Royal Bath Taker.

Receiver of Foot Rubs and Praise.

Ingenue Emeritus.

Good Samaritan Emeritus.

Undersecretary of Trivial Pursuits.

Chief Executive Napper.

Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom of Spring.

Procurer of Unnecessary Hats.

Empress of Ice Cream.

Cloud-...

Suzanne Buffam
b. 1972

Sweet Like a Crow

For Hetti Corea, 8 years old

 

‘The Sinhalese are beyond a doubt one of the least musical

people in the world. It would be quite impossible to have

less sense of...

Michael Ondaatje
b. 1943

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.

 

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of...

Elizabeth Bishop
1911-1979

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

Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I)

In the onion, there’s

something of fire. That fire known as

Fog. The onion is the way

fog has of entering the earth.

 

Into the soil. Through the green leaves of the onion....

Erin Mouré
b. 1955

Sometimes a Voice (1)

Sometimes a voice — have you heard this? —

wants not to be voice any longer, wants something

whispering between the words, some

rumour of its former life. Sometimes, even

in the midst of making sense or...

Don McKay
b. 1942

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

 

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And...

William Butler Yeats
1865-1939

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless...

William Wordsworth
1770-1850

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

...

Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

Stormy, husky, brawling,

City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted...

Carl Sandburg
1878-1967

A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General

His Grace! impossible! what dead!

Of old age too, and in his bed!

And could that mighty warrior fall?

And so inglorious, after all!

Well, since he’s gone, no matter how,

The last loud trump must wake him now:

And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,

He’d wish to sleep a little longer.

And could he be indeed so old...

Jonathan Swift
1667-1745

The Men That Don’t Fit In

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,

A race that can’t stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain’s crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

...

Robert W. Service
1874-1958

Miniver Cheevy

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,

Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;

He wept that he was ever born,

And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old

When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;

The vision of a warrior bold

...

Edwin Arlington Robinson
1869-1935

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed...

Carl Sandburg
1878-1967

Sonnet LV: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn

The living...

William Shakespeare
1564-1616

Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

...

John Donne
1572-1631

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

Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone, —

A higher charm than modern culture won

With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,

Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.

A many-colored light flows from one sun...

Margaret Fuller
1810-1850

When I was Fair and Young

When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.

Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.

But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore:

Go, go, go, seek some other where; importune me no more.

How many weeping eyes I made to pine in woe,

How many sighing hearts I have not skill to show,

But I the prouder...

Queen Elizabeth I
1533-1603

On Shakespeare. 1630

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,

The labor of an age in pilèd stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a live-long monument....

John Milton
1608-1674

Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes

’Twas on a lofty vase’s side,

Where China’s gayest art had dyed

The azure flowers that blow;

Demurest of the tabby kind,

The pensive Selima, reclined,

Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;

The fair round face, the snowy beard,

The...

Thomas Gray
1716-1771

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad...

A. E. Housman
1859-1936

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

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

Give All to Love

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good-fame,

Plans, credit and the Muse, —

Nothing refuse.

’T is a brave master;

Let it have scope:

Follow it utterly,

Hope beyond hope:

High and more high

It dives into noon,

With wing unspent,

...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882

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

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as...

Robert Frost
1874-1963

Old Ironsides

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle shout,

And burst the cannon’s roar; —

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more!...

Oliver Wendell Holmes
1809-1894

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,

Though thou be black as night

And she made all of light,

Yet follow thy fair sun unhappy shadow.

Follow her whose light thy light depriveth,

Though here thou liv’st disgraced,

And she in heaven is placed,

Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth.

...

Thomas Campion
1567-1620

Love Armed

Love in Fantastic Triumph sat,

Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed,

For whom Fresh pains he did Create,

And strange Tyrannic power he showed;

From thy Bright Eyes he took his fire,

Which round about, in sport he hurled;

But ’twas from mine he took desire

Enough to undo the Amorous World.

From me he...

Aphra Behn
1640-1689

No Coward Soul Is Mine

No coward soul is mine

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere

I see Heaven’s glories shine

And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear

O God within my breast

Almighty ever-present Deity

Life, that in me hast rest,

As I Undying Life, have power in Thee

Vain are the thousand...

Emily Brontë
1818-1848