poetry: results 265–288 of 735

You're ripped and he's a little lit and on a whim you've crossed two states to get hitched. Right away it's clear the justice of the peace doesn't like the story here, and before he'll tie the knot, he says, he's got to ask about your breeding. What people you're from. What they might have to say about all this.

I'll complain of my bones,

I think it's safe to say

and I'll worry the miles

we never drive. I'll say your name

when I shouldn't

to every door barred before us

as if you're known in Belize…

Bad mood and bad dog and bad luck like

my broken neck or heart or head

playing out so much bad weather

like kinked yarn unraveled by a bad

black cat…

You, if you were sensible,

When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one dreadful,

You would not turn and answer me

"The night is wonderful."

Though her eyes had kept like marbles,

her tongue was a broken See 'n Say:

people and places but never a story…

They all climbed up on a high board fence—

Nine little Goblins, with green-glass eyes—

Nine little Goblins that had no sense,

And couldn't tell coppers from cold mince pies;

And they all climbed up on the fence, and sat—

And I asked them what they were staring at.

Case of ditto for eating meat.

Copper rings for arms and

Above the knee. Arm rings

Made from Elephant's teeth.

Ditto ditto for eating meat.

Here lies a bicycle. Here lies

A shoe. Here sand or ash or

Fingertips and from your Mama

Comes a tune; sound like water…

Auguries interpreted incorrectly caused a fever.

Dry heat leathers skin, embeds bread in bones that know there's more.

Gift the thunderegg, teethe on junipers, drive to the white dove.

One one-thousand, two…, lightning and strike unwed—wait there's more.

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back…

I made a posie, while the day ran by:

Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie

            My life within this band.

But time did becken to the flowers, and they

By noon most cunningly did steal away,

            And wither'd in my hand.

First, dependence is our only enterprise.

The dirt-nuzzle. Sunlight's rough tongue-lick of the body.

First, change happens only to the sky.

Lost in up-gaze, we grow down. How cryptic of the body.

Gradually, one season arrives

that marks her time

to leave. As simple as that.

I press my hands against an invisible wall.

What you have been taking for words

are just chattering and ruffling and squawks.

It doesn't mean I don't love you.

Actor and carwash and actor

and carwash and actor together

strip down.

a man

wearing a blue cap

working his bicycle…

I thought the moose had died

    in the clearing

             where I had stopped

for a tiny breath…

Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me—thy soft breast

Shall pant to mine—bend o'er me—thy sweet eyes,

And loosened hair, and breathing lips, arms

Drawing me to thee—these build up a screen

To shut me in with thee, and from all fear,

So that I might unlock the sleepless brood

Of fancies from my soul…

O solitude! If I must with thee dwell,

   Let it not be among the jumbled heap

   Of murky buildings;—climb with me the steep,

Nature's Observatory

the nerves keep 'em shaking, and so

if you take a shovel and split the body, bi-

furcate him, trifurcate him, his little teeth still spit…

When door of death

yawns, dress me pink.

I-resounding,

Earth-sequestered-

Paint me six

feet with stilettos…

Now prompts the Muse poetic lays,

And high my bosom beats with love of Praise!

But, Chatterton! methinks I hear thy name,

For cold my Fancy grows, and dead each Hope of Fame.

some women lose more than me,

the uterus, the ovaries, the fallopian tubes, it's good

he says that it was caught early enough. he speaks

with the ease that implies that the body is nothing

more complex than the limbless, trapdoored models

that decorate biology classrooms…

Maps are never skin. I know

that you're only a guide but

I prefer to pretend otherwise.