poetry: results 505–528 of 735

It's how Hemingway dies

in the children's biography

I found in the public library, white death

like a cloud descending…

…you know immediately

she won't live long: body a fourth

of our bodies, cut off below the chest,

legs hanging like cloth. African, late teens…

Sometimes my friends & I, we get to feeling persecuted.

You see, we have a strong sense of entitlement

& deep stores of confidence that we are, individually

& collectively, the most awesomest thing of all time.

And all those hands, all that skin,

kisses brushing cheeks.

            I never once touched down, I kept out.

My plastic blinds, cast light                 To stir,

Like sleeping tabby cats, stomachs exposed, ringlets of striped fur…

i am able to sit through an extremely funny movie

without making a noise or changing my facial expression

i am incapable of laughing without trying to laugh

at work i wonder

if i should take anti-depressant medicine

finally, i decide, no, i shouldn't…

Muses, O ye who the course of true love so willingly favor…

Towards the setting sun the two thus went on their journey…

Like as the traveller, who, when the sun is approaching its setting,

Fixes his eyes on it once again ere quickly it vanish…

Now when the foreign judge had been by the minister questioned

As to his people's distress, and how long their exile had lasted,

Thus made answer the man: "Of no recent date are our sorrows;

Since of the gathering bitter of years our people have drunken…

Here the three men, however, still sat conversing together,

With mine host of the Lion, the village doctor, and pastor;

And their talk was still on the same unvarying subject,

Turning it this way and that, and viewing from every direction.

Thus entertaining themselves, the men sat talking. The mother

Went meanwhile to look for her son in front of the dwelling,

First on the settle of stone, whereon 'twas his wont to he seated.

When she perceived him not there, she went farther to look in the stable…

Thus did the modest son slip away from the angry upbraiding;

But in the tone he had taken at first, the father continued…

Ow when of comely mien the son came into the chamber,

Turned with a searching look the eyes of the preacher upon him,

And, with the gaze of the student, who easily fathoms expression,

Scrutinized well his face and form and his general bearing.

Truly, I never have seen the market and street so deserted!

How as if it were swept looks the town, or had perished!

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day…

once i knew an old man who very much enjoyed falling in love

and given more or less whiskey

could affect a transylvanian accent with some precision…

Canoes

and BBQ smell up

the faded metal…

Mother lying on the couch coughing fire,

the death of applause. Father puddled on the floor,

paycheck spent on modeling glue. Sisters, brothers.

Burn the couch, the television…

There is a lowness to this light,

how the sun barely scrapes

past tree tops,

where noon is dawn…

Her spine curves into the turnstile.

He nuzzles closer, twice her size.

Language concealed in flashing signals.

There is rain on the rails.

She thinks she's Harry Houdini's bathrobe.

Scrape from the perfect sky

a pocketful of that sock-you-in-the-eyes blue.

Grind it and leaven it with life.