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 Molly CROSS-BLANCHARD Dear Dolphin The shaman at Broadway and Main with a plastic shaker and some sage says you’re my power animal. Says we both have big brains, like to chatter. Charlie Petch How to Tell If a Poem Is Trans or Not Look directly at the crotch Gently wave away all thoughts about how you never cared about crotches of poems before this poet Consider the subject Bunkong Tuon Moon in Khmer You are light when the sun is punched out and darkness reigns. You are the antidote to what came before: black blood, black heart, hands tied, kneeling before a ditch of human bones. Rita Wong Declaration of Intent let the colonial borders be seen for the pretensions that they are i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us the beauty of enough, the path of peace to be savoured Monica Sok Self-Portrait in Siem Reap The French chef says, Try the foie gras, it’s very good. So I treat myself to the liver of a force-fed goose. Give it to me on a crostini with black currant! Jose Hernandez Diaz Pan Dulce My niece calls me from my brother-in-law’s phone While I’m getting ready to wash dishes. I pick up. She says she needs to talk to her grandfather. I tell her that her grandfather just went to sleep, Mohja Kahf Bury Me in Arabic “Morning of goodness to you” — “Morning of goodnesses” Or add flowers: “morning of roses” Always multiply the gift— “welcome” to “two welcomes” “a hundred welcomes and kinship and ease” Billy-Ray Belcourt Leonardo DiCaprio My ex-boyfriend got measurably more attractive and all I got was a dad bod. Leonardo DiCaprio has a dad bod, and for whatever reason this is reassuring to me. Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar Kai Cheng Thom What the Queer Community Should Have Told Us 1. you are perfect & also flawed 2. you are allowed to make mistakes & you must be accountable for them 3. accountability is not a price you pay in blood for being human Carolyn Forché The Colonel WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the Geffrey Davis Unfledged Weekends too my father roofed poor neighborhoods, at prices only his back could carry into profit. In the name of labor’s virtue—or was it another bill collector’s callous Philip Larkin This Be The Verse They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. Lucille Clifton won’t you celebrate with me won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up Alexis Pauline Gumbs another set of instructions we are asking you to trust your hands. put them on your heart. trust your heart. hear what we are saying. trust what you hear. we are asking you to build a circle. always a circle. not almost a circle. face Bernard Ferguson juxtaposition with seeds i thought you were gone / stupid bird / darling worms shifting in the mud / this time i am not so certain / is it kinship or are you gloating? / have i grown bitter with the bees / how they bring the blooms reliably? Sheree Fitch Do Your Best Under the Circumstances There is no land of perfect, child. There is no sea of ease. There is no candy apple trail. There’s broccoli and peas. There is no suit of armour, child. Russell Atkins Coffee mornings have bulk and that saves them from immediate death— 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. Aref Qazvini Tulips Bloom from Youths’ Blood I. It’s the season of wine, meadows, and Rose The court of spring is cleared of choughs and crows Generous clouds now water Rey[1] more freely than Khotan[2] Grace Nichols Moon-Gazer On moonlight night when moon is bright Beware, Beware— Moon-Gazer man with his throw-back head and his open legs gazing, gazing up at the moon Moon-Gazer man Majzoob Tabrizi Fire in the Reeds One night, fire fell into a reed bed It burned like love falling onto a soul As fire’s head warmed to its work every reed turned into a candle at its own grave Gwendolyn Brooks kitchenette building We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.” Maggie Estep Scab Maids on Speed My first job was when I was about 15. I had met a girl named Hope who became my best friend. Hope and I were flunking math class so we became speed freaks. This honed our Natalie Diaz from Exhibits from the American Water Museum 99. From an original rock painting in Topock, Arizona, now digitized on a wall-mounted monitor: Before this city, the Creator pressed his staff into the earth, and the earth opened— Simone White Windrim To Windrim or sycamore rustle cicada or bark and to Wayne Natalie Wee Let Us Be Fireflies Let Us Be Fireflies All day we practice morse code signals Jalal al-Din Rumi Where did the handsome beloved go? Where did the handsome beloved go? I wonder, where did that tall, shapely cypress tree go? He spread his light among us like a candle. Where did he go? So strange, where did he go without me? Mina Assadi The Dictator’s Message The Dictator’s Message O poets return, we have swept your homeland clean of thorns and splinters O writers return, to make a record of your works Fevziye Rahgozar Barlas An Innocent Little Girl The little girl is innocent they’ve put henna on her hands they’ve plaited her hair beautifully they’ve put kohl round her eyes they’ve dyed her eyebrows Hafiz Shams-ud-din-Muhammad We Haven’t Travelled to This Door We haven’t travelled to this door For wealth or mastery, We come here seeking refuge from Misfortune’s misery. And we have journeyed all this way, Erin Robinsong Late Prayer May our weapons be effective feminine inventions that like life. May we blow up like weeds, and be medicinal and everywhere. May the disturbed ground be our pharmacy. May the exhausted Cassandra Myers Lake Baptiste Ungenders Me upon contact / head first / baptismal the rind of me / peels into ribbons of foam / and pearls / i re-brown at the water’s touch / its two-way mudmirror / hands me its own name / earthliquid / bottomless Sadiqa de Meijer Jesse’s Farm We’re driving and the radio says mass marine extinctions within a generation. No silence, no sirens — an unflustered inflection, then stock markets, cryptic as Latin mass. I force myself: the interval Ada Limón We Are Surprised Now, we take the moon into the middle of our brains so we look like roadside stray cats with bright flashlight-white eyes in our faces, but no real ideas of when or where to run. Shazia Hafiz Ramji Poem of Failed Amends (Amor fati) I’ve put the oats in a jar, with yogourt and seeds, left it in the fridge overnight. The fruit on top will thaw, dripping sweetness into the rest. I want to remember I’ve done this Ivanna Baranova confirmation bias at least in our waking life most commemoration doubles as force since even the most benign zodiacal conceptions are tinged eurocentric when brown women die Cedar Sigo Poems for Saints (1) 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 Selina Boan From all you can is the best you can i once shoved my foot through glass getting to know my own anger its patches of stupid bloody love stress is just a socially acceptable word for fear Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang Dick Pics Two dicks, sitting in my daughter’s inbox, like men without hats, waiting for any door to open. * Sighting a stranger’s penis Language English