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 Chen Chen When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities To be a good ex/current friend for R. To be one last inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship advice for L. To be advice for my mother. To be a more comfortable William Blake The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” Ella Wheeler Wilcox Solitude Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, Al Purdy The Cariboo Horses At 100 Mile House the cowboys ride in rolling stagey cigarettes with one hand reining half-tame bronco rebels on a morning grey as stone… John Donne A Hymn to God the Father Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which was my sin, though it were done before? Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run, Amy Uyematsu A Practical Mom can go to Bible study every Sunday and swear she’s still not convinced, but she likes to be around people who are. We have the same conversation every few years — I’ll ask her if she stops Valzhyna Mort Nocturne for a Moving Train The trees I’ve glimpsed from the window of a night train were the saddest trees. They seemed about to speak, then— vanished like soldiers. Liz Howard 1992 This is our welfare half a duplex with mint green siding shrugged between 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 Ian Keteku Moment One I remember my birth like it was tomorrow, the unholy sensation Kim Addonizio Aquarium The fish are drifting calmly in their tank between the green reeds, lit by a white glow that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank glass that holds them in displays their slow 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. 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. I don’t know anything about dolphins, except Kim Hyesoon Icicle Glasses Day thirty-nine The thing that death gave you — your face leaks your face overflows Your face is the grave of your nose your face is the grave of your ears Tyler Pennock It was in a boardroom It was in a boardroom that I witnessed the latest killing A room filled with knowledgeable white people trying to understand what we offer shaking their heads 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 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? Don Kerr Editing the Prairie Well, it’s too long for one thing and very repetitive. Remove half the fields. Then there are far too many fences interrupting the narrative flow. Get some cattlemen to cut down those fences. Kai Cheng Thom diaspora babies diaspora babies, we are born of pregnant pauses/spilled from unwanted wombs/squalling invisible-ink poems/written in the margins of a map of a place called No Homeland 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 i’m still sleeping Alice Oswald A Short Story of Falling It is the story of the falling rain to turn into a leaf and fall again it is the secret of a summer shower to steal the light and hide it in a flower and every flower a tiny tributary Joseph Dandurand The First Day When I was five I was put on a bus and sent to Catholic school not unlike my mother who was five when she was put on a train and sent to residential school, both feeling that gut feeling Mathew Henderson Badlands Your father worked Drumheller while you ate and slept at home. He travelled the badlands, squatted below rocks, read books … Sara Peters You’d Have to Pay Me Could You Pay Me Enough You’d have to pay us Could you pay us enough To live for a stretch Brenda Hillman Equinox Ritual with Ravens & Pines — so we said to the somewhat: Be born — & the shadow kept arriving in segments, cold currents pushed minerals 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! Paul Laurence Dunbar Invitation to Love Come when the nights are bright with stars Or when the moon is mellow; Come when the sun his golden bars Drops on the hay-field yellow. Come in the twilight soft and gray, Robert Browning Confessions What is he buzzing in my ears? “Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears?” John Keats La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, Amber Dawn The Ringing Bell I used to liken a poem to praying. Is that right? Not the woo and gratitude praying served by queer witches. Childhood praying. As a girl I genuflected to the tabernacle Marianne Moore Poetry I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a… Gwen Benaway Trillium the animal in me is constant. thirst starts, hunger answers. sleep is uncertain, restless limbs. in the night, I hear footsteps. Paul Laurence Dunbar We Wear the Mask We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, — This debt we pay to human guile; Méira Cook Adam Father He wakes up naked and drunk as a bear on sun-fermented garbage. Hungover and queasy and riled up by bees. Nothing going well today, he moans, life being short and the craft, ah, long. Gerard Manley Hopkins As Kingfishers Catch Fire As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Give All to Love Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Robin Coste-Lewis Mother Church #3 KIN KLETSO/YELLOW HOUSE CHACO CANYON, SAN JUAN COUNTY, NEW MEXICO ANASAZI RUINS, AD 1125-1130 For Henri, at 2 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… Jessica Johns How Not to Spill Dad has creases on his hands so thick they could split with a poke. He gestures for me to try so I do. His skin bends on a hinge and out spills every good and bad thing: cattails from our Susan Howe From Titian Air Vent A work of art is a world of signs, at least to the poet’s nursery bookshelf sheltered behind the artist’s ear. I recall each little motto howling its ins and outs to those of us who might as well be on the moon Language English