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 Ken Babstock Fire Watch Hello, listen, I’m on a field phone, do not speak until I say “over.” Repeat, don’t talk until I say “over.” Over. Do you understand, or… Sally Ito God the Tea Master All the weapons we marshal to confront the day You ask to be left by the door before entering. The sword in its sheath must lie on the grass, the quiver and bow hung off a branch. Michael Fraser Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes The puck skates in on parted-snow ice. It's the season’s last game, an encore to stomach winter’s sliver, to shrug off the townsfolk stares. The moonlit night is advanced in years Gerard Manley Hopkins Spring Nothing is so beautiful as Spring — When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens,… 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 is it about love loss Tyler Pennock I have so many now. I have so many now. There’s one where we were giants, playing with our size by falling over houses and trees, laughing. There’s another where I was racing the old ones in a game, and we stopped Etel Adnan absence. displacement. absence. displacement. waiting. then comes rejection. anger follows. shame makes the beds the shadows jostle between the walls of the scarcely visited cities. Aisha Sasha John Regardless If I am judged If I am punished If I am dismissed If I am misunderstood If I am celebrated If I am envied If I am competed with If I am slandered against If I am seen Wallace Stevens The Snow Man One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, Meghan Kemp-Gee A Newly Discovered Species of Lizard with Distinctive Triangular Scales I am Charles Darwin. I eat owlflesh at Cambridge University. I have discovered something, an entirely new species with tropical fever in its reptile fingers. I am busy with taxonomying its most peculiar and three-sided Aphra Behn Love Armed Love in Fantastic Triumph sat, Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed, For whom Fresh pains he did Create, Neil Surkan On High There was busy air there, air seething through the leaves so, from farther up, the tree-line shone like a single scintillating polyhedron. Still, though ravens and wrens flaked off the top, Oliver Wendell Holmes Old Ironsides Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see Lorna Goodison Ideas of Home i Winter has landed; my boot bucks on a stone surrounded by snow; I swear, I murmur Oracabessa. “The rock” is what I call home, all islanders do, and I’m in blessed Ann Arbour, 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, Dylan Thomas 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 Chen Chen Self-Portrait as So Much Potential Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango. As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront. Realizing I hate the word “sip.” But that’s all I do. Edgar Allan Poe “Alone” From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were — I have not seen As others saw — I could not bring Joshua Jennifer Espinoza Comfort 11 am. Time to wake up. Muscles sore, jaw clenched, warm light scattering dreams of violence across the bedroom. I've chosen a self Stevie Smith Not Waving But Drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought John Donne The Flea Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea Adam Posed Could our first father, at his toilsome plow, Thorns in his path, and labor on his brow, Clothed only in a rude, unpolished skin, Natalie Scenters-Zapico Buen Esqueleto Life is short & I tell this to mis hijas. Life is short & I show them how to talk to police without opening the door, how to leave the social security number blank Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch The Fatigue The Fatigue is just fatigue. It sprays my body like a numbing agent. Say the way I sleep might not be working, say the way I eat might not be working. Hope to god the meds Thomas Hardy Hap If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, William Shakespeare Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 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 Jane Mead From World of Made and Unmade In my dream my mother comes with me. We are in the meadows we call The Flats, walking the dogs. Walk straight past the water trough, she says, do not engage the moss. Pamela Mordecai My sister cries the sea My sister is crying and crying her tears grow to salt stormy showers to rain and to rapids and rivers they run to the sea to the sea. My sister sobs softly she knows Ada Limón The Raincoat When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years, my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work, osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine Patricia Smith 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, Sonnet L'Abbé Poor Speaker I understand you. I get what you’re trying to say. What you’re trying to say is you want me to get it. I get it. You want me to understand. You want me to know 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 Theodore Roethke My Papa’s Waltz The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Matthew Rohrer Dog Boy ONE Late at night in Oklahoma, a very small, an extremely small man ran across the road in front of my friend’s car. He does not doubt this is real, though the rest of us do, and it doesn’… Lorna Crozier Packing for the Future: Instructions Take the thickest socks. Wherever you're going you'll have to walk. There may be water. There may be stones. There may be high places you cannot go without Matthew Arnold Dover Beach The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Marvin Frances more treaty lines 1790 → treaty 2, district of Hesse (step into wolf) province of quebec “We do herby certify that the following goods were delivered to the several Nations” Andrea Thompson Enigma Who I am depends on which side of my skin you stand on. In here it’s all neurons firing synapses telling stories blood tracing ancestral histories 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 Language English