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 Ocean Vuong Deto(nation) There’s a joke that ends with — huh? It’s the bomb saying here is your father. Now here is your father inside your lungs. Look how lighter the earth is — afterward. Gregory Scofield I’ll Teach You Cree with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki your mouth will be the web catching apihkêsis words, Alootook Ipellie Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border It is never easy Walking with an invisible border Separating my left and right foot Adonis Ali Ahmad Said Esber The Wound I. Leaves, asleep under wind: a ship for the wound. The wound glories in these ruinous times. Trees growing in our own eyelashes a lake for the wound. The wound shows up in bridges Edmund Waller Song Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, Ben Jonson Song: To Celia Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love; Time will not be ours forever; Lord (George Gordon) Byron So, we’ll go no more a roving So, we’ll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, James Langer St John’s Burns Down for the Umpteenth Time Let’s say the fix was in. Let’s say history, Being human and thus short on ideas, Made change from an old bag of tricks. Say this John Milton Sonnet XXIII: Methought I Saw my Late Espoused Saint Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave… David McGimpsey 71. Song for a Silent Treatment. I told her, in plain language, how I felt. And by that I mean I mumbled a poorly paraphrased and already… 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 Kaie Kellough Mantra of No Return my mother occupies the passenger seat. my brother and i stick in the back. the radio babbles and sings between us. she is estranged, returning Hoa Nguyen My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962 Very loud a mad frenzy The wooden barrel she rode would have roared (I first wrote “road”) Dane Swan Pride A half-hour. Thirty minutes. One thousand eight hundred seconds. They sat. Protest is not supposed to be comfortable. 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, Changming Yuan Chinese Chimes: Nine Detours of the Yellow River you are unaware of your obscure sources but you are explicitly sure of the vast sea as your final destination Guillaume Apollinaire The Little Car The 31st day of August 1914 I left Deauville a little before midnight In Rouveyre’s little car Shane Book World Town Entirely windless, today’s sea; of these waters’ many names the best seemed “field-of-pearl-leaves,” for it smelled like the air in the house he built entirely of doors: pink school door, Naomi Shihab Nye Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, Layli Long Soldier From Whereas Whereas my eyes land on the shoreline of “the arrival of Europeans in North America opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.” Because in others, I hate the act Ian Williams Echolalia Once one gets what one wants one no longer wants it. One no longer wants what? James Wright A Blessing Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows Olive Senior Rejected Text for a Tourist Brochure “I saw my land in the morning and O but she was fair” - M.G. Smith, “Jamaica” (1938) I Come see my land Come see my land Daniel Borzutzky Lake Michigan, Scene 3 The bodies are on the beach And the bodies keep breaking And the fight is over But the bodies aren't dead And the mayor keeps saying I will bring back the bodies Evelyn Lau Dear Updike No, nothing much has changed. A year later, the world is still one you’d recognize — no winged cars to clog the air, Dennis Lee 400: Coming Home You are still on the highway and the great light of noon comes over the asphalt, the gravelled shoulders. You are on the highway, there is a kind of William Shakespeare Sonnet LV: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, But you shall shine more bright in these contents 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 Suzannah Showler Too Negative I was a kid other kids’ parents gossiped about. They told their children what I was: too negative. I get it. Fair to fear contagion of bad attitudes, William Ernest Henley Invictus Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be Tina Biello C Wing 1 Your mother is missing, the nurse hovers at the door . Your mother is missing, a bit louder this time. As if this was natural, a daily game of let's find the Italian, Sharon Olds From the Window of My Home-Town Hotel On the lee slope of the small coastal mountain which conceals the sun the first hour after its rising, in the dry, steep ravines, the live mist of the heat is seething like dust left over from an earlier world. Emily Brontë Shall earth no more inspire thee Shall earth no more inspire thee, Thou lonely dreamer now? Since passion may not fire thee T. S. Eliot La Figlia che Piange O quam te memorem virgo... Stand on the highest pavement of the stair — Lean on a garden urn — James Millhaven Closure On the night we dug up your father’s body (for reasons I can no longer remember) we took turns with the shovel as we passed a bottle of Whyte & Mackay back and forth. Sue Goyette Eight The trick to building houses was making sure they didn’t taste good. The ocean’s culinary taste was growing more sophisticated and occasionally Robert Frost The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood Katherena Vermette mixed tape side a: 1. 18 and Life her friend takes her to 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, 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. Language English