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 Raymond Antrobus Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car the policeman was waiting. Gun raised. I use the past tense though this is irrelevant in Daniel's language, which is sign. Brandon Wint From: Incantation: Memory of Water Tonight, a strand of my great-grandmother’s hair sashes an amber beer bottle discarded by a tourist. A white thread of my grandmother’s baptismal robe is a bangle on a wrist of kelp William Wordsworth The World Is Too Much With Us The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; — Little we see in Nature that is ours; Zhang Er from Cross River . Pick Lotus 9 How to describe sea To someone who’s never seen it? He lives to ninety-nine, he wants it, to see it To walk on its glass surface, to blow the seven trumpets. Stanley Kunitz The Portrait My mother never forgave my father for killing himself, especially at such an awkward time and in a public park, that spring when I was waiting to be born. She locked his name 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 Cynthia Cruz Duras (Poverty) “The link with poverty is there is there in the man's hat, too, for money has got to be brought in, got to be brought in somehow,” M.D., The Lover. Kayla Czaga Livejournal.com/lonelyradio We could read your words from anywhere but you felt like the only soul sitting in your swivel chair listening to your parents dream-breathing down the hall while you typed George Murray Cowboy Story The books sit on the shelf, a row of coma patients in a ward, a series of selves no longer able to learn and trapped at the point of injury: the last page. Douglas Walbourne-Gough Ella Josephine Campbell Slim, slight. Sinew and bird bones. Cords of her hands like spruce roots. Came from Ship Cove to Crow Gulch with little more than the child inside her, landed in a small shack flanked by 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 Denise Riley Under the Answering Sky I can manage being alone, can pace out convivial hope across my managing ground. Someone might call, later. What do the dead make of us that we’d flay ourselves trying Tamar Rubin Perennial For thirty-one years, my mother tried not to miss her. Every week, a little water or the trickle of a few ice cubes dropped in black earth. Years back, in the muck of Toronto, April, Emily Dickinson Wild Nights — Wild Nights! Wild Nights — Wild Nights! Were I with thee Wild Nights should be Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang Winter House My father threw his language overboard, a bag of kittens, waterlogged mewling: small hard bodies. My mother hung on to hers — Wove the words like lace, an open web William Blake The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow A little black thing among the snow, Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe! “Where are thy father and mother? say?” Octavio Paz Wind, Water, Stone for Roger Caillois Water hollows stone, wind scatters water, stone stops the wind. Water, wind, stone. Wind carves stone, 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. Walt Whitman O Captain! My Captain! O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, Jalal al-Din Rumi Great Intimacy It is like an exquisite spider web, this world, but I don't get trapped. I have ceased to tie the strings of one shoe to another in the morning, so now I don't trip over my wants. This leaves me Milton Acorn I've Tasted My Blood If this brain’s over-tempered consider that the fire was want and the hammers were fists. Charles Sangster Sonnet VII from ‘Sonnets Written in the Orillia Woods’ Our life is like a forest, where the sun Glints down upon us through the throbbing leaves;… Ariana Reines Inner Life Those tweets I sent about Duke Ellington While my mom was being evicted again According to what ethics under the sun Can I possibly have been speaking? A Kind of private feeling I can’t even place here Lee Maracle Language Do you speak your language? I stare — I just said: how are you? I thought English was my language apparently it isn’t I thought Halkomelem was gibberish the devil’s language that’s what the nuns said Billy Collins Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide Lindsay Nixon niya Emma Healey Trust Fund Witches 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 Wallace Stevens The Emperor of Ice-Cream Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Douglas Gary Freeman memories of my youth as children we learned to stand on one leg clasping bundles of hope between our teeth not because we wanted to resemble flocks of black flamingos 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 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 Wordsworth I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, Robert Frost Fire and Ice Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire Robert Bringhurst These Poems, She Said These poems, these poems, these poems, she said, are poems with no love in them. These are the poems of a man C. D. Wright Re: Happiness, in pursuit thereof It is 2005, just before landfall. Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess. I am located at the corner of Waterway Margaret Avison The Swimmer’s Moment For everyone The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes, But many at that moment will not say John McCrae In Flanders Fields In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky Hoa Nguyen Blousy Guitar Blousy guitar I don’t want to count the beats Hey Hey My pen I have bed hair in the best way Daughter of sunlight and air and I’m glad you were born on this day or put another way: that you were Alfred, Lord Tennyson Break, Break, Break Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter Language English