Poems | Poetry in Voice

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,

Maurice Kilwein Guevara

Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Conceptión Before Entering Sears

Conchita debemos to speak totalmente in English

cuando we go into Sears okay Por qué

Porque didn’t you hear lo que pasó It say

on the eleven o’clock news anoche que two robbers

Adam Sol

Opus 75, Sestina in B-flat for the Glockenspiel

In the empty classroom, at sunrise, a girl

sits on the floor, staring at a glockenspiel.

She’s shredding the cuticles on her left hand

Christina Rossetti

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

Victoria Chang

Hindsight

Hindsight- never existed until August

3, 2015. Someone had painted

over hindsight. But if you paint over

Richard Lovelace

To Althea, from Prison

When Love with unconfinèd wings

Hovers within my Gates,

And my divine Althea brings

Yoko Ono

Color Piece

Visual world not exactly shaped –

Sense of smell, anticipation, senses that

are not exactly shaped —

Dark shadows casted —

Rat colors with faint hairly smells and pale

Wanda Coleman

In That Other Fantasy Where We Live Forever

we were never caught

we partied the southwest, smoked it from L.A. to El Dorado

worked odd jobs between delusions of escape

drunk on the admonitions of parents, parsons & professors

Walt Whitman

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!

Through the windows — through doors — burst like a ruthless force,

Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I think I should have loved you presently

I think I should have loved you presently,

And given in earnest words I flung in jest;

And lifted honest eyes for you to see,

Lucille Clifton

forgiving my father

it is friday. we have come

to the paying of the bills.

all week you have stood in my dreams

like a ghost, asking for more time

but today is payday, payday old man;

my mother’s hand opens in her early grave

Dionne Brand

From Verso 4

I was nine and I stood at the top of the street for no reason except to make the descent of the gentle incline toward my house where I lived with everyone and everything in the world, my sisters and my cousins were with me, we had our bookbags…

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

The tide rises, the tide falls,

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;

Along the sea-sands damp and brown

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,

Emily Dickinson

Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

Ian Keteku

Moment One

I remember my birth

like it was tomorrow, the unholy sensation

Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen

Mama

When the horse picked Mama up by the hair

that time, was she scared?

There is a photograph of her with this horse

in the brown family album. She stands

beside him, thin in the chilly wind

John Donne

The Good-Morrow

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Louise Bernice Halfe

April 30, 2014

Weeds are flattened beneath last year’s tire tracks

others lay burden by the winter’s heavy snow.

The crocuses labor through this thick blanket.

I am sun drained from the bleakness

Halyna Kruk

in this house

the body of a poem, still warm,

hangs on the nail of the mundane

touched to its core

like a reproach, like proof,

that i was here

and you were here

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Charge of the Light Brigade

I.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

Tyler B. Perry

FLOOD

The hallway is an empty

riverbed, smooth and barren.

At three o’clock classroom

doors open like dams.

Gullies of teens stream

out, to become one

Joseph Dandurand

Harmony with all of you

the task given to me when all

the ice had melted was to

welcome the sky people to

the river and to show them

how to fish and how to

build a fire to warm

themselves.

I moved on and came across

Tomaž Šalamun

Hymn of Worldwide Responsibility

I proclaim the brotherhood of natural, strong, sacred people.

A bond of incandescence, a bond of blazing lightning, bright labor,

the mind and soul of the planet, we are, like you,

Edgar Albert Guest

It Couldn’t Be Done

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done

But he with a chuckle replied

That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one

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,

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,

N. Scott Momaday

The Visions of Stone Carrier

Stone Carrier was my grandfather, my father, my brother, and
my son. He was a good and brave man, and he taught me many
things. He shared some of his memories with me, memories