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Take the I Out
By Sharon Olds
But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and...
Calling Things What They Are
By Ada Limón
I pass the feeder and yell, Grackle party! And then an hour later I yell, Mourning dove afterparty! (I call the feeder the party and the seed on the ground the afterparty.) I am getting so good at watching that...
Gratitude
By Cornelius Eady
I’m here
to tell you
an old story.
This
Appears to be
my work.
I live
in the world,
Walk
the streets…
Enter the Dragon
By John Murillo
For me, the movie starts with a black man
Leaping into an orbit of badges, tiny moons

Catching the sheen of his perfect black afro.
Arc kicks, karate chops, and thirty cops

On their backs. It starts with the swagger,
The cool lean into the...
Crip vs. Crip
By Walela Nehanda
Crip (noun): slang for a disabled person/the whole of
the disabled community/
a school of thought
Example: “I’m on crip time”
Meaning: Time bends differently when the universe that is
my body dictates it

Crip (noun): a Black gang that originated in...
Into the Weeds
By Kevin Prufer
The brutality of those two men
who broke into her apartment
and murdered her boyfriend,
...
Meditation During the Sufferings and Deaths of Others
By Sharon Olds
I did not deserve to be beaten,
and I did not deserve ballet lessons––
except insofar as everyone deserves ballet lessons.
Me mum thought I was well worth beating.
She would not have thought that I deserved to starve.
I deserved the milk in her...
The Skokie Theater
By Edward Hirsch
Twelve years old and lovesick, bumbling
and terrified for the first time in my life,
but strangely hopeful, too, and stunned,
definitely stunned—I wanted to cry,
I almost started to sob when Chris Klein
actually touched me—oh God—below the belt
in the back row of the...
The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator
By Anne Sexton
The end of the affair is always death.
She’s my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she’s mine.
She’s...
In Celebration of My Uterus
By Anne Sexton
Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating all my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
They said you were immeasurably empty
but you are not.
They said you were sick unto dying
but they were wrong.
You are singing like a...
- Living
- Health & Illness
- Gratitude & Apologies
- Meters
- Free Verse
- Techniques
- Confessional
- Types/Modes
- Ode
- + 2 more
Menstruation at Forty
By Anne Sexton
I was thinking of a son.
The womb is not a clock
nor a bell tolling,
but in the eleventh month of its life
I feel the November
of the body as well as of the calendar.
In two days it will be my birthday
and as...
Crossing the Atlantic
By Anne Sexton
We sail out of season into an oyster-gray wind,
over a terrible hardness.
Where Dickens crossed with mal de mer
in twenty weeks or twenty days
I cross toward him in five.
Wrapped in robes—
not like Caesar but like liver with bacon—
I rest on the...
The Room of My Life
By Anne Sexton
Here,
in the room of my life
the objects keep changing.
Ashtrays to cry into,
the suffering brother of the wood walls,
the forty-eight keys of the typewriter
each an eyeball that is never shut,
the books, each a contestant in a beauty contest,
the black chair, a...
Wanting to Die
By Anne Sexton
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the...
With Mercy for the Greedy
By Anne Sexton
Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,
no larger than a thumb,
small and wooden, no thorns, this rose—

I pray to its...
The Starry Night
By Anne Sexton
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all...
Music Swims Back to Me
By Anne Sexton
Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and...
Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound
By Anne Sexton
I am surprised to see
that the ocean is still going on.
Now I am going back
and I have ripped my hand
from your hand as I said I would
and I have made it this far
as I said I would
and I am on...
The Moss of His Skin
By Anne Sexton
It was only important
to smile and hold still,
to lie down beside him
and to rest awhile,
to be folded up together
as if we were silk,
to sink from the eyes of mother
and not to talk.
The black room took us
like a cave or a...
Her Kind
By Anne Sexton
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been...

Quick Tags

Explore Poems: Confessional

Take the I Out

Calling Things What They Are

Gratitude

Enter the Dragon

Crip vs. Crip

Into the Weeds

Meditation During the Sufferings and Deaths of Others

The Skokie Theater

The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator

In Celebration of My Uterus

Menstruation at Forty

Crossing the Atlantic

The Room of My Life

Wanting to Die

With Mercy for the Greedy

The Starry Night

Music Swims Back to Me

Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound

The Moss of His Skin

Her Kind