The Kiss

BY KURT BROWN

That kiss I failed to give you.

How can you forgive me?

The kiss I would have spent on you is still

There, within me. It will probably die there.

But it will be the last of me to die.

On the Pulse of Morning

BY MAYA ANGELOU

A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,

Marked the mastodon,

The dinosaur, who left dried tokens

Of their sojourn here

On our planet floor,

Any broad alarm of their hastening doom

Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,

Come, you...
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ginary:

Thanks for the love on my set in member review ( :

Sep 1, 2023

Oh Say Can You See

BY VIKTORIA VALENZUELA

By the dawn's early light, I think of skin; I think of how

Light can shine through my eyelids no matter how hard I close them.

I question, do they see

a lampshade at a neo-Nazi party?

When I think of eyelids

I pet mine with flower petals soaking.

We soak up the sun's rays to make...
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It’s a lucky day for me
if they are burning on the hill
the cut and fallen branches.
Fire consumes wood, smoke
consumes air. Lucky day
to see what burns and smokes
inside me. If I sit at the window
long enough, I know the moon
will come back. Is that enough then?
I don’t mean is the moon enough,
but is the waiting for...
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Since There Is No Escape

BY SARA TEASDALE

Since there is no escape, since at the end

My body will be utterly destroyed,

This hand I love as I have loved a friend,

This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;

Since there is no escape even for me

Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:

The scent of orchards in the...
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Guilt Mountain

By Ishmael Reed

When he does his taxes,
He finds charges for things
He didn’t sign up for.
No chance to read about penalties and
Interest rates.
He didn’t sign up for life’s contract.

Would he initial
“I agree” after reading life’s
Terms?
Promising him a chance to

Stroll, sprint, and trot on a star. Flowers, honey, an unlimited chance to walk in...
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sick day
burning with fever
burning with lust
sweat drips
sizzling on molten sheets

ghost spiders crawl corridors of wet skin
raising gooseflesh and memories of rusty lips

dragged to the cul-de-sac where desire

waits for the next bus to oblivion

i squirm to find a cool spot on this...
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Diaspora Sonnet Traveling Between Apartment Rentals

By Oliver de la Paz

What made the grammar of our early years,
moving from place to place, house to flimsy

house, was the meaning made between us, here
and there, and wherever or whenever

we moved. The windows chafed. Father pushed boards
with his palm to make the concavity

recede into dust. The blight in the siding
spoke...
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Cities with their fools for God

Nicole Brossard

Translated from the French by Sylvain Gallais & Cynthia Hogue

this time I count the hands, the feet,

the tongues, the tunics, the pebbles

the heads, the beardsthe skullcaps, the veils, the scarves,

I do not count the vertigos

the ablutions the miraclest

he whiplashes

in the loudspeakers

the dozens of spat-out words, such a big fire...
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Moving away is only to the boundaries

of the self. Better to stay here.

I said, leaving the horizons

clear. The best journey to make

is inward. It is the interior

that calls. Eliot heart it.

Wordsworth turned from the great hills

of the north to the precipice

of his own mind, and let himself

down for the poetry stranded

on the bare ledges.

For...
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tadkil

The Kiss