One at the Same Time even wearing a real smile what is heartbroken still heartbroken Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

A Little Pain I hold no greater value than the secret Please believe I strive to share You must know Even if you don’t want to tell me tell me. James Tate

Valentine for Vasko Popa to give someone a small red day a very loud heart is for once like you said to be empty and ready to be the little box the whole world fills Matthew Zapruder

Marie Howe

How happy I was if I could forget To remember how sad I am Would be an easy adversity But the recollecting of Bloom Keeps making November difficult Till I who was almost bold Lose my way like a little Child And perish of the cold. Emily Dickinson briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/07/18/a...

Exogenous Brought down from pastures from quarried heart of vanished riverbed. Your bones the broomstick, the schoolgirl’s breasts pressed on the thresher’s floor. From whose flanks comes this world’s dark lowing? Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Δαύοις ἀπάλας ἐτάρας ἐν στήθεσιν … Sappho May you bed down, Head to breast, upon The flesh Of a plush Companion. Aaron Poochigian briefpoems.wordpress.com/2017/02/25/w...

The Pleasure I enjoy watching myself grow old and gray I am authentic I say I belong with the others. David Ignatow Image courtesy @phillipcrymble.bsky.social‬

The Offerings Too many things on the altar. 
 A petal would do. Or the ant that stops for a moment at it. Cid Corman briefpoems.wordpress.com/2017/06/19/b...

Poverty Mountain Sleep in a field Take off your clothes Psychically That’s probably What heaven means Hannah Brooks-Motl Image courtesy @neonpajamas.bsky.social‬

A Shell Here we are all, naked as Greeks, Killing the lice in our shirts: Suddenly the air is torn asunder, Ripped as coarse silk, Then a dull thud.... We are all squatting. Frederic Manning #ArmisticeDay 🌺

The System That pack of scoundrels tumbling through the gate emerges as the Order of the State Stanley Kunitz

Prospect Among orange-tile rooftops and chimney pots the fen fog slips, gray as rats, while on spotted branch of the sycamore two black rooks hunch and darkly glare, watching for night, with absinthe eye cocked on the lone, late, passer-by. Sylvia Plath

Note 106 You do not have to save the things that kill you. Christina Sharpe Image courtesy @brandonshimoda.bsky.social More monostich here:- briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/s...

Nothing to Declare I stand before it All that I own What kind of heaven would it be if I couldn’t take you John Freeman Image courtesy @bloodsigns.bsky.social

Hunger They say you catch more
 flies with honey. Dead bodies also work. The question is why you want flies at all. Trust me. They will come soon enough . I’ve heard they visit the eyes first. Michael Bazzett Image courtesy @taraskurtu.bsky.social

The Donnellys Someone in an accent of seduction whispered 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘯. Then someone filled a bucket up with sleep. Mermaidism in the Donnelly house was five sisters deep. Martin Dyar

Quid Pro Quo: A Dedication You said we could replace our lumpy twenty-year-old mattress if I wrote you a poem. So here's your god- damn poem. Katie Farris Image courtesy @mandymchugh.bsky.social

Victoria Chang -

The Hope of Tears We see the world with half-formed eyes and think The world half-formed; that night falls when we blink. Tears may wash the lens; the wise man’s light Is salt and hot, and makes each shadow bright. Paul J. Pastor

All Souls Day the pauper’s grave washed clean by rain John J. Dunphy #AllSoulsDay

Poem for today. From Lucille Clifton's book, How to Carry Water: bit.ly/howtocarrywater #poem #booksky #writing

Enough Music by Dorianne Laux

...witches ride abroad.

Halloween by Michael Longley

Gutbucket I want, like water, you — something wet gainst the back of my throat. Carry me out reel me in I been down this well too long — Kevin Young Image courtesy ‪@maureenthorson.bsky.social‬

Long Exposure Even after letting go of the last bird I hesitate   There is something in this empty cage that never gets released Garous Abdolmalekian (Translated from Persian by Idra Novey & Ahmad Nadalizadeh)

Rover Rover’s such a clumsy dog! We love to laugh at Rover. He topples in the toilet bowl and somersaults in clover. He’s crazy to play leapfrog now and the neighbour’s dog loves Rover— but Rover’s always getting stuck before he’s halfway over! Andrew Hudgins

@fotoole.bsky.social on Heaney's initial reluctance to engage with the Troubles in his poems. "He resisted gut instincts that could not be transmuted into art, steering clear, like Odysseus, of both the whirlpool of propaganda and the monster of indifference." observer.co.uk/culture/book...

The Heart Is Not A pocket. A thing that can be turned inside out by anybody’s hand. Not a place for pebbles or loose change. Not to carry old receipts. It does not tear at the seam. It doesn’t have a seam. It cannot be torn. Danusha Laméris Image courtesy @mandymchugh.bsky.social

"flowering gorse bush" flowering gorse bush leaning over towards the sea as if its growth were towards completion of yellow in blue as leaves have grown back in branches songs have come among the leaves a gathering in the young whitebeam Thomas A. Clark

"Poem" by Joe Brainard.

Academic The stethoscope tells what everyone fears: You're likely to go on living for years, With a nurse-maid waddle and a shop-girl simper, And the style of your prose growing limper and limper. Theodore Roethke

After Keats 1 If truth is not a thing apart from me, then I don’t want it. 2. —Have you always told the truth? I have always loved the truth. Ellen Bryant Voigt Image courtesy @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social

The Moods Time drops in decay, Like a candle burnt out, And the mountains and the woods Have their day, have their day; What one in the rout Of the fire-born moods Has fallen away? W. B. Yeats

This Is The First Thing This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe Within a wood. Philip Larkin Image courtesy ‪@mirahqv.bsky.social‬

Knowledge Now that I know How passion warms little Of flesh in the mould, And treasure is brittle,— I’ll lie here and learn How, over their ground, Trees make a long shadow And a light sound. Louise Bogan Image courtesy ‪@carlasarett.bsky.social‬

Bird on the School Path There is this bird furiously hoking through the bushes, like 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘. 𝐼𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑓. 𝐷𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝐼𝑛 𝑚𝑦— 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠. Dawn Watson Image courtesy ‪@themothmagazine.bsky.social‬

Vertigo Mind led body to the edge of the precipice. They stared in desire at the naked abyss. If you love me, said mind, take that step into silence. If you love me, said body, turn and exist. Anne Stevenson Image courtesy ‪@maureenthorson.bsky.social‬

Late Wonders My face is now gone. Instead, I have a hawk’s face. None of the poets notice, they only want fame. Fame is a bucket of eyes. Victoria Chang Image courtesy @phillipcrymble.bsky.social‬

Sand The tide is going out. As we watch I can see more and more sand. “I think it’s coming in,” I hear him say. It’s good he’s not an Admiral or the moon. Selima Hill Image courtesy ‪@carolinebirduk.bsky.social‬

Rilke #poetry

And tonight, thinking of those issues, I then opened the page to this in the new Seamus Heaney. Which felt oddly helpful and meaningful at this time.

Sabbaths 1999 II I dream of a quiet man who explains nothing and defends
 nothing, but only knows
 where the rarest wildflowers
 are blooming, and who goes, and finds that he is smiling not by his own will. Wendell Berry

William Shakespeare

Rubus Ursinus: A Prayer for the Blackberry Harvest Reaching through thorns, milking the black udders with stung wrists. Sister and mother and unnamed stranger, say: whose is this dark blood on my hands? Robert Bringhurst

So So the promise of happiness? he asked a frog then swallowed the frog And the buzz of memory? he asked the page before lighting the page And by night the sliding stars beyond the night itself Michael Palmer Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Seamus Heaney at play with language

In Memoriam On that stormy night a top branch broke off on the biggest tree in my garden. It's still up there.  Though its leaves are withered black among the green the living branches won't let it fall. Norman MacCaig Image courtesy @pacificraft.bsky.socia

Raymond Carver: