A Dead Statesman I could not dig; I dared not rob: Therefore I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue And I must face the men I slew. What tale shall serve me here among Mine angry and defrauded young? Rudyard Kipling briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/e...

Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness I am his Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? Alexander Pope Image courtesy @robertallenpoet.bsky.social‬ briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/d...

The Blue Boat How late the daylight edges toward the northern light as though journeying in a blue boat, gilded in mussel shell with, slung from its mast, a lantern like our old idea of the soul Kathleen Jamie

Butterflies They fall in ribbons down the path of oceans, the foam-pale butterflies, but the flowers are salt. They prove the charms of rapine, that the emotion called beauty has earned this result. Derek Walcott

Ease The baby sighing little curves like the fretwork on a violin or torturing her face with soggy mitts while smiling at shadows. Her thoughts forming the heartbeat of THUMP while I wind her, speaking her secret language with the magpies in Fairview Park. Jessica Traynor

A New Being I know myself no more, my child, Since thou art come to me, Pity so tender and so wild Hath wrapped my thoughts of thee. These thoughts, a fiery gentle rain,         Are from the Mother shed, Where many a broken heart hath lain And many a weeping head. Æ (George Russell)

Making it in poetry The young teller at the credit union asked why so many small checks from universities?
 Because I write poems I said. Why haven’t I heard of you? Because I write poems I said. Bob Hicok

Inheritance Where did you get those big eyes? My mother. And where did you get those lips? My mother. And the loneliness? My mother. And that broken heart? My mother. And the absence, where did you get that? My father. Warsan Shire

I see that my UK friends are mourning the passing of #TonyHarrison, so here *in memoriam* is a video of his realization of the medieval mystery plays. May he rest in peace. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzIr...

from “Palladas, Poems” Born crying, and after crying, die. It seems the life of man’s just one long cry. Pitiful and weak and full of tears, Man shows his face on earth and disappears. Tony Harrison briefpoems.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/z...

Words for a Dead Friend Some nights, or whenever I meet up with the dead, facing out in long lines leading out of me, you are most alive among those still in sight: you cannot be killed in the living mind looking in George Quasha Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

How I pine How I pine for a hawdy, yir really beautiful body, ahm right besotten, ah fancy yi rotten; let’s huvva tet-a-tet – stoap playn hard tay get. Tom Leonard

Still Start As if engine parts could be wrenched out
 at random and the car would still start and sound even, hearts can go with chambers broken open. Kay Ryan

First Day at Day Care My daughter comes home smelling like another woman’s perfume. Beth Ann Fennelly Image - ‪@phillipcrymble.bsky.social‬

For the Road to Santiago For the road to Santiago, don’t make new declarations about what to bring and what to leave behind. Bring what you have. You were always going that way anyway, you were always going there all along. David Whyte Image courtesy @arealmofwonder.bsky.social

I can’t help but think of that cruel fairy tale about the proud girl who trod on a loaf to spare her new shoes crossing a puddle of mud. Down she sank, down, past the Marsh Witch’s brewery, to hell’s portals ‘Autumn Cyclamen’, a poem by @aestallings.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Long Poem on Four Feet Emptied of humans the dancing ground dances. Robert Bringhurst

May Such beauty, you say Let us stop & admire A moment, a day The fields & the fire God the great spider Has caught you again Tom Disch

The Sandpiper The sandpiper Scampers over sand Advances, withdraws As breakers disband Each wave undergoes The bead of his eye He pecks what it tows Keeps himself dry Samuel Menashe briefpoems.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/p...

Love, Maybe Always in the middle of our bloodiest battles you lay down your arms like flowering mines to conqueror me home. Audre Lorde

Then When she came to meet him at the ferry he said you are so pale worn so frail standing on her toes to reach his ear she whispered I am an old woman oh then he was always kind Grace Paley

My Makeup On my cheeks I wear the flush of two beers . on my eyes I use the dark circles of sleepless nights to great advantage . for lipstick I wear my lips Rochelle Kraut Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

We Shake with Joy We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body. Mary Oliver

And the Ghosts they own everything Graham Froust

Copla de Pie Quebrado Consolatory tears, flow, flow and wet my cheeks as usual: love kills us all. Peter Reading Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Old Snapshot From the shape of his head she can remember the way he tasted, like corn meal bread, flat, mealy, wasted; not like the wine of her winning lad of red head, who set her sinning on a cornfield bed. Ann Darr

In an Evening Window She pares fruit with a pearl-handled knife. The moon wants a fingernail to fullness. Nearly translucent are the thin slices of pear she raises to her lips, traces of their nectar like a fine dew wetting her fingertips. Robyn Sarah Image - ‪@phillipcrymble.bsky.social‬

Ablutions He kneels on the bathroom floor to clip his fingernails straight into the toilet. Imagine his bent head, the concentration, the bright metallic snip like a speckled thrush tapping a snail against a stone. Martha Sprackland Image courtesy @nessalampert.bsky.social

An Augury The raven preceded the dove out of the ark and for seven days circled water, waiting for a perch, and for seven more circled, waiting for the dove. Robert Bringhurst

A Map of Love Your face more than others' faces Maps the half-remembered places I have come to I while I slept— Continents a dream had kept Secret from all waking folk Till to your face I awoke, And remembered then the shore, And the dark interior. Donald Justice

Past Imperfect I've learned to step lightly into the world that couldn't contain me to forgive while never forgetting, to praise the plum tree and the washline. Unfinished things rest. Words
 gather dust. Loss matters less. Hettie Jones Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social‬

Breakfast in Heidelberg Said Brueghel to Hegel “I’ve brought you a flagel.” Said Hegel to Brueghel “What is a flagel?” Said Brueghel to Hegel “A flagel’s a bagel without all the dough.” Said Hegel to Brueghel “Thank you, but no.” Caitlin Doyle

little one the baby arrived with stitched lips no matter how hard the midwife tried she couldn’t undo the stitches and, shrugging, handed her over for the needle-eyed mother to see to Geraldine Clarkson

Small Moth by Sarah Lindsay

Gothic Cathedrals They lie across France like God’s love letters: Something he can read and say, “Anyway, they loved me once.” Gail White

Testimony How do children survive abuse? It’s so boring. In the end. I am
a wholly serious person. But we aren’t in the end yet. Hedgie Choi

To Eleanor Clarke Without heroics, without belief, I send you, as I am not rich, Nothing but odds and ends a thief Bundled up in the last ditch. Louis MacNeice

@sealeychallenge.bsky.social My third year to complete #TheSealeyChallenge - 32 books, old and new, over 31 days: one children’s book, one drama, one travel guide, two “collected poems”three “selected poems”, an Irish week, a Canada week. A cornucopia of wonders. With thanks to Nicole Sealey.

An Ace of Hearts My darling, all these sentiments and signs Of love, what difference posting through the town The purple hearts, the bloody valentines, If all are only asses upside down? Howard Nemerov

#SealeyChallenge - Day 31 Sentences by Howard Nemerov And quietly in darkness, in moonlight, or snowlight Reflective, listen to the whistling earth In its backspin trajectory around the sun…

The Everlasting Self Comes in from a downpour Shaking water in every direction— A collaborative condition: Gathered, shed, spread, then Forgotten, reabsorbed. Like love From a lifetime ago, and mud A dog has tracked across the floor. Tracy K. Smith

#SealeyChallenge - Day 30 Such Color: New and Selected Poems by Tracy K. Smith This is a poem about the itch
That stirs a nation at night. This is a poem about all we’ll do
Not to scratch— Where fatigue is great, the mind Will invent entire stories to protect sleep.

ENVOY Good Night, at last the light of the sun is gone under Earth’s rim and we can see the dark interstices Day’s lord erases. Robert Duncan

#SealeyChallenge - Day 29 Bending the Bow by Robert Duncan My mother would be a falconress, And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist, would fly to bring back from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize…

Antiquity Too (After Goethe) Antiquity too had arms, legs, loins, and while its shadows thrashed on stone it would one day be, fucked, flicker-lit, like you, like me. Christian Wiman

#SealeyChallenge - Day 28 Once in the West by Christian Wiman Too many elegies elevating sadness to a kind of sad religion: one wants in the end just once to befriend one’s own loneliness, to make of the ache of inwardness— something, music maybe…

3.2 There is saying something the same thing in a different form,
There is saying something new in the same form,
There is saying the same thing again in the same form
There is not much saying something new in a new form Hannah Sullivan

#SealeyChallenge - Day 27 Three Poems by Hannah Sullivan Hannah Sullivan You stand around, On the same street corners, smoking, thin-elbowed,
Looking down avenues in a lime-green dress
With one arm raised, waiting to get older.

House Rules CHARCOAL & ROSE ROOM LOUNGE House Rules: Proper Dress Picture ID Required Age 25 yrs or Older No Muscle Shirts T Shirts No Service No excuse Kevin Young

#SealeyChallenge - day 26 Stones by Kevin Young We sleep long if not sound— our feet finding morning Till the end we sing into the wind.