april is: a poem a day for national poetry month

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[april-is]

April 30, 2026: from Every Time I Ever Said I Want to Die, Andrea Gibson

from Every Time I Ever Said I Want to Die Andrea Gibson

[...] a difficult life is not less worth living than a gentle one. Joy is just easier to carry than sorrow, and you could lift a city

from how long you’ve spent holding what’s been nearly impossible to hold. This world needs those who know

how to do that. Those who can find a tunnel with no light at the end of it and hold it up like a telescope

to show that the darkness contains many truths that can bring the light to its knees. Grief astronomer,

adjust the lens, look close. Tell us what you see.

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Read the full poem here and see it performed. Spoken word poet Andrea Gibson (they/them) died this past July, aged 49, of ovarian cancer. The movie Come See Me in the Good Light is about their remarkable last year coming to terms with mortality.

Also by Andrea Gibson: + Instead of Depression + In the chemo room, I wear mittens made of ice so I don’t lose my fingernails. But I took a risk today to write this down.

More spoken word/slam poets here.

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And that, my friends, brings us to the end of another poetry month. But fear not, I leave you with gifts:

+ a totally re-done tag directory, to let you explore all 660(!!) previously shared poems by topic, vibe, format, and more. + An actually up-to-date alphabetical list for quickly finding specific poets. + A magical link to a random poem from the past and the chronological archives.

And of course you can always beat on, boats against the current, and be borne back ceaselessly into the past:

2025: Dead Stars, Ada Limón 2024: A Valentine for Ernest Mann, Naomi Shihab Nye 2023: Oral History of Insatiability, Jason Myers 2022: Try to Praise the Mutilated World, Adam Zagajewski 2021: In Defense of a Long Engagement, Mairead Small Staid 2020: Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness, Mary Oliver 2019: Starlings in Winter, Mary Oliver 2018: Born Yesterday, Philip Larkin 2017: Thus, He Spoke His Quietus, Thomas Lux 2016: Trees, W.S. Merwin 2015: Today and Two Thousand Years from Now, Philip Levine 2014: from For a Long Time I Have Wanted to Write a Happy Poem, Richard Jackson 2013: Tear It Down, Jack Gilbert 2012: from An Atlas of the Difficult World, Adrienne Rich 2011: Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal, Naomi Shihab Nye 2010: from Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Walt Whitman 2009: from The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot 2008: from Five-Finger Exercises, T.S. Eliot 2007: Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot 2006: Preludes, T.S. Eliot 2005: A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot

Thanks for riding along. <3

[april-is]

April 29, 2026: America Is Loving Me to Death, Michael Kleber-Diggs

America Is Loving Me to Death Michael Kleber-Diggs

acrostic golden shovel

America is loving me to death, loving me to death slowly, and I Mainly try not to be disappeared here, knowing she won’t pledge Even tolerance in return. Dear God, I can’t offer allegiance. Right now, 400 years ago, far into the future―it’s difficult to Ignore or forgive how despised I am and have been in the Centuries I’ve been here—despised in the design of the flag And in the fealty it demands (lest I be made an example of). In America there’s one winning story—no adaptations. The Story imagines a noble, grand progress where we’re all united. Like truths are as self-evident as the Declaration states. Or like they would be if not for detractors like me, the ranks of Vagabonds existing to point out what’s rotten in America, Insisting her gains come at a cost, reminding her who pays, and Negating wild notions of exceptionalism—adding ugly facts to God’s-favorite-nation mythology. Look, victors get spoils; I know the Memories of the vanquished fade away. I hear the enduring republic, Erect and proud, asking through ravenous teeth Who do you riot for? Tamir? Sandra? Medgar? George? Breonna? Elijah? Philando? Eric? Which One? Like it can’t be all of them. Like it can’t be the entirety of it: Destroyed brown bodies, dismantled homes, so demolition stands Even as my fidelity falls, as it must. She erases my reason too, allows one Answer to her only loyalty test: yes or no, Michael, do you love this nation? Then hates me for saying I can’t, for not burying myself under Her fables where we’re one, indivisible, free, just, under God, her God.

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Have y'all heard about the hot new poetic form, the golden shovel? Seriously. It was invented by Terrance Hayes, in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks: in his poem, "The Golden Shovel", reading the last word of each line gives you her poem "We Real Cool", vertically.

Poets have run with the idea in all kinds of clever directions -- using last words to spell out lines from other poems, prose quotes, even Cardi B lyrics...! (I wasn't kidding when I said it's hot. Terrance Hayes, Ravi Shankar, and Patricia Smith put together an anthology a few years back of golden shovel poems specifically building on the work of Gwendolyn Brooks and over 200 top-name poets contributed. It's not every decade a new poetic form drops, I guess!)

Today's Michael Kleber-Diggs poem is a golden shovel, as you'll see if you go back and try that vertical reading of the last words. It's also, astoundingly, an acrostic poem, where reading the first letter of each line also reveals a hidden message. I love the contrast of it: so much skill and artistry being used to address something so raw and ugly.

When we were very young:

2025: Greensickness, Laurel Chen [whoa! This is also a response to Gwendolyn Brooks.] 2024: from Gaza, Summer 2006, Jasmine Donahaye 2023: June, Alex Dimitrov 2022: Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be, Ross Gay 2021: Choi Jeong Min, Franny Choi 2020: Earl, Louis Jenkins 2019: Kul, Fatimah Asghar 2018: My Life Was the Size of My Life, Jane Hirshfield 2017: I Would Ask You To Reconsider The Idea That Things Are As Bad As They’ve Ever Been, Hanif Abdurraqib 2016: Tired, Langston Hughes 2015: Democracy, Langston Hughes 2014: Postscript, Seamus Heaney 2013: The Ghost of Frank O’Hara, John Yohe 2012: All Objects Reveal Something About the Body, Catie Rosemurgy 2011: Prayer, Marie Howe 2010: The Talker, Chelsea Rathburn 2009: There Are Many Theories About What Happened, John Gallagher 2008: bon bon il est un pays, Samuel Beckett 2007: Root root root for the home team, Bob Hicok 2006: Fever 103°, Sylvia Plath 2005: King Lear Considers What He’s Wrought, Melissa Kirsch

[april-is]

April 28, 2026: Resolution 2, Layli Long Soldier

Resolution 2 Layli Long Soldier

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(Today’s poem is shared as an image, and includes a transcription/description of the poem as alt text. If you’re unable to see it, you can also find it transcribed below.)

I was lucky enough to see Layli Long Soldier give a reading this year; she's a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation (and quite charming). This is one of her poems in response to the US government's quiet and tepid resolution apologizing to Native peoples for the harm it's caused caused. (Read more in this damning excerpt: "Whereas".)

It's a divisive poem among readers -- I think because of its deceptive simplicity. Consider the meaning of the boxed in square (a reservation?) and how the last line cuts off in the middle of the phrase, like it's been snatched away.

More: 2025: Connor Everywhere But, Adam Falkner 2024: The Mother’s Loathing of Balloons, A.E. Stallings 2023: To Be Alive, Gregory Orr 2022: A Metaphor, J. Estanislao Lopez 2021: Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming, Thomas Lux 2020: What Kind of Times Are These, Adrienne Rich 2019: Conversation with Phillis Wheatley #2, Tiana Clark 2018: Love Poem, Denise Levertov 2017: Young Wife’s Lament, Brigit Pegeen Kelly 2016: For the Confederate Dead, Kevin Young 2015: Awaking in New York, Maya Angelou 2014: when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story, Gwendolyn Brooks 2013: Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, Hayden Carruth 2012: My Place, Franz Wright 2011: from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry 2010: Love After Love, Derek Walcott 2009: To This May, W.S. Merwin 2008: Father, Ted Kooser 2007: from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell 2006: Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop 2005: Dream Song 1, John Berryman

A transcript of the poem text follows:

The poem is in the shape of a vertical rectangle, with large amounts of white space.

Text down the left side reads: "I commend and honor Native Peoples for the thousands of years that they have stewarded and protected this land", with "this land" repeated across the bottom line, and scattered randomly throughout the page. A small square sits inside the poem, in the upper left quadrant. The final line of the poem cuts off after the word "this", without "land".

[april-is]

April 27, 2026: Peril Sonnet, David Baker

Peril Sonnet David Baker

Where do you suppose                                        they’ve gone the bees now

that you don’t see them                                        anymore four-winged

among flowers    low                                        sparks in the clover

even at nightfall                                        are they fanning have

they gone another                                        place blued with pollen

stuck to their bristles                                        waiting beyond us

spring dwindle is what                                        we call it collapsing

neonicotinoids                                        high levels in pneu-

matic corn exhaust”                                        loss of habitat

or disappearing                                        disease in the way

of our kind     so to speak                                        what do you think

they would call it                                        language older than

our ears were they                                        saying it all along

even at daybreak —

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The past is a foreign country:

2025: De'an, Heid E. Erdrich 2024: Witness, Crystal Wilkinson 2023: from Burial, Ross Gay 2022: Ode to Tortillas, José Olivarez 2021: Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry, Jericho Brown 2020: The Restoration, Gary Jackson 2019: The Termite, Ogden Nash 2018: Elegy, W.S. Merwin 2017: Young Wife’s Lament, Brigit Pegeen Kelly 2016: For the Confederate Dead, Kevin Young 2015: Awaking in New York, Maya Angelou 2014: when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story, Gwendolyn Brooks 2013: Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, Hayden Carruth 2012: My Place, Franz Wright 2011: from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry 2010: Love After Love, Derek Walcott 2009: To This May, W.S. Merwin 2008: Father, Ted Kooser 2007: from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell 2006: Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop 2005: Dream Song 1, John Berryman

[april-is]

April 26, 2026: Driving After Supper, Marianne Boruch

Driving After Supper Marianne Boruch

The old senselessness returns  when driving in June  the ribbon roads, low corn  on either side, then woods, then meadows  where sheep just stand there,  slowly turn their heads. We are talking again  about how cool it is. It could be Maine, I say  for the 20th time, though usually  this seems the other harder world—Indiana— birds with their wait wait wait high  in trees, and such hot dust  when we stop, so studded with gravel.  We pass an old brick school—1880— disguised as someone's house, the door open  to its ring of chairs  around the small TV, a blue jacket  hung on a hook. Gifts  at every moment, though not  the farmer, farther on,  out circling in his tractor  furious haywire turns, his wife  a thin shadow in the yard; nor the kid  at the next house who spits  on his knife, and lifts it up, quietly now  gouging the porch railing.  We barely see that, joy being what it is, and the evening  so temporary.

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For my kid, who loves cars the way I love poetry, and who wanted more poems with vehicles.

Poetry drive-thru menu:

2025: Butter, Olive Oil, Flour, Lucia Cherciu 2024: Origin Story, 1993, Adam Falkner 2023: For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on the Sidewalks in Connecticut, Hanif Abdurraqib 2022: Demeter, Midwinter, Mairead Small Staid 2021: from A Pillow Book, Suzanne Buffam 2020: Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild, J.P. Grasser 2019: After the First Child, the Second, Mary Austin Speaker 2018: A New Lifestyle, James Tate 2017: Anchorage, Joy Harjo 2016: Poem to First Love, Matthew Yeager 2015: Ode to the Reel Mower, Jim Daniels 2014: So Much Happiness, Naomi Shihab Nye 2013: Habitation, Margaret Atwood 2012: About Marriage, Denise Levertov 2011: In Praise of My Bed, Meredith Holmes 2010: Black Swan, Brigit Pegeen Kelly 2009: In Me as the Swans, Leslie Williams 2008: Gnosticism V, Anne Carson 2007: American Names, Stephen Vincent Benet 2006: since feeling is first, e.e. cummings 2005: The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

[april-is]

April 25, 2026: A Strange Feeling, Nâzim Hikmet

A Strange Feeling Nâzim Hikmet

“The plum trees are in bloom —the wild apricot flowers first, the plum last —

My love, let’s sit face to face on the grass. The air is delicious and light —but not really warm yet— the almond shells are green and fuzzy, still very soft . . .

We’re happy because we’re alive, We’d probably have been killed long ago if you were in London, if I were in Tobruk or on an English freighter . . .

Put your hands on your knees, my love —your wrists thick and white— and open your left hand: the daylight is inside your palm like an apricot . . . Of the people killed in yesterday’s air raid, about one hundred were under five, twenty-four still babies . . .

I love the color of pomegranate seeds, my love —a pomegranate seed, seed of light— I like melons tart . . .”

. . . . . . a rainy day far from fruits and you —not a single tree has bloomed yet, and there’s even a chance of snow— in Bursa Prison, carried away by a strange feeling and about to explode, I write this out of pigheadedness— out of sheer spite — for myself and for the people I love.

2.7.1941

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(Written during the Turkish poet's 1938-1950 political imprisonment for supporting Communism.)

Also by Nâzim Hikmet: It’s This Way

More like this:  + On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam, Hayden Carruth  + from Understory, Craig Santos Perez  + We Lived Happily During the War, Ilya Kaminsky  + Easter, Jill Alexander Essbaum  + The Conditional, Ada Limón  + The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

Previously on Poetry Month Poems for People Who Read Poetry:

2025: a remix for remembrance, Kristiana Rae Colón 2024: from Moon for Aisha, Aracelis Girmay 2023: Still Life with Nursing Bra, Keetje Kuipers 2022: A Small-Sized Mystery, Jane Hirshfield 2021: Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew, Ross Gay 2020: Vigil, Phillis Levin 2019: Nights in the Neighborhood, Linda Gregg 2018: I Dreamed Again, Anne Michaels 2017: wishes for sons, Lucille Clifton 2016: Told You So, Keetje Kuipers 2015: Accident, Mass. Ave., Jill McDonough 2014: This Hour and What Is Dead, Li-Young Lee 2013: To Myself, Franz Wright 2012: Manet’s Olympia, Margaret Atwood 2011: Three Rivers, Alpay Ulku 2010: Ode to Hangover, Dean Young 2009: We become new, Marge Piercy 2008: The Only Animal, Franz Wright 2007: Dream Song 385, John Berryman 2006: The Quiet World, Jeffrey McDaniel 2005: Man and Wife, Robert Lowell

[april-is]

April 24, 2026: Afro, Morgan Parker

Afro Morgan Parker

I’m hiding secrets & weapons in there: buttermilk pancake cardboard, boxes of purple juice, a magic word our Auntie Angela spoke into her fist & released into hot black evening like gunpowder or a Kool, 40 yards of cheap wax prints, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a Zulu folktale warning against hunters drunk on Polo shirts & Jägermeister, blueprints for building ergonomically perfect dancers & athletes, the chords to what would have been Michael’s next song, a mule stuffed with diamonds & gold, Miss Holiday’s vocal cords, the jokes Dave Chapelle’s been crafting off the grid, sex & brown liquor intended for distribution at Sunday schools in white suburbs, or in other words exactly what a white glove might expect to find taped to my leg & swallowed down my gullet & locked in my trunk & fogging my dirty mind & glowing like treasure in my autopsy

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More Morgan Parker: + If You Are Over Staying Woke + It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine

Time warp:

2025: American Sonnet for the New Year, Terrance Hayes 2024: How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, Hanif Abdurraqib 2023: Lit, Andrea Cohen 2022: Meditations in an Emergency, Cameron Awkward-Rich 2021: How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River, Barbara Crooker 2020: Ash, Tracy K. Smith 2019: Under Stars, Dorianne Laux 2018: Afterlife, Natalie Eilbert 2017: There Are Birds Here, Jamaal May 2016: Poetry, Richard Kenney 2015: Dreaming at the Ballet, Jack Gilbert 2014: Vocation, Sandra Beasley 2013: Near the Race Track, Brigit Pegeen Kelly 2012: from Ask Him, Raymond Carver 2011: Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord, John Rybicki 2010: Rain Travel, W.S. Merwin 2009: Goodnight, Li-Young Lee 2008: Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje 2007: Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Hass 2006: Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke 2005: On Turning Ten, Billy Collins

[april-is]

April 23, 2026: from The Palace, Kaveh Akbar

from The Palace Kaveh Akbar

I have a kitchen device that lets me spin lettuce. There is no elegant way to say this—people               with living hearts               that could fit in my chest want to melt the city where I was born. At his elementary school in an American suburb, a boy’s shirt says: “We Did It To Hiroshima, We Can Do It To Tehran!”

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At his elementary school in an American suburb, a boy’s shirt says: “We Did It To Hiroshima, We Can Do It To Tehran!”

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The take-home trophy:               roasted goat baying on the spit.

·

A boy’s shirt says: “We Did It To Hiroshima, We Can Do It To Tehran!” He is asked to turn his shirt inside out. He is asked? His insides, out. After he complies, his parents sue the school district. Our souls want to know how they were made,                                    what is owed. These parents want their boy to want to melt my family, and I live among them. Palace throne. Comfy, burning. I draw it without lifting my pen. I draw it fat as creation—                                    empty as a footprint.

·

How to live? reading poems, breathing shallow, spinning lettuce.

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Read or listen to the full poem here, with an intro by Kevin Young. (Backup link.)

More Kaveh Akbar: + Against Dying + What Seems Like Joy

All our yesterdays:

2025: Staircase, Adam Gianforcaro 2024: Available Now: Archaic Torsos of Both Sexes, Gregory Orr 2023: Search Patrols, Ilya Kaminsky 2022: The Problem with Travel, Ada Limón 2021: When I Say That Loving Me Is Kind Of Like Being A Chicago Bulls Fan, Hanif Abdurraqib 2020:from Children Walk on Chairs to Cross a Flooded Schoolyard, Patrick Rosal 2019: If Life Is As Short As Our Ancestors Insist It Is, Why Isn’t Everything I Want Already At My Feet, Hanif Abdurraqib 2018: Bliss and Grief, Marie Ponsot 2017: Verge, Mark Doty 2016: Ever, Meghan O’Rourke 2015: The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car, Dorothea Grossman2014: May Day, Phillis Levin 2013: The Triumph of the Infinite, Mark Strand 2012: Mermaid Song, Kim Addonizio 2011: the laughing heart, Charles Bukowski 2010: from Jenny, Genya Turovskaya 2009: A Step Away From Them, Frank O’Hara 2008: Entry, Lisa Sewell 2007: Meanwhile, Richard Siken 2006: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka 2005: Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne

[april-is]

April 22, 2026: Solitude, Franny Choi

Solitude Franny Choi

I hope no one comes to my party, I said out loud, and meant it. In the email, I tried to sound too busy to care like, I'm having too much sex to waste time on proper punctuation, pretending it's not                       the other way around. Laura convinced me to jump in the Narragansett Bay on my birthday— February. There's no good word for the opposite of fire, the ice's sear and split, how it beckons the blood        toward what means to end it.                                  Oh god, I gasped over and over as we stumbled through the snow back to the car, me and my (burning) legs. Now that's my kind of intimacy—                               faceless, salty, no wondering how my jokes are going over, just running straight toward warmth as my skin bursts open in shock.

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More Franny Choi: + Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness + The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On + Physical Therapy + Choi Jeong Min

Plunge

2025: Meanwhile the Watermelon Seed, Idra Novey 2024: Kinder Than Man, Althea Davis 2023: Dearest,, Jean Valentine 2022: Birth, Louise Erdrich 2021: Cicada, Hosho McCreesh 2020: Future Memories, Mario Meléndez 2019: Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman, Anne Sexton 2018: First Night, D. Nurkse 2017: Einstein’s Happiest Moment, Richard M. Berlin 2016: Yiddishland, Erika Meitner 2015: July, Kazim Ali 2014: This Morning in a Morning Voice, Todd Boss 2013: Paralysis, Peter Boyle 2012: from Mayakovsky, Frank O’Hara 2011: Northern Pike, James Wright 2010: Humpbacks, Mary Oliver 2009: Alone, Jack Gilbert 2008: From Blossoms, Li-Young Lee 2007: For Grace, After A Party, Frank O’Hara 2006: Wild Geese, Mary Oliver 2005: A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert

[april-is]

April 21, 2026: Coconut, Paul Hostovsky

Coconut Paul Hostovsky

Bear with me I want to tell you something about happiness it's hard to get at but the thing is I wasn't looking I was looking somewhere else when my son found it in the fruit section and came running holding it out in his small hands asking me what it was and could we keep it it only cost 99 cents hairy and brown hard as a rock and something swishing around inside and what on earth and where on earth and this was happiness this little ball of interest beating inside his chest this interestedness beaming out from his face pleading happiness and because I wasn't happy I said to put it back because I didn't want it because we didn't need it and because he was happy he started to cry right there in aisle five so when we got it home we put it in the middle of the kitchen table and sat on either side of it and began to consider how to get inside of it

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Also: + Egg, C.G. Hanzlicek + Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje + This Morning in a Morning Voice, Todd Boss + Will You?, Carrie Fountain

Crack open the past:

2025: An Improvement in Stairs, Mairead Small Staid 2024: April Morning, Jonathan Wells 2023: What I Did Wrong, Marie Howe 2022: This Morning, Jay Wright 2021: Kiss of the Sun, Mary Ruefle 2020: Teaching English from an Old Composition Book, Gary Soto 2019: Easter, Jill Alexander Essbaum 2018: Annunciation, Marie Howe 2017: The Promise, Marie Howe 2016: In the Woods, Kathryn Simmonds 2015: Heat, Jane Hirshfield 2014: What Remains, Ellery Akers 2013: 30th Birthday, Alice Notley 2012: Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life], Bruce Smith 2011: The Forties, Franz Wright 2010: Prayer of the Backhanded, Jericho Brown 2009: A Primer, Bob Hicok 2008: Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry, Howard Nemerov 2007: Open Letter to the Muse, Kristy Bowen 2006: A Sad Child, Margaret Atwood 2005: The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

[april-is]

April 20, 2026: Give Me This, Ada Limón

Give Me This Ada Limón

I thought it was the neighbor’s cat back to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house but what came was much stranger, a liquidity moving all muscle and bristle. A groundhog slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still green in the morning’s shade. I watched her munch and stand on her haunches taking such pleasure in the watery bites. Why am I not allowed delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth, as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled spikes used in warfare and fencing. Instead, I watch the groundhog closer and a sound escapes me, a small spasm of joy I did not imagine when I woke. She is a funny creature and earnest, and she is doing what she can to survive.

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More animals: + Toad, Norman MacCaig + The Fox, Faith Shearin + A Blessing, James Wright + No, Mark Doty

More Ada Limón <3: Dead Stars // What I Didn't Know Before // Instructions on Not Giving Up // Overjoyed // Before // The Conditional // The Problem with Travel

Still hungry?

2025: Poem in the Shape of the Poet Beating Henry Kissinger to Death with Their Bare Hands, Felix Lecocq 2024: blessing the boats, Lucille Clifton 2023: Wound is the Origin of Wonder, Maya C. Popa 2022: When the Fox Comes to the City, Patricia Fargnoli 2021: aubade for the whole hood, Nate Marshall 2020: Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand 2019: New Year’s Day, Kim Addonizio 2018: I Know You Think I’ve Forgotten, Jane Hirshfield 2017: The Writer, Richard Wilbur 2016: from Seven Skins, Adrienne Rich 2015: I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life, Mary Oliver 2014: In the Park, Maxine Kumin 2013: To A Sad Daughter, Michael Ondaatje 2012: My Dead Friends, Marie Howe 2011: Staying After, Linda Gregg 2010: Dream Song 14, John Berryman 2009: What We Kept, Megan Alpert 2008: Please Take Back the Sparrows, Suzanne Buffam 2007: It Happens Like This, James Tate 2006: Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd 2005: September Song, Geoffrey Hill

[april-is]

April 19, 2026: Riveted, Robyn Sarah

Riveted Robyn Sarah

It is possible that things will not get better than they are now, or have been known to be. It is possible that we are past the middle now. It is possible that we have crossed the great water without knowing it, and stand now on the other side. Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now we are being given tickets, and they are not tickets to the show we had been thinking of, but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope. The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall without waiting for the last act: people do. Some people do. But it is probable that we will stay seated in our narrow seats all through the tedious denouement to the unsurprising end—riveted, as it were; spellbound by our own imperfect lives because they are lives, and because they are ours.

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Bon appétit:

2025: spring, Safia Elhillo 2024: Dear Proofreader, David Hernandez 2023: The Socks, Jane Kenyon 2022: Ode to Friendship, Noor Hindi 2021: Heartbeats, Melvin Dixon 2020: Sunday Night, Raymond Carver 2019: Virginia Street, Jennifer Hayashida 2018: What Seems Like Joy, Kaveh Akbar 2017: Aunties, Kevin Young 2016: For the Union Dead, Robert Lowell 2015: The Cambridge Afternoon Was Gray, Alicia Ostriker 2014: Spirit of the Bat, Peggy Shumaker 2013: Thanks, W. S. Merwin 2012: Sweetness, Stephen Dunn 2011: I Remember, Anne Sexton 2010: Letter, Franz Wright 2009: 23rd Street Runs Into Heaven, Kenneth Patchen 2008: HOUSEHOLD ACTIVITY NO. 26, J.R. Quackenbush 2007: from Briggflatts, Basil Bunting 2006: The Chores, Frannie Lindsay 2005: Direct Address, Joan Larkin

[april-is]

April 18, 2026: Still Life with Invisible Canoe, Idra Novey

Still Life with Invisible Canoe Idra Novey

Levinas asked if we have the right To be        the way I ask my sons If they’d like to be trees       

The way the word tree Makes them a little animal Dancing up and down Like bears in movies                   Bears I have to say Pretend we are children     

At a river one of them says So we sip it    pivot in the hallway    Call it a canoe

It is noon in the living room We are rowing through a blue That is a feeling mostly 

The way drifting greenly Under real trees  Is a feeling near holy

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Also by Idra Novey: Meanwhile the Watermelon Seed

Many more parenthood poems.

Suck the marrow out of life with poetry from:

2025: I want a president, Zoe Leonard 2024: Fourteen, Marie Howe 2023: I wanted to be surprised., Jane Hirshfield 2022: Short Talk on Waterproofing, Anne Carson 2021: Cindy Comes To Hear Me Read, Jill McDonough 2020: from This Magic Moment, David Kirby 2019: Poem In Which I Become Wolverine, José Olivarez 2018: In the Beginning God Said Light, Mary Szybist 2017: from Contradictions: Tracking Poems, Adrienne Rich 2016: I Said Yes but I Meant No, Dean Young 2015: Cardinal Cardinal, Stephen Dunn 2014: Ezra Pound’s Proposition, Robert Hass 2013: Wistful sounds like a brand of air freshener, Bob Hicok 2012: Not Getting Closer, Jack Gilbert 2011: Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car, Dan Pagis 2010: The Moss of His Skin, Anne Sexton 2009: It’s This Way, Nazim Hikmet 2008: The Problem With Skin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil 2007: Serenade, Terrance Hayes 2006: The Old Liberators, Robert Hedin 2005: Morning Song, Sylvia Plath

[april-is]

April 17, 2026: "God-With-Us", Reginald Shepherd

"God-With-Us" Reginald Shepherd

after Jean Valentine

What will I call you when you are gone? How will I know your name? Little star, reflection on the Sea of Galilee, a lantern in the wood, half-hid, half-seen? reflecting on what can’t be touched, be known? And the sheen of milk across the sky, the galaxy poured out like me, true sky, false dawn, and a young woman’s nipple, star of milk, star of a nursing child’s mouth, my child, my lord, whoever you may be today, tonight which will not end, a cup passed to me, from which I may or may not drink, half-empty star, still asleep by now? And your small body, Emmanuel, (how small my heart to fit inside yours) lie there, pearled, asleep… How I want to believe. (a pearl, an irritant).

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This was the last poem Reginald Shepherd wrote, from the hospital, about two weeks before his 2008 death. The quotation marks in the title complicate it in the best way, I think. It's not necessarily something he's saying; it's an idea he's talking about. (Or that's my guess, anyway.)

One possible reference: God With Us was written on the belt buckles of German soldiers going into battle in World War I. (As noted by his partner Robert Philen in the foreword to the posthumously published Red Clay Weather.)

+ Previously shared: Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd

Feast:

2025: I Have a Time Machine, Brenda Shaughnessy 2024: You Belong to the World, Carrie Fountain 2023: Mammogram Call Back with Ultra Sound, Ellen Bass 2022: Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness, Franny Choi 2021: Weather, Claudia Rankine 2020: The Understudy, Bridget Lowe 2019: Against Dying, Kaveh Akbar 2018: Close Out Sale, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz 2017: Things That Have Changed Since You Died, Laura Kasischke 2016: Percy, Waiting for Ricky, Mary Oliver 2015: My Heart, Kim Addonizio 2014: My Skeleton, Jane Hirshfield 2013: Catch a Body, Oliver Bendorf 2012: No, Mark Doty 2011: from Narrative: Ali, Elizabeth Alexander 2010: Baseball Canto, Lawrence Ferlinghetti 2009: Nothing but winter in my cup, Alice George 2008: Poppies in October, Sylvia Plath 2007: I Imagine The Gods, Jack Gilbert 2006: An Offer Received In This Morning’s Mail, Amy Gerstler 2005: The Last Poem In The World, Hayden Carruth

[april-is]

April 16, 2026: Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line, George Starbuck

Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line George Starbuck for Helen Vendler

O for a muse of fire, a sack of dough, Or both! O promissory notes of woe! One time in Santa Fe N.M. Ol’ Winfield Townley Scott and I … But whoa.

One can exert oneself, ff, Or architect a heaven like Rimbaud, Or if that seems, how shall I say, de trop, One can at least write sonnets, a propos Of nothing save the do-re-mi-fa-sol Of poetry itself. Is not the row Of perfect rhymes, the terminal bon mot, Obeisance enough to the Great O?

“Observe,” said Chairman Mao to Premier Chou, “On voyage à Parnasse pour prendre les eaux. On voyage comme poisson, incog.”

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More poems with wordplay and more sonnets.

Timewarp to:

2025: As a Human Being, Jericho Brown 2024: Love Comes Quietly, Robert Creeley 2023: After Touching You, I Think of Narcissus Drowning, Leila Chatti 2022: Will You?, Carrie Fountain 2021: After Graduate School, Valencia Robin 2020: in lieu of a poem, i’d like to say, Danez Smith 2019: from The Invention of Streetlights 2018: Returning, Tami Haaland 2017: An Ordinary Composure, James L. White 2016: Verge, Mark Doty 2015: Reasons to Survive November, Tony Hoagland 2014: Unhappy Hour, Richard Siken 2013: Just Once, Anne Sexton 2012: Talk, Noelle Kocot 2011: Why They Went, Elizabeth Bradfield 2010: Anxiety, Frank O’Hara 2009: The Continuous Life, Mark Strand 2008: An old story, Bob Hicok 2007: you can’t be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar 2006: For the Sisters of the Hotel Dieu, A.M. Klein 2005: Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem, Bob Hicok

[april-is]

April 15, 2026: Tulips, Kevin Young

Tulips Kevin Young

What the dead want— shelter—opposable thumbs—to quit being

compared to taxes, as if they can be evaded. Each April

sadly      sadly wiser, & alone

they push up      like tulips from the earth, perennial as pain.

Trouble me again.

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Kevin Young is incredible at making his poems so, so spare, yet stuffed full of meaning. Every word brimming over. Some others:

+ Gutbucket + Boogaloo + Expecting

Pluck a poem from the overgrown garden of today in:

2025: Tree, Jane Hirshfield 2024: Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation, Natalie Diaz 2023: Dutch Elm Disease, Valencia Robin 2022: More Bang for Your Buck Running Scared, Brennan Bestwick 2021: Rain, Peter Everwine 2020: Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale, Dan Albergotti 2019: Prayer, Galway Kinnell 2018: Egg, C.G. Hanzlicek 2017: Well Water, Randall Jarrell 2016: For Desire, Kim Addonizio 2015: The Coming of Light, Mark Strand 2014: Flying Low, Stephen Dunn 2013: The Envoy, Jane Hirshfield 2012: Red Wand, Sandra Simonds 2011: Trying to Raise the Dead, Dorianne Laux 2010: Asking for Directions, Linda Gregg 2009: A Blessing, James Wright 2008: New York, New York, David Berman 2007: Waste Land Limericks, Wendy Cope 2006: There Are Two Worlds, Larry Levis 2005: America, Allen Ginsberg

[april-is]

April 14, 2026: You Are Who I Love, Aracelis Girmay

You Are Who I Love Aracelis Girmay

You, selling roses out of a silver grocery cart

You, in the park, feeding the pigeons You cheering for the bees

You with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding cats

You protecting the river   You are who I love delivering babies, nursing the sick

You with henna on your feet and a gold star in your nose

You taking your medicine, reading the magazines

You looking into the faces of young people as they pass, smiling and saying, Alright! which, they know it, means I see you, Family. I love you. Keep on.

You dancing in the kitchen, on the sidewalk, in the subway waiting for the train because Stevie Wonder, Héctor Lavoe, La Lupe

You stirring the pot of beans, you, washing your father’s feet

You are who I love, you reciting Darwish, then June

Feeding your heart, teaching your parents how to do The Dougie, counting to 10, reading your patients’ charts

You are who I love, changing policies, standing in line for water, stocking the food pantries, making a meal

You are who I love, writing letters, calling the senators, you who, with the seconds of your body (with your time here), arrive on buses, on trains, in cars, by foot to stand in the January streets against the cool and brutal offices, saying: YOUR CRUELTY DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME

You are who I love, you struggling to see

You struggling to love or find a question

You better than me, you kinder and so blistering with anger, you are who I love, standing in the wind, salvaging the umbrellas, graduating from school, wearing holes in your shoes

You are who I love weeping or touching the faces of the weeping

You, Violeta Parra, grateful for the alphabet, for sound, singing toward us in the dream

You carrying your brother home You noticing the butterflies

Sharing your water, sharing your potatoes and greens

You who did and did not survive You who cleaned the kitchens You who built the railroad tracks and roads You who replanted the trees, listening to the work of squirrels and birds, you are who I love You whose blood was taken, whose hands and lives were taken, with or without your saying Yes, I mean to give. You are who I love.

You who the borders crossed You whose fires You decent with rage, so in love with the earth You writing poems alongside children

You cactus, water, sparrow, crow      You, my elder You are who I love, summoning the courage, making the cobbler,

getting the blood drawn, sharing the difficult news, you always planting the marigolds, learning to walk wherever you are, learning to read wherever you are, you baking the bread, you come to me in dreams, you kissing the faces of your dead wherever you are, speaking to your children in your mother’s languages, tootsing the birds

You are who I love, behind the library desk, leaving who might kill you, crying with the love songs, polishing your shoes, lighting the candles, getting through the first day despite the whisperers sniping fail fail fail

You are who I love, you who beat and did not beat the odds, you who knows that any good thing you have is the result of someone else’s sacrifice, work, you who fights for reparations

You are who I love, you who stands at the courthouse with the sign that reads NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE

You are who I love, singing Leonard Cohen to the snow, you with glitter on your face, wearing a kilt and violet lipstick

You are who I love, sighing in your sleep

You, playing drums in the procession, you feeding the chickens and humming as you hem the skirt, you sharpening the pencil, you writing the poem about the loneliness of the astronaut

You wanting to listen, you trying to be so still

You are who I love, mothering the dogs, standing with horses

You in brightness and in darkness, throwing your head back as you laugh, kissing your hand

You carrying the berbere from the mill, and the jug of oil pressed from the olives of the trees you belong to

You studying stars, you are who I love braiding your child’s hair

You are who I love, crossing the desert and trying to cross the desert

You are who I love, working the shifts to buy books, rice, tomatoes,

bathing your children as you listen to the lecture, heating the kitchen with the oven, up early, up late

You are who I love, learning English, learning Spanish, drawing flowers on your hand with a ballpoint pen, taking the bus home

You are who I love, speaking plainly about your pain, sucking your teeth at the airport terminal television every time the politicians say something that offends your sense of decency, of thought, which is often

You are who I love, throwing your hands up in agony or disbelief, shaking your head, arguing back, out loud or inside of yourself, holding close your incredulity which, yes, too, I love    I love

your working heart, how each of its gestures, tiny or big, stand beside my own agony, building a forest there

How “Fuck you” becomes a love song

You are who I love, carrying the signs, packing the lunches, with the rain on your face

You at the edges and shores, in the rooms of quiet, in the rooms of shouting, in the airport terminal, at the bus depot saying “No!” and each of us looking out from the gorgeous unlikelihood of our lives at all, finding ourselves here, witnesses to each other’s tenderness, which, this moment, is fury, is rage, which, this moment, is another way of saying: You are who I love   You are who I love  You and you and you are who

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Also! + Dead Stars, Ada Limón + from Moon for Aisha, Aracelis Girmay

Keep going:

2025: Sorrows, Lucille Clifton 2024: The Wordsworth Effect, Joyce Sutphen 2023: Spring Poem, Colleen O’Connor 2022: Red, Mary Ruefle 2021: Bathing, Allison Seay 2020: A Small Moment, Cornelius Eady 2019: You Meet Someone and Later You Meet Their Dancing and You Have to Start Again, David Welch 2018: Henry Clay’s Mouth, Thomas Lux 2017: When Your Small Form Tumbled into Me, Tracy K. Smith 2016: Eve Recollecting the Garden, Grace Bauer 2015: from I Love A Broad Margin To My Life, Maxine Hong Kingston 2014: Gift, Czeslaw Milosz 2013: This Be The Verse, Philip Larkin 2012: We Did Not Make Ourselves, Michael Dickman 2011: Happiness (3), Jean Valentine 2010: When I Think, Jeanne Marie Beaumont 2009: The Poem, Franz Wright 2008: Morning Poem, Robin Becker 2007: Supple Cord, Naomi Shihab Nye 2006: Wish For a Young Wife, Theodore Roethke 2005: The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy, Jeffrey McDaniel