The words kept burning

[weltenwellen]

“He grins again, and everything inside me moves. Oh, love. Love.”

— James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

[pollen]

Mairead Small Staid, from "An Improvement in Stairs"

[bitesizedpoetry]

Sylvia Plath, "Three Women"

[existential-celestial]

Ilya Kaminsky, from “Musica Humana  [an elegy for Osip Mandelstam],” in Dancing in Odessa

[seekingstars]

Once in a While I Am Reminded - Leila Chatti

[geryone]

Bakandamiya: An Elegy, Saddiq Dzukogi

[geryone]

Bakandamiya: An Elegy, Saddiq Dzukogi

[paper-wounds]

[geryone]

Bakandamiya: An Elegy, Saddiq Dzukogi

[paper-wounds]

[lifeinpoetry]

My friend wakes up at noon. Goes to bed at eight. Wants less time because she wants less pain.

I understand. I’ve been there too. I can spot a scar beneath a wristwatch from a hundred yards away.

And no, it is not the weak who try to clock out early. It’s people who are desperate to go home.

— Andrea Gibson, from “Time Piece,” You Better Be Lightning

[havingapoemwithyou]

I Have A Postcard Mouth by Trista Mateer

[feral-ballad]

Kim Addonizio, from Wild Nights: New & Selected Poems; “Last Lights”

[feral-ballad]

Shon Faye, from Love in Exile

[poetic-questions]

—Audre Lorde, "The Cancer Journals"

[roua-poemului]

“I knew no end to desiring you.”

— Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse; Fragments [translated by Richard Howard]

[paper-wounds]