u/listen_joyiscoming

I love a short, surprising poem. And, really, this whole poem surprises me. The title, which is long but still doesn’t hint to me where the poem will go. That visceral ending image which is so tender and a little repulsive— can I feel dirt in my mouth as I read it?

And the first couplet too, surprises me, in its completeness. The logic and meter and rhyme and punctuation make it snap shut, an entire world. It feels a little sing song, like a line from a children’s book. It could be the entire poem, but that would be a less interesting poem.

I want that balding head (how many poems do I know about women balding?), not Mother Earth but Earth of Mother, loss remaking the world the same way love remakes the world.

Woke up today thinking about this poem. One of my favorites from this gorgeous anthology

In the years since I first read these, I think haiku #8 has become my favorite. And still, yes, the heartbreaking final one.

The Haiku Foundation had an interesting essay on these haiku; I’ll share it in the comments.

I read this poem while waiting to see the doctor & I made a little noise at the end that made the other people in the waiting room look up at me from their phones. Oops. Anyway, “he takes me / careful as a poison inside him” !

I adored this whole book. So carefully crafted and full of heart.

It includes a lot of this sub’s favorite poems too (like “Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you” and “Hammond B3 Organ Cistern”).

This poem felt like a metta (lovingkindness) meditation to me & I think of it sometimes now as I’m trying to go to sleep. Love the declarative fragment of the opening line as well as that final image

Read this one aloud if you can! It feels good in the mouth & in the air

P.s. the last picture is a piece of art that my sister created after I shared this poem with her 💙

Truly astounding to realize Lucille Clifton had even more great poems that had previously been lost to time! I’ll post some more of my favorites this week

Gorgeous ode to friendship & girlhood in this book which is one of my favorites of the year so far.

my marriages / my alibis my bright and hardy stalks / of protea 💕

This is such an interesting layered poem because taken out of context, it captures this delicious solitude, this lovely childhood magic.

But read within the context of her book What the Living Do, which explores a childhood full of grief and abuse, I sense something more sinister in that last line. She didn’t have to use the word “hitting” for the rain. She could have said “tapping” or something else more neutral or musical.

I guess I see this happiness as something more like relief, which is sometimes the only form of happiness we can access.

(Also I adore that first couplet.)

Picking back up my goal to post poems in this sub that have never been shared here before!

This poem is fully satisfying to me. The extended metaphor. The music. The way the ending just clicks into place.

Published in Poetry Magazine & then in her collection The Niagara River

One of six sonnets I found in the Summer 2025 issue of The Missouri Review. I love the imagery

A gem I found in the Summer 2025 issue of The Missouri Review. One of six sonnets and I enjoyed them all— if there’s interest, I’ll post another

This poem never loses its magic for me

There are a couple lines I’m not totally convinced by, but there are many that I love. I am moved by this poem that captures—more than many elegies— the ongoing nature of grief, the movement, the presence that absence leaves

Published in The Many Days: Selected Poems of Norman MacCaig

I find this poem very charming.

Also if anyone knows the translator for this version, please tell me! I’ve been searching far and wide for the answer. I enjoy other versions but I especially like this ending

Those last two lines!

Someone asked for bee & honey poems in this sub recently and this is one of the first poems that came to mind for me.

I sent it to a couple disabled friends in the early years of the pandemic. It makes a good poem postcard 💌

This was published through an organization that does arts therapy (specifically poetry workshops) for kids in Ukraine.

You can view their anthology A New Odyssey on the website but right now it’s only fully available in Ukrainian.

I found out about Poems Not Bombs through Ilya Kaminsky (if you haven’t read his books Dancing in Odessa and Deaf Republic, they’re both masterpieces) and I was deeply moved by both the concept of this work and the individual poems themselves. God, heartbreaking and gorgeous.

Published in her book Shirt in Heaven

Went to a thrift store to get some books for my friends’ kids and found this gem