Read A Little Poetry

“Violent feelings / are good, so I have heard, for your health.”

— Anna Swir

“I wait to be speared and wanted.”

— Hồ Xuân Hương

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This poem appeared in Poetry, 2008. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“we could be another’s blessing / with our brief and epic lives”

— adrienne maree brown

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This poem appeared in Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Fiction and Poetry by adrienne maree brown, published by AK Press, 2022. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“You being / inside / means / you’re already hurt.”

— Isabelle Correa

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This poem appeared in Good Girl and Other Yearnings by Isabelle Correa, published by Write Bloody Publishing, 2025. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“So I opened the door, / and she said, “It jumped off.” / We stood looking around.”

— Louis Simpson

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This poem appeared in The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940-2001 by Louis Simpson, published by BOA Editions Ltd., 2003. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“Its viscous body is buried in a bottle cap coffin / offered to the earth under flower beds”

— Hannah Voteur

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This poem appeared in Burningword Journal, 2025. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“from womb / to breath and one / with oneness // I be, / from the river / to the sea.”

— Fady Joudah

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This poem appeared in ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly, 2023. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“call it a wishfulness, or a light in which you / believe you can move”

— Jody Rambo 

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This poem appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, 2025. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“O little sea, // O my body, / Sit here with me / While I just talk.”

— Noelle Kocot

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This poem appeared in Soul in Space by Noelle Kocot, published by Wave Books, 2013. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“if you have not heard it, / you had better hurry to where / they still sing.” 

— Mary Oliver

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This poem appeared in New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver, published by Beacon Press, 2007. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“I dance in my kitchen on Friday nights, / singing like only a lucky girl can. ”

— Amy Fleury

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This poem appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Volume 41:2, Fall/Winter 2002. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“Because you memorize songs, even commercials / from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming.”

— Matthew Olzmann

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This poem appeared in Mezzanines by Matthew Olzmann, published by Alice James Books, 2013. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“Let me look at your face and see a heaven worth having”

— Ruth Awad (@ruthawad.bsky.social)

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This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets, 2019. Shared here with deep gratitude.

““But I like it / “Because it is bitter, / “And because it is my heart.””

— Stephen Crane

“It doesn’t have to be that bad, / it doesn’t have to be bad at all, / but if it is, please call.”

— Lena Oleanderson (@lena-oleanderson.bsky.social)

“Magic is any science / you do not understand. So, too, / is God.”

— Jaz Sufi

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This poem appeared in Pank Magazine, 2018. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“My loves. You are the only people / I’d surrender my softness to.”

— Noor Hindi (@noorhindi.bsky.social)

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This poem appeared in Jellyfish Magazine, Issue 16, 2019. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“Pretty, Selma said. / Yes, I said. And underneath my yes / Another yes, the yes to my body”

— Dan Chelotti

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This poem appeared in Poetry, 2014. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“There’s one good thing, / Charles: the few beautiful verses / granted you by God / sing.”

— Thomas Lux

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This poem appeared in New and Selected Poems: 1975-1995 by Thomas Lux, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“yet there is always talk of Syria, there is always / talk of home”

— Ahmad Almallah

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This poem appeared in We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage, published by Persea Books, 2023. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“But my body’s a bad / dog, all dumb tongue / and hunger, down / on all fours again, tied up / outside again, coming / when called but then always refusing / to stay.”

— Ali Shapiro

“crying myself awake / to water my roots, deflowered”

— Leia K. Bradley

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This poem appeared in Booth, 2024. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“And again // the stupid magnolia goes // stupidly showboating // into the stupid night.”

— Hajara Quinn 

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This poem appeared in Timber Journal, Volume 6.2, Summer 2016. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“I thought of the question the choreographer asked her gathered dancers: What do you do in order to be loved?”

— Rick Barot

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This poem appeared in The Common Mag, Issue 29, 2025. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“Not a red rose or a satin heart. // I give you an onion.”

— Carol Ann Duffy

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This poem appeared in Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy, published by Anvil Press, 1993. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“You are like the night / With its stillness and constellations”

— Pablo Neruda

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This poem appeared in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda, published by Editorial Nascimento, 1924. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“Those who live to have it and / those who live to give it.”

— Vievee Francis

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This poem appeared in The Shared World by Vievee Francis, published by Northwestern University Press, 2023. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“If only I leave it alone. / If only you ask where it hurts.”

— Nur Turkmani

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This poem appeared in Amsterdam Review, Spring 2024. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“he felt like a poem / being translated from one language into another.”

— Troy Jollimore 

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This poem appeared in Rattle Poetry #43, Spring 2014. Shared here with deep gratitude.

“To be alive you had to be some kind / of consequence.”

— Jessica Hincapié

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This poem appeared in American Literary Review, 2025. Shared here with deep gratitude.