a song in the front yard By Gwendolyn Brooks I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose. I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley, […]
Are We There Yet By R. Virgil Ellis you’d say, tired of our prompting to see the world as you should: train-thunder as we go under a trestle, smiling face painted on a barn. You’d even get bored looking for signs that had the rare q, x, or z. Are we there yet? So we […]
Totally like whatever, you know? By Taylor Mali (Thanks, Phil!)
Fifteen By Leslie Monsour The boys who fled my father’s house in fear Of what his wrath would cost them if he found Them nibbling slowly at his daughter’s ear, Would vanish out the back without a sound, And glide just like the shadow of a crow, To wait beside the elm tree in the […]
At Becky’s Piano Recital By Carl Dennis She screws her face up as she nears the hard parts, Then beams with relief as she makes it through, Just as she did listening on the edge of her chair To the children who played before her, Wincing and smiling for them As if she doesn’t regard […]
Child on top of a Greenhouse By Theodore Roethke The wind billowing out the seat of my britches, My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty, The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers, Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight, A few white clouds all rushing eastward, A line of elms plunging and […]
Some Boys are Born to Wander By Walt McDonald From Michigan our son writes, How many elk? How many big horn sheep? It’s spring, and soon they’ll be gone above timberline, climbing to tundra by summer. Some boys are born to wander, my wife says, but rocky slopes with spruce and Douglas fir are home. […]
sweating, struggling, we’re lugging the bin over grass and gravel, sticks and stones to the mound of broken trees, the earth hot and dry like Hemingway or Steinbeck; man and boy toiling through the fading sunlight. you wait at the edge, eager, forward and back again as i shovel and grunt. your fingers twitch. dust […]
[if mama / could see] By Lucille Clifton if mama could see she would see lucy sprawling limbs of lucy decorating the backs of chairs lucy hair holding the mirrors up that reflect odd aspects of lucy. if mama could hear she would hear lucysong rolled in the corners like lint exotic webs of lucysighs […]
The Cut By Ann and Jane Taylor WELL, what’s the matter ? there’s a face What ! has it cut a vein ? And is it quite a shocking place ? Come, let us look again. I see it bleeds, but never mind That tiny little drop ; I don’t believe you’ll ever find That […]