350 Poems

350 : Chad Vogler

2009-10-24T23:56:00.013-05:00

Growing up slowly from the departed

Plants that lined the rivers like lakes

An emergent wind carries the weight

Of our particular millstone

349 : Paulette C Turcotte

2009-10-24T23:56:00.012-05:00

If I were to lie down in the moss with my ear to the goings on of the earth,

I would gladly tell you all that I hear. If I had my ear to the ground, if I were

once again lying in the moss, I would know the secrets of the earth and oh,

I would tell you. Who Listens? Who hears?

348 : Liesl Jobson

2009-10-24T23:53:00.000-05:00

Before my newborn ears heard rivers,

a cipher stamped a number I now cannot forget.

I'm waiting for the goddess to whisper

my real name.

347 : Thanasis Maskaleris

2009-10-24T23:50:00.000-05:00

…trying to block off, as in a nightmare, the new tumbleweeds–

plastic bags, billowing in the wind, descending on the littered shore.

How much longer will Persephone return, to bring her green Spring

to our choking Earth

346 : Adam Roberts

2009-10-24T23:48:00.000-05:00

LAST LINES OF A POLITICAL SESTINA (MOBILIZING)

and change happens into you.

The ground is littered with stanzas.

A bicycle is a small thing that works.

As usual, you give me back myself.

345 : Maya Malhar

2009-10-24T23:46:00.000-05:00

water deep blue, sky azure
air invigorating, crisp, pure.
newborn, bouncing, secure
end of an era

344 : Elaine Kahn

2009-10-24T23:43:00.001-05:00

I could be crystallized

spread like a young

mother, I could buzz the

fungus clear off.

343 : Michelle Lyons

2009-10-24T23:13:00.000-05:00

If a tree falls in the middle of our minds

Swearing he tried-- but could not find the forest

Will the temporal lobes still find the echo?

Oh riddle, don't die.

342 : Jessica Young

2009-10-24T23:10:00.001-05:00

I picture how paper gives into fire, the way its flat edges curl
first reaching out, then folding into themselves.. Then I think
of the wisped sounds that are barely there, and yet are there.
The reaching out, the reaching

341 : Eric Linsker

2009-10-24T23:03:00.001-05:00

I am in sands of snow.

In seeing I do not grow.

To the sea!

340 : Andy Peterson

2009-10-24T23:00:00.000-05:00

last leaves
scatter form. the city tree
a a_eae eo__._e_.i_.__ee
i forget my hamburger

339 : Chris Balmer

2009-10-24T22:56:00.001-05:00

after the beginning of our endlessness
you said
where is the place that holds our falling,

oh that day in the grass

338 : Carol Dorf

2009-10-24T22:50:00.000-05:00

Marrow: Aquifer

Stygobites retreat from light in their aquatic universe.

When geologists pump out water to mine or to nourish cattle, every

creature that has evolved in the isolated calcrete aquifer dies.

337 : Anna Elena Eyre

2009-10-24T22:48:00.001-05:00

Liquid Constituent

water webs currency

solar disinfection leaches

BPA tax-toxicity

336 : Toby Bielawski

2009-10-24T22:43:00.000-05:00

Postcard

Dear Alaska, visiting you when I was

Younger, I saw Mendenhall Glacier. Today,

I remember everything it said: we are

Visiting always.

335 : Erina Harris

2009-10-24T22:33:00.001-05:00

At the birthday party for the sky we built the smoking tower.
"The sky is one and it shall have a candle!"..we cried over
and over...And then I turned and looked at you: "Whatever will we do
when it is two!"

334 : Glenn D'Alessio

2009-10-24T22:33:00.000-05:00

A Crack in Glass Can Reach 3,000 Miles-per-hour

A crocodile swallows stones to dive deeper.
The Maldives are displaced by inhumanities’ weight
spreading fossilized plants and animal remains
across a fragile planet.

333 : Andy Hepner

2009-10-24T22:32:00.001-05:00

I ate, I learned, I swam

I dove, I dove, I reaped

now

I survive

332 : Sidik Fofana

2009-10-24T22:30:00.000-05:00

There we shall lay, scattered like ape skulls
Or clues in god's toolbox
Long gone the very matter that explained
What happened

331 : Sarah Bartlett

2009-10-24T22:29:00.000-05:00

Oh no, it's the environment on lead
guitar. We cry Free Bird! Free Bird!
but it just stands there, watching
the orange flames.

330 : Cherie Spaulding

2009-10-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

Body Worlds
(after the exhibit in Chicago)

Living lips
engorged with a thousand capillaries
must be kissed--
frequently!

329 : Linda Lee Crosfield

2009-10-24T22:27:00.002-05:00

Sun and moon take turns presiding

over this tiny sphere we live on

pushing light through to the darkest places

trusting we'll eventually see what we're doing.

328 : Deborah Gilchrist

2009-10-24T22:27:00.001-05:00

the old woman stoops
softly plants a kiss and an ear
on the sleeping child
and weeps

327 : Pamela Porter

2009-10-24T22:26:00.000-05:00

Windswept bluff, cusp of inlet and sea,

that bald eagle pair call to each other --

a fluttering song, an impossible music,

the tenderness of years.

326 : Greg Bachar

2009-10-24T22:22:00.001-05:00

The little stone hits the big stone and bounces off.
The big stone doesn't move. Illumination is a pretty word.
We’re going to need a lot to move that stone.
Illumination.

325 : Aedan Hepner

2009-10-24T22:19:00.002-05:00

Ohh little penguin

I hear much of your sadness

Your ice home has gone

324 : Alan Felsenthal

2009-10-24T22:19:00.001-05:00

in a neglect of ladder,
a refuse of regard, habit
of matter to sift through slope,
inverted region.

323 : Coleman Hepner

2009-10-24T22:17:00.000-05:00

..............................................Empty oceans are left. Forests, lifeless

.............. Nothing but trash and baking dirt. Ghosts haunt the waste land we once called home

............................................................Nothing left now

................................................How could we be so blind?

322 : Travis Carter

2009-10-24T22:02:00.001-05:00

Changing exponentially

A most hideous metamorphosis

A majority of inhabitants unable to be bothered

A poem will help

321 : Elise Wang

2009-10-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

We live because of these, she said, these things
that are still.
Budded in the tips of branches, wake

four-folded in the snow.

320 : Kevin Holden

2009-10-24T21:57:00.000-05:00

Through time to black powder chrysalis blooming
In the brainstem, the trees of birds, or
The flame turns sand to glass and we hear only
Our own names.

319 : R. Scott Rideout

2009-10-24T21:56:00.001-05:00

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The balding man with the spaulding crayon

sits in the grass

by the banks of the mill river

and can never ever tell a lie

318 : Nancy Eaton

2009-10-24T21:56:00.000-05:00

Eternity

When I was born, the sun was setting in the west

and the moon was rising in the east.

Canada geese were gathering to fly south

for the winter.

317 : Rob MacDonald

2009-10-24T21:54:00.000-05:00

REMORSE

Up from the dust of the west,

lightning sends a message

to the heavens, dots and dashes

for cover.

316 : Scott Mansfield

2009-10-24T21:53:00.000-05:00

three days of cold wind and constant rain
makes me yearn for climate change
blue skies and sunshine
NOW

315 : Naomi Benaron

2009-10-24T21:51:00.000-05:00

Drought

October chuffs to its end and still
heat pours from the sun’s chimney.
The train of global warming’s gone express –
destination: Auschwitz Earth.

314 : Robert Fitzgibbon

2009-10-24T21:50:00.000-05:00

Kill yourselves
Kill yourselves
Kill yourselves
Kill

313 : Ellen Thurmond

2009-10-24T21:49:00.001-05:00

Orange sky thick with grit.

Skeletal trees reaching for the space above the rubble

piled over Earth. Her bodies fragmented by fear

and a desire to be the god of all except one's self.

312 : JoAnn Balingit

2009-10-24T21:48:00.000-05:00

Many Moons

“Many moons! Many moons!” he cries as he breaks from me,

face to the sky, small and running down the slope, arms wide.

“But I only see one moon—” “No! Many moons!” and

“Save the moons!” he cries.

311 : Leonora Zoninsein

2009-10-24T21:47:00.003-05:00

eart

moving from (living) the animal

we neither use our mind to care

a parody of proud inheritance

the habit at polluting

310 : Kristina England

2009-10-24T21:47:00.001-05:00

The Ice Storm

took down trees, telephone lines.

Wires sparked against my car

as I followed the moonlight

home to you.

309 : Tony Barnstone

2009-10-24T21:46:00.001-05:00

Planet Elegy

Out the plane window: rock outcrop hilltops with linguini-crazy roads,

fields between freeways and golf carts like lice in their bright green hair,

the sad, folded elephant skin of mountains, the sunset clouds spilled,

entrails of a gutted beast.

308 : Jill Darling

2009-10-24T21:44:00.000-05:00

lift lament red petals against horns sound

the dramatic finish fall scattered

dances where orchestrated minus attention

falter or

307 : Dot Devota

2009-10-24T21:40:00.000-05:00

H u m a n A c t i v i t y

to stop practically at
the present moment---what
bizarre, tasteless food
we've grown

306 : Soham Patel

2009-10-24T21:37:00.000-05:00

Destinations towards home travel with us like coal resting inside the mountain does towards light

bulbs. We lounge back in the dark so to save energy. They say the answer is just one left turn away and

that if we all keep the lights off, Appalachia can stop coughing. The very trains that take the water to our

wells will have to wait back by the beach.

305 : Julie Mahfood

2009-10-24T21:36:00.001-05:00

Going Coastal

fifteen years later, she’s living in vancouver

in montreal, weather reminiscent without

mountains, february bulbs. in the suburbs

umbrellas bloom

304 : Steve Caratzas

2009-10-24T21:33:00.001-05:00

Before I forget again, leave me adrift
in more water than we know what to do with,
defenseless. Knee-deep, navel-deep, neck-deep:
the river's rising.

303 : Sarah Calhoun

2009-10-24T21:32:00.000-05:00

This sky, a golden blister tasting like sulfur bombs and sweet molasses.
Reminds me of the caramels I used to put in your pockets.
Later I would watch you throw the wrappings on the ground.
I followed right behind.

302 : David Weinstock

2009-10-24T21:29:00.000-05:00

ROWING

To go forward, we sit backwards,
and pull with all our strength
hoping we can get from 387
back to 350.

301 : Sam Witt

2009-10-24T21:27:00.001-05:00

EURYDICE 3.5/CODA

All of this happens behind the Gods’ empty, empty pupil,
Look back over your shoulder //The polar ice caps are melting for good but tonight
////.//I’ll disappear into shelf after continental shelf of glacial ice collapsing: into 2 bodies,

yours and mine:

300 : Department of Posthumous Letters

2009-10-24T21:25:00.003-05:00

WENT TO THE INFECTED MAN FOR A HANDSHAKE

The calculations came. We cut them
with baking soda. If "hit me" was a literal translation
of our hope to be lived in, then yes,
be literal.

299 : Daniel Smith

2009-10-24T21:25:00.001-05:00

The mild summers temperature is low
I stepped outside to the chill of a cold rain
The climate has changed this year
It is July

298 : Sawako Nakayasu

2009-10-24T21:23:00.001-05:00

"congratulations on your (ongoing) destruction"

that wave that bellows or roars or howls into itself

into gray lies in a white pocket in a metallic desert in a

blank sheet of paper burning

297 : Nicole Steinberg

2009-10-24T21:22:00.001-05:00

Nocturne

Never mind this nixed nirvana; nourished by nitrous

nail polish, I’ll be nefarious in the netherworld: nude

& noxious in the nylon nest, numerating the nimbi of

nucleotides. (Neptune’s next.)

296 : Lisa R. Smith

2009-10-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

faithful, silent witness to birth, struggle, death;

selfless, present, nuturing, protecting, giving as a best-imagined lover;

supple fortitude, untouching embrace, eternal memory;

arborial sentinel on lifelong watch

295 : Lauren Harrison

2009-10-24T21:20:00.000-05:00

Poetry is
Poetry is
Poetry is
poetry

294 : Patria Rivera

2009-10-24T21:19:00.000-05:00

First breath

From sea, salmon trail
calm river waters to spawn
in land of first breath—
now gone.

293 : Dimitri Basilakos

2009-10-24T21:16:00.001-05:00

More on swans
after poem 262

Twenty years ago by a man-made lake a swan took the shoe

off my foot. It didn't so much hiss as

choke to death. Whatever they tell us,

I wouldn't listen.

292 : Karen Wood Hepner

2009-10-24T21:13:00.000-05:00

we went to the mall for sweaters and scented markers
and ate corn dogs and flirted
and drew on each other with our scented markers
naked like ghosts

291 : Erika Lorentzsen

2009-10-24T21:11:00.000-05:00

dusk, a witness, sacrifices for an imagined city,

a place filled with many visions, a banquet, one life,

many, captive to its acts

of collective alarm.

290 : Barbara Sabol

2009-10-24T21:10:00.001-05:00

El Nino?

Spooked by streets exuding fresh worm-pong washed over concrete
in a warm rain when here it is, almost Christmas. Red, blue, yellow bulbs
call from blooming bushes - lights and odd buds each announcing
its own strange holiness.

289 : Elizabeth Greene

2009-10-24T21:09:00.001-05:00

So many homes are gone:
why do we change
the weather of this world
for cold cash?

288 : Paige Pancratz

2009-10-24T21:07:00.000-05:00

Tell me again how it used to be,
how it's supposed to be.
Write your words as if you can
create safety.

287 : Mary Hutchins Harris

2009-10-24T21:05:00.000-05:00

where is the tree, they will ask me,

where is the tree you climbed

and I will only be able to answer

where is the bird

286 : Aaron St. Pierre

2009-10-24T21:02:00.000-05:00

Roses are blue
Violets are red
This is a love poem
Where we all end up

285 : Heather Berlowitz

2009-10-24T21:01:00.000-05:00

*And Then the World Abruptly Ended
"I could get used to this global warming thing,"
she smiled and sighed, coyly removing
her*

284 : Becca Klaver

2009-10-24T19:44:00.000-05:00

Global Weirding

The gilded ship slashed & gashed,
oil oozing, mushy lifeboats out to sea --
& all along the sooty shores tourists trilling
Me Muh Me Me Me

283 : Emily Kendal Frey

2009-10-24T19:41:00.000-05:00

Driving 1-5 down the grated
orange sky, grasshoppers frying on my fine
thigh hairs Do you or don't you
unbidden break?

282 : Libby Kramer

2009-10-24T19:40:00.001-05:00

Shrinking, shirking;
there is no difference
left;
anymore--

281 : Sam Pereira

2009-10-24T19:38:00.000-05:00

The Turkish Did It

Suddenly, gas fumes all the way from Istanbul

Penetrated my front door. It’s always the Turkish,

I wept in California, driving my Corvette

Across the Delaware.

280 : Richard Greenfield

2009-10-24T19:31:00.000-05:00

Irrigation

I thought I reached the reservoir (gone) I felt North in my coat the mapped currents (gone)
in my pocket where I thought drought they the city thought druthers (gone) you greenlawn
bastards there will be no more (ok?) (gone) there will be no more

279 : Mary Jo Bang

2009-10-24T19:29:00.001-05:00

Lions and Tigers: The Escaped Animal Was Bent to the Trainer’s Will

We put you in the circus. Was that a good idea? And now
There are so few of you. Why why why why why
Why why why why why why

278 : Giancarlo Campagna

2009-10-24T19:26:00.001-05:00

we lift to our mouths plastic containers
stealing a living air while the black bear
gets a whiff of us eating ourselves into
a diet of remorse

277 : Lucile Barker

2009-10-24T19:21:00.001-05:00

Always the catch in the throat
The cough that can’t escape
Just a slight hovering of a breath
Not taken

276 : Charles Denson

2009-10-24T19:12:00.000-05:00

Single Eye

Horseshoe crab
breeding ground
for 350 million years—
time is running out

275 : Clare Ramsaran

2009-10-24T19:10:00.000-05:00

dry trees crackle

with unconscious blossoming

slow sonnets fade and curl

dust echoes

274 : George Higgins

2009-10-24T19:05:00.000-05:00

Clouds of jet fuel,
halos of warmth, radiate,
mimicking the orange sun that just set
in the Coliseum.

273 : Rick Benjamin

2009-10-24T19:02:00.000-05:00

Whales singing out lust for Salt Water's body, bees' hum-drunk on even
the idea of honey, mosquito's high-pitched cry for human blood. I can
no longer make any claims for the sound of my own voice, though still
some days I can hear hear it's heart.

272 : Kristin Anderson

2009-10-24T18:49:00.000-05:00

You didn't have time to carpool only
wanted to get home after soccer practice before
dark and relax. Because it was a Long Day. a deep breath.
exhausted.

271 : Kim Tingley

2009-10-24T18:48:00.001-05:00

Along Route 9 wind turbines spin hypnotically over fields of sun-ripening corn.
On Vernon solar panel power flashes amber light where children cross, safely, to school.
These routes of beauty, congested with my own car’s emissions.
My children, our world, their future.

270 : Jeff Nagy

2009-10-24T18:47:00.002-05:00

The elephant's trump won't, nor will the crane's
knotted crosshand like the heart's magnetic veins
palm, purple, orient it, tell the weathervanes
when the weather wanes.

269 : Valerie Roth

2009-10-24T18:44:00.000-05:00

snow falls hard
cedars crack with anticipation
a fire burns to
invite warmth

268 : Joseph Cooper

2009-10-24T18:39:00.000-05:00

Comes a night, a kind of choreography
When she is still a wet roadmap

A grizzly scene, fleeing
A fretted sun.

267 : Lynn Xu

2009-10-24T18:38:00.001-05:00

The trees cried and sucked away.
The one unmixing night
From night. Song we woke to
Lay between us.

266 : Mike Puican

2009-10-24T18:35:00.000-05:00

Late spring, hail

like espresso machines,

scent of glaciers

not far away.

265 : JoAnne Growney

2009-10-24T18:31:00.000-05:00

The Spider

Spinner of intricate, twenty-inch silk food snares.

Twenty inches—not fifty or two hundred.

She knows the limits to her senses. Humans

keep building bigger webs.

264 : Ellen Grace Picker

2009-10-24T18:30:00.001-05:00

the hair you grew long just so it could
sweep across your face on those brief fall days.
i've tried learning the slow way, i've tried
doing the hard way.

263 : David Peacock

2009-10-24T18:29:00.001-05:00

our planet,
headed for an iceberg
black as coal

262 : Amanda Deutch

2009-10-24T18:27:00.000-05:00

Coney Island Creek

A conference of swans on a polluted creek tells us
what to do. We don’t listen, afraid
of their hiss. A bite from a swan’s beak can
break a human’s arm.

261 : Scot Siegel

2009-10-24T18:21:00.001-05:00

PARADIGM SHIFT

Raise your hand if you give a damn
about Global Climate Change
This could be the end of the world; or
The beginning of a new one. (Are we in it?)

260 : Joey Yearous-Algozin

2009-10-24T18:18:00.000-05:00

BEACH PLUMS

I'm not
the right
kind of animal

259 : Robin Lim

2009-10-24T18:17:00.001-05:00

Hummingbirds live only a few seasons, all of them outdoors.

The only way to catch a bird who can never stop trembling,

is to stand still and emit the odor of pollen, It makes absolutely no sense what

we humans sell our lives for.

258 : Margot Glasspiegel

2009-10-24T18:14:00.000-05:00

The weatherman is missing hiding slightly off the chart
Telling clouds how to gather —
Where it’s going to rain
But not where you can hide.

257 : Brice Bogher

2009-10-24T18:12:00.000-05:00

"So we'll go no more a-lekking," bubbled some chiclids.
"Lake Victoria's receded beneath a sandy lid."
"Who gives a thought to lekking?" Victoria snapped back,

then powdered up her bruises, and wore a turtleneck.

256 : Heidi Greco

2009-10-24T17:58:00.001-05:00

jellyfish billow like leaky parachutes

starfish with too many legs scrabble

over each other, blanket the bottom

of a stagnant sea.

255 : Margaret Foley

2009-10-24T17:56:00.000-05:00

Some Force for it

Indolent uncouth Willard willows, following Tortured peat hags finished with

Dancing Dybukim dycrasia, hiding her, hindering her greenest drapers of Babylon

give it one more tangled Dyne, simple rubbing belts, for tires and oak wheat wind, feet curling,

for not one of us can blame Dione

254 : Maureen Alsop

2009-10-24T17:54:00.000-05:00

Sweetheart

The cool field of grass, once where you loved. Watermark. The sky

never left your mind. And out to the hotpink sea the boats had gone. Doves

among the surefooted parakeets and finches shivered and sang. Goddamn. Where, in the weedgreen traces did you go.

253 : Monica Bergers

2009-10-24T17:53:00.000-05:00

It had not been a regular kind of night, certainly. After supper, when
Joel and the others
would be finishing the work, corralling the chickens in the coop
leveling the marks
pocked and driven into the dirt by the horses and wagon,
old Brechka brought out the fiddle

252 : Penelope Scambly Schott

2009-10-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

Climate Change in Portland, Oregon

This way-too-orange extravagance of fall,

after a winter too stormy, summer too hot,

and the two-legged citizenry of the planet,

too many of us, too foolish.

251 : Athena Kildegaard

2009-10-24T17:49:00.000-05:00

Monarchs don't come anymore on their trek
to Michoacan, though the milkweed is thick.
I used to mark their arrival on the calendar.
Now I conjure ghosts.