Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”

  WILD GEESE   You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine....

Poem of the Day: Christine Garren

  THE WOVEN MESSAGE   come hide near me I’ll count however long I need to count the insects in the web— I like the still living ones—that beat of wing I hear or the still turned-on ignition of the firefly—I see one’s underbelly blink on and...

Poem of the Day: Cynthia Cruz

  SELF-PORTRAIT   I did not want my body Spackled in the world’s Black beads and broke Diamonds. What the world Wanted, I did not. Of the things It wanted. The body of Sunday Morning, the warm wine and The blood. The dripping fox Furs dragged through the...

Poem of the Day: Claudia Rankine

  /  You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black-tarred street being swallowed by speed; he tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there. You think maybe this is an experiment and you are being...

Poem of the Day: Allan Peterson

  THE INEVITABLE   To have that letter arrive was like the mist that took a meadow and revealed hundreds of small webs once invisible The inevitable often stands by plainly but unnoticed till it hands you a letter that says death and you notice the weed...