Image Study

The margin is a widening condition. Stars asleep in the ward I left.
Between survival and not-: breathwidth. Between her stillsoft head and the barred bed-: two adult fists could fit. In the
apartment on unwashed sheets I look away from the blank crib instead at instead into a photograph on a screen. A face within looks across fathoms to meet my looking. Fear has a photosensitive surface. I make the light it needs. What else without her do I have to feed. Despite the respite of temporary distance my speculations leak through. All alike until animated in either direction of belief.
I assemble my theories, though it goes without seeing, my saying who she is. A margin of pixels, abyssal. I know no tomorrow. Nor the yesterday immobile in my hand. An object that cannot object depicts. The depiction can conjure but cannot be grief. A bond trails after and binds if one is lucky. One of us was lucky. You can't see my mouth. I've punctured there a grin.

Sarah Ghazal Ali

Published in Jewish Currents August 17, 2016

G.C.H

I have experienced this most in critique groups!! Every line has to take you somewhere and lead to an experience we never had before!! Billy Collins put it really well and I am going to use this a lot!!

" all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it" .

Sandy Denny's singing: who knows where the time goes?
and it isn't us, still partying on a Sunday afternoon,
slumped on a garden patio beneath a greasy sun,
after a night of pale, crooked lines;
after improvised cocktails of gin and raspberry vodka.

'She died at thirty one', someone says, plucking
an olive from an ashy slick.
'Fell down the stairs.'

And I'm aware I'm wearing grim, glittery rags; yesterday's knickers.
My back to honeysuckled brick, I flick tongue over gums
that taste like a gun in the mouth.

A mobile flashes MUM. No one picks up.
We know how mothers fret over the ticking clocks:
our one-bed flats,
our ovaries.

Instead we fill our plastics up with cider, and watch wasps as they circle spikes of lavender;
the big sky's cirrus scraps
- a Brimstone butterfly flaps, then settles on a blackened bone.

My friends, we are so lucky
and disgusting, and will pay for this tomorrow.

I absolutely adore this poem, and especially enjoy the delivery from the author. It’s published by Voicemail Poems, one of my favorite online journals. You can listen here.

I'm a composer and I would like to write a song cycle, so I need a collection of poems to set to music. I don't know anything about poetry or where to look; would love recommendations of anyone knows anything. I would prefer a cycle with each poem being somewhat short, and as for subject matter, something dark, perhaps related to love. This is an example of a song cycle and the lyrics thereof https://oxfordsong.org/song/pierrot-lunaire

Hiii, I am looking for poetry books that reflect on struggling writer's who are in big cities like NY, London, Mumbai (especially post 1990s). I recently read "Just Kids" by Patti Smith and I feel like I want to read more poetry. I also loved Vikram Seth's "all who you sleep tonight". Any poetry books around the urban struggle themes are welcome. Thank youuu

Idk if this is the right place to ask, i dont even know what's considered a poem. But im looking for something.

I heard her laugh in her sleep. Im jealous. Where is she going that i cannot go.

Of course this is NOT verbatim! But this is the gist of it. I love it so much, i would be so thankful if anyone can tell me the whole thing🙏

This poem is written by Gregory Orr, from the collection “How Beautiful the Beloved” published by Copper Canyon Press. It is so hard to continue to be vulnerable, but I believe that is the purpose of life… keep pressing onward, keep loving.