For what is prophecy but the first inkling
of what we ourselves must call into being?
The call need not be large. No voice in thunder.

It’s not so much what’s spoken as what’s heard—
and recognized, of course. The gift is listening
and hearing what is only meant for you.

Excerpt from Prophecy by Dana Gioia

You have to let things
Occupy their own space.
This room is small,
But the green settee

Likes to be here.
The big marsh reeds,
Crowding out the slough,
Find the world good.

You have to let things
Be as they are.
Who knows which of us
Deserves the world more?

- Robert Bly

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you have ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit.  Feast on your life.

For begging beauty
one can hardly blame the artist

sleeping like butter in the sun
taking no action for action

some prefer being a yellow rose petal
I learned when I traveled

the young poet saying a prayer
is a form of panic

for j.byrd

i am a man’s head hunched in the road.

i was chosen to speak by the members

of my body. the arm as it pulled away

pointed toward me, the hand opened once

and was gone.

why and why and why

should i call a white man brother?

who is the human in this place,

the thing that is dragged or the dragger?

what does my daughter say?

the sun is a blister overhead.

if i were alive i could not bear it.

the townsfolk sing we shall overcome.

while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth

into the dirt that covers us all.

i am done with this dust. i am done.

Here are the illuminated
cities at the center of me, and here is the center
of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we
can drink from.

Richard Siken

And here, in full sunlight, we are gifts hoisted to the vanishing point.

Excerpt from [Untitled] by J. Michael Martinez

You’re human, you know

Like the rest of us, you’re stuck with that. Own up to it.

Excerpt from Night Drafts by Tony Sanders

It takes so long for the human to become a human!

Excerpt from The Descent of Man by Vijay Seshadri

What does it even mean to write a poem?
It means today
I’m correcting my mistakes.

It means I don’t want to be lonely.

Excerpt from Again a Solstice by Jennifer Chang