Every dog has his day and so with every elf. Welcome. You have landed in the department of self-promotion. You may leave at any time. I’m thrilled to have a piece published in Lithub chronicling my ten years as Poem Elf. Thanks to any of you who read it. More importantly, thanks to […]
MoreMirror by Sylvia Plath I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful ‚ The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It […]
MoreDan’s Bugs by Jim Harrison I felt a little bad about the nasty earwig that drowned in my nighttime glass of water, lying prone at the bottom like a shipwrecked mariner. There was guilt about the moth who died when she showered with me, possibly a female. They communicate through wing vibrations. I was careful […]
Morefrom “Corinna’s Gone A-Maying” by Robert Herrick Get up! get up for shame! The blooming morn Upon her wings presents the god unshorn. See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air: Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The dew bespangling herb and tree! For the final installment of […]
MoreLate Hours by Lisel Mueller On summer nights the world moves within earshot on the interstate with its swish and growl, an occasional siren that sends chills through us. Sometimes, on clear, still nights, voices float into our bedroom, lunar and fragmented, as if the sky had let them go long before our […]
MoreSolitaire by Amy Lowell When night drifts along the streets of the city, And sifts down between the uneven roofs, My mind begins to peek and peer. It plays at ball in odd, blue Chinese gardens, And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples Amid the broken flutings of white pillars. It dances with […]
MoreFor the second installment of the bedtime series, Wayne Dodd’s “Of Rain and Air.” I left it on an evergreen tree bordering an RV park. Of Rain and Air by Wayne Dodd All day I have been closed up inside rooms, speaking of trivial matters. Now at last I have come out […]
MoreBed in Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see The birds still hopping on the tree, Or hear the grown-up […]
MoreTouch Me by Stanley Kunitz Summer is late, my heart. Words plucked out of the air some forty years ago when I was wild with love and torn almost in two scatter like leaves this night of whistling wind and rain. It is my heart that’s late, it is my song that’s […]
MoreToday’s the last of the guest postings on Poem Elf. I’m not going to throw shade on all the other posters by suggesting I’ve saved the best for last—each entry has been a wonder to me—but I am mighty pleased to end this collaboration with a poem perfectly suited to these pandemic days and posted […]
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