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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

three weeks later brought us news of September married very quietly to Rome on her way back to Russia. -Excerpt from A Little White Shadow by Mary Ruefle #poetry #erasurepoetry

Yellowing page, most of the text is whited out except for:
A Little White Shadow
three weeks later
brought us news of
September
married very quietly to
Rome
on her way back to Russia.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

"And does the heart grow old?" - J. V. Cunningham, “To My Wife” from The Exclusions of a Rhyme: Poems and Epigrams.

J. V. Cunningham
To My Wife
And does the heart grow old? You know
In the indiscriminate green
Of summer or in earliest snow
A landscape is another scene,

Inchoate and anonymous,
And every rock and bush and drift
As our affections alter us
Will alter with the season’s shift.

So love by love we come at last,
As through the exclusions of a rhyme,
Or the exactions of a past,
To the simplicity of time,

The antiquity of grace, where yet
We live in terror and delight
With love as quiet as regret
And love like anger in the night.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

"In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia Has Been Condemned" -By James Wright #poetry

"In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia Has Been Condemned"

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.

I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.

I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?

For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
In Bridgeport, Ohio.

And nobody would commit suicide, only
To find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

"It is Isis the mystery Must be in love with me." -Don Juan, D.H. Lawrence #poetry

DON JUAN

It is Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.

Here this round ball of earth,
Where all the mountains sit
Solemn in groups,
And the bright rivers flit
Round them for girth:

Here the trees and troops
Darken the shining grass;
And many bright people pass
Like plunder from heaven:
Many bright people pass
Plundered from heaven.

But what of the mistresses,
What the beloved seven?
—They were but witness,
I was just driven.

Where is there peace for me?
It is Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.

Keywords: D.H. Lawrence, Don Juan, Isis, Aset

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

“The girls in Nicaragua wore rosaries with gold crosses hanging from them and strings of pearls around their heads and black tresses. And we fell in love with the women of that land.” -Ernesto Cardenal, "With Walk in Nicaragua" #poetry

Page from a book.
Text:
And the sentry's cry was as musical as a bird's in the evening.
Just the way in snow-covered small towns in the States,
come evening one hears the watchmen's voices
cheery, full and clear.
And the cry of "alerta" resounded once more.

Text highlighted in blue:
The girls in Nicaragua
wore rosaries with gold crosses hanging from them
and strings of pearls around their heads and black tresses.
And we fell in love with the women of that land.
End of highlighted text.

One day we embarked on the Virgin, for Granada,
in front of those two silent volcanos like two blue guards.
The lake was glassy smooth
and all at once herons everywhere flew over the lake
as if great white flowers, toward islands where they sleep,
and flocks of screaming ducks took off in search of shelter.
At night we stopped the trembling engine in front of Granada,
and only the waves against the boat could be heard.
We covered our lanterns with canvas,
dropped anchor stealthily,
attached a cable to a tree on the shore,
and lowering some launches, we disembarked.
No one could see us advancing in the darkness with our black

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Reposted by The Poetry Curator

Words Without Borders & WWB Campus @wwborders.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Racial violence haunts a South African family in this excerpt from Melody Makeda Ledwon's 2025 Momentum Award–winning translation of Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner's novel MESSER, ZUNGEN. Read it here:

wordswithoutborders.org

Pink Dogs - Words Without Borders

An excerpt from Melody Makeda Ledwon's 2025 Momentum Award–winning translation of Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner's novel "Messer, Zungen."

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

"She says she'll leave him if he screws around; why not attempt it, if that's all it takes?" "Two Husbands" by Henry Taylor, as published in The Flying Change. #poetry

Two Husbands
1.
She says she'll leave him if he screws around;
why not attempt it, if that's all it takes?
He fears forgiveness; through her, he has found
uprightness in his dreams of dodged mistakes.
2.
The youthful urge to kill has left him dry,
that filled their first years with ecstatic woe;
he is content to wait, and watch things die:
as life goes on, he learns to let it go.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

"he thinks i am going to run away. maybe i will." Poem No. 1 by Sonia Sanchez #poetry

Poem No. 1

my husband sits
buddha like
watching me weave my
self among the sad
young men of my time.
he thinks i am going
to run away.
maybe i will.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

"... placing a thumb in our mouths, leaving the free hand to handle the intricacies of the fingering," Air Sax by Billy Collins

Air Sax

In the dorm rooms of our snowbound college
during certain parts of the Coltrane solos
featured on the album Milestones,
parts we had deemed exceedingly worthy,
we boys would play imaginary
tenor saxophones by placing a thumb
in our mouths, leaving the free hand
to handle the intricacies of the fingering,

and with puffed-out cheeks and eyes closed,
we would blow hard, instead of sucking
as we had done in our infancy.
And even though we would step back
to laugh at the silly pathos of ourselves,
there was always great intensity and joy in our playing.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

"...stepped out of his immaculate flesh and hummed..." Morning raga: 6/28/84 by Sonia Sanchez #poetry

Morning raga: 6/28/84

did you see the new tonite?
James r. thornwell died today
of an epileptic fit. 41 years old
blackman. ex/ Vietnam/veteran.
given lsd in the service spliced
his own genes reproduced himself
in manic depressive colors and
was discharged. jasrthornwell
died today. never worked again.
became a drifter. while his mind
drilled in military sermons and
drugs stepped out of his immaculate
flesh and hummed...

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

"(Cuban-American mí: I singo therefore I am, sí.)" -Gustavo Peréz Firmat, "Last-Mambo-in-Miami" #nationalpoetrymonth

Gustavo Peréz Firmat Last-Mambo-in-Miami

Soy un ajiaco de contradicciones.
I have mixed feelings about everything.
Name your tema, I'll hedge;
name your cerca, I'll straddle it
like a cubano.

I have mixed feelings about everything.
Soy un ajiaco de contradicciones.
Vexed, hexed, complexed,
hyphenated, oxygenated, illegally alienated,
psycho soy, cantando voy.
You say tomato,
I say tu madre;
You say potato,
I say Pototo.
Let's call the hole
un hueco, the thing
a cosa, and if the cosa
goes into the hueco,
consider yourself en casa,
consider yourself part of the family.

(Cuban-American mí:
I singo therefore I am, sí.)

Soy un ajiaco de contradicciones,
un puré de impurezas:
a little square from Rubik's Cuba,
que nadie nunca acoplará.
(Cha-cha-chá.)

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

"Cristo Negro de Portobelo" a poem by Darrel Alejandro Holnes #NationalPoetryMonth

Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Cristo Negro de Portobelo
It's when they see me naked that they finally believe
I'm from Panamá. The crucifix
hanging on my Black chest, underneath
the little hair I inherited from my father,
sweats as I perform what priests
and their laws call unnatural acts.
Only men grow body hair.
Only men are this dark and when
my hands finally darkened enough
to color even the blackest swans
I was sad to see them suddenly turn into wings,
plumed palms, hollow finger bones,
limp wrists. But then again, the struggle
of first flight against the moon's night
can be a freedom beyond heaven and
its wanting eternity. So now
rebellion is my new religion
or something else romantic and American
like a crownless king, perhaps an immigrant one
atop a throne, in native disguise.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

"April this year, not otherwise Than April of a year ago, Is full of whispers, full of sighs," From “Second Song of April," a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay Welcome to National Poetry Month!

April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
In orchards near and far away
The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;
The men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,
Noisy and swift the small brooks run
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun,
Pensively,—only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Second Song of April”

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

"It is the moon that disappears It is the stars that hide not I It's the City that vanishes, I stay with my forgotten shoes, my invisible stocking It is the call of a bell" -"Guru" by Allen Ginsberg

Guru

It is the moon that disappears
It is the stars that hide not I
It's the City that vanishes, I stay
with my forgotten shoes,
my invisible stocking
It is the call of a bell

Primrose Hill, May 1965

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

"The proof of a poem is not that we have never forgotten it, but we knew at sight we never could forget it." -Robert Frost #poetry

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound - that he will never get over it. That is to say, permanence in poetry, as in love, is perceived instantly. It hasn't to await the test of time. The proof of a poem is not that we have never forgotten it, but we knew at sight we never could forget it.

-Robert Frost

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

"If my Valentine you won't be, I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree." -Ernest Hemingway Finca Vigia, Cuba, 14 February 1956 How It Was (1976)

Book cover of Ernest Hemingway Complete Poems Edited by Nicholas Gerogiannis. Revised Edition. Sticker: Hemingway House Key West www.hemingwayhome.com Black and white photo of Ernest Hemingway in the center.

88 If my Valentine you won't be...

If my Valentine you won't be,
I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree.

Finca Vigia, Cuba, 14 February 1956
How It Was (1976)

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

"Nicaragua in a Voice" by Francisco Aragón #poetry

Francisco Aragón

Nicaragua in a Voice

More than the poems
—the fruits that sang
their juices; dolls, feverish,
dreaming of nights,

city streets—for me it was
the idle chat between the poems:
cordial, intimate almost...
like a river's murmur

as if a place—León,
Granada—could speak,
whistle, inhabit
a timbre...as if, closing

my eyes, I had it again,
once more within reach:
his voice—my father
unwell, won't speak.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

"The Witch Reads Me My Birthchart" -Eloisa Amezcua, in "Latino Poetry, The Library of America Anthology," edited Rigoberto Gonzalez.

Eloisa Amezcua
The Witch Reads Me My Birthchart
she says the planets & stars show that I’m too good at being alone
I have unresolved traumas from past lives it is true
there were difficulties during my delivery even in the womb
I had a bad feeling cord around my throat as I tried
to make passage forced into this world or rather out of another
by extraction the witch asks if I often feel guilty
asks if I try to heal those around me despite finding it difficult
to bond with anyone other than myself
she wants to know about my childhood memories
if I’m alone in them
& I admit I stop listening though I can still hear
the untroubled tone in her voice vowels elongated
mouth full of sounds like spandex bursting at the seams
I want to go back to the stars we’ve strayed so far from the planets
she says there’s much to learn about my sources of pain
the gaping wound I will try to alleviate for the rest of my life
I want to touch her long hair as if it were my hair
I want to convince her I believe in everything she believes
but I demand too much of faith
like apples in the market I inspect the curves & creases
put them back at the slightest sign of bruising

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Like the nomadic dollar I pass to the cashier behind the register you are off to other hands. -"Breaking Up," Billy Collins, Musical Tables #poetry

Breaking Up

Like the nomadic dollar
I pass to the cashier

behind the register
you are off to other hands.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

One failure on Top of another. "Their Sex Life" by A.R. Ammons

Their Sex Life
One failure on
Top of another

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Excerpt from the poem "We'll Not Die in Paris" by Natalka Bilotserkivets, translated by Dzvinia Orlowsky. From IN THE HOUR OF WAR: POETRY FROM UKRAINE edited by Carolyn Forche and Ilya Kaminsky.

too bitter we cried abused nature
we loved too fiercely
our lovers shamed
too many poems we wrote
disregarding poets
they'll not let us die in Paris
and the alluring water
under the Pont Mirabeau
all be encircled with barricades

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

First Love by Carolyn Emerick, published in "Pagan Poems, Volume II"

First Love

Kiss me in the morning
when the sun begins to rise.
I look at you intently,
and brush the hair from your eyes

You give a sheepish smile,
remembering the night.
We lay under the blanket,
hiding from the light.

Our hearts are beating loudly,
and our breaths are rather deep.
The memory of this morning,
forever will I keep.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

"Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell." -William Carlos Williams, Introduction to Howl, and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg

...takes of in the very intimate details of his poem. He avoids nothing but experiences it to the hilt. He contains it. Claims it as his own - and, we believe, laughs at it and has the time and affrontery to love a fellow of his choice and record that love in a well-made poem. [The following sentence is highlighted in blue] Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.

William Carlos Williams

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

"...He suffers time the way a lover always will, a traveler, as if by having at last the loved one, as if by merely arriving a completion takes place. The harrowed waves. Paris, the destination" Poetry from "The Crossing, 1927" by Lynda Hull

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Why I Am a Pagan by Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)

Why I Am a Pagan Zitkala-Sa Gertrude Simmons Bonnin
When the spirit swells my breast I love to roam leisurely among the green hills; or sometimes, sitting on the brink of the murmuring Missouri, I marvel at the great blue overhead. With half closed eyes I watch the huge cloud shadows in their noiseless play upon the high bluffs opposite me, while into my ear ripple the sweet, soft cadences of the river's song. Folded hands lie in my lap, for the time forgot. My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand. Drifting clouds and tinkling waters, together with the warmth of a genial summer day, bespeak with eloquence the loving Mystery round about us. During the idle while I sat upon the sunny river brink, I grew somewhat, though my response be not so clearly manifest as in the green grass fringing the edge of the high bluff back of me.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

CONSTELLATIONS REARRANGE THEMSELVES INTO A PROTEST SIGN Every uprising has the universe on their side. That's not a horizon. That's the earth drawing the line. -Andrea Gibson in You Better Be Lightning #poetry

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Reposted by The Poetry Curator

Stone Circle Review @stonecirclereview.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Recently, when I encounter something I don't know, I'm trying not to pull out my phone and look it up. Feeling certain all the time has terrible consequences for art. -- Ross White

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

I hang crucified on every tear Of your flood of tears. Now there is nothing left to forgive. -Vladimir Mayakovsky from "A Cloud of Trousers"

Background: solid white Foreground text: I hang crucified on
every tear
Of your flood of
tears.
Now there is
nothing left to
forgive.

-Vladimir Mayakovsky from "A Cloud of Trousers"

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical From "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath

Book page with text highlighted in pink. Text: Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

She'd find a hidden meaning in every pair of pants, then hurry home to be alone and write about romance. -From "Impeccable Conception" by Maya Angelou

Book page with the last four lines highlighted in pink. Text: Impeccable Conception

I met a Lady Poet
who took for inspiration
colored birds, and whispered words,
a lover's hesitation.

A falling leaf could stir her.
A wilting, dying rose
would make her write, both day and night,
the most rewarding prose.

She'd find a hidden meaning
in every pair of pants,
then hurry home to be alone
and write about romance.

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The Poetry Curator @thepoetrycurator.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom -From the "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou

Book page highlighted in pink. Text: The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom

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