This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end —
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release —
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best —
God! but the interest!
The son of two former enslaved people, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American poet to reach a wide audience, publishing prolifically before his early death. His use of both dialect and standard English to portray his culture’s folkways, joys, and travails distinguishes him from other writers of the time. He also spoke out against racism and injustice in essays that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Saturday Evening Post, and other mainstream publications.
By Paul Laurence Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears...
By Paul Laurence Dunbar
Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or come when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love,...
By J. Estanislao Lopez
This century is younger than me.
It dresses itself
in an overlong coat of Enlightenment thinking
despite the disappearing winter.
It twirls the light-up fidget spinner
won from the carnival of oil economies.
In this century, chatbots write poems
where starlings wander from their murmuration
into the denim-thick...
By Aileen Cassinetto
we are not that kind of country.
We are sanctuary for the hungry,
the homeless, the huddled,
held together by an idea
our immigrant fathers believed in.
Rendered, it meant independence.
Pursued, it kindled war, ordinance,
a fighting chance. Forty thousand
musket balls, by themselves, did not
shape the...
By Richard Siken
Driving, dogs barking, how you get used to it, how you make
the new streets yours.
Trees outside the window and a big band sound that makes you feel like
everything's okay,
a feeling that lasts for one song maybe,
the parentheses all clicking shut behind you.
The way we move through time and space, or only time.
The way it's night for many miles, and then suddenly
it's not, it's breakfast
and you're standing in the shower for over an hour,
holding the bar of soap up to the light.
I will keep watch. I will water the yard.
Knot the tie and go to work. Unknot the tie and go to sleep.
I sleep. I dream. I make up things
that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
The trees in wind, the streetlights on,
the click and flash of cigarettes
being smoked on the lawn, and just a little kiss before we say goodnight.
It spins like a wheel inside you: green yellow, green blue,
green beautiful green.
It's simple: it isn't over, it's just begun. It's green. It's still green.
By Ahn Joo Cheol
Faintly remains.
Scarcely remains.
Drops of water form inside my life
as if I cherish a drop of light
just as love is formed inside the word love
just as the word goodbye doesn’t permeate it
it faintly lingers.
A thin part of me remains.
Sometimes inside me...
