Work poems
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Morning
© Deborah Ager
You know how it is waking
from a dream certain you can fly
and that someone, long gone, returned
Summer Nights
© Deborah Ager
The factory siren tells workers time to go home
tells them the evening has begun.
When living with the tall man
Meeting
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats' meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.
Day Dream
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
One day people will touch and talk perhaps
easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as
sunlight,
Ai
© Denise Duhamel
There is a chimp named Ai who can count to five.
There's a poet named Ai whose selected poems Vice
just won the National Book Award.
The name "Ai" is pronounced "I"
Yes
© Denise Duhamel
According to Culture Shock:
A Guide to Customs and Etiquette
of Filipinos, when my husband says yes,
he could also mean one of the following:
Snow White's Acne
© Denise Duhamel
At first she was sure it was just a bit of dried strawberry juice,
or a fleck of her mother's red nail polish that had flaked off
when she'd patted her daughter to sleep the night before.
But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering
Kinky
© Denise Duhamel
They decide to exchange heads.
Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin
over Ken's bulging neck socket. His wide jaw line jostles
atop his girlfriend's body, loosely,
Sestina Otiosa
© Sir Walter Raleigh
Our great work, the Otia Merseiana,
Edited by learned Mister Sampson,
And supported by Professor Woodward,
Is financed by numerous Bogus Meetings
Hastily convened by Kuno Meyer
To impose upon the Man of Business.
My Last Will
© Sir Walter Raleigh
They will grieve; but you, my dear,
Who have never tasted fear,
Brave companion of my youth,
Free as air and true as truth,
Do not let these weary things
Rob you of your junketings.
The Artist
© Sir Walter Raleigh
The Artist and his Luckless Wife
They lead a horrid haunted life,
Surrounded by the things he's made
That are not wanted by the trade.
Now What Is Love
© Sir Walter Raleigh
Now what is Love, I pray thee, tell?
It is that fountain and that well
Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
It is, perhaps, the sauncing bell
That tolls all into heaven or hell;
And this is Love, as I hear tell.
Ay, workman, make me a dream,
© Stephen Crane
Ay, workman, make me a dream,
A dream for my love.
Cunningly weave sunlight,
Breezes, and flowers.
The impact of a dollar upon the heart
© Stephen Crane
The impact of a dollar upon the heart
Smiles warm red light,
Sweeping from the hearth rosily upon the white table,
With the hanging cool velvet shadows
Moving softly upon the door.
Many workmen
© Stephen Crane
Of a sudden, it moved:
It came upon them swiftly;
It crushed them all to blood.
But some had opportunity to squeal.
God fashioned the ship of the world carefully.
© Stephen Crane
God fashioned the ship of the world carefully.
With the infinite skill of an All-Master
Made He the hull and the sails,
Held He the rudder
In the night
© Stephen Crane
In the night
Grey heavy clouds muffled the valleys,
And the peaks looked toward God alone.
City Gent
© Craig Raine
On my desk, a set of labels
or a synopsis of leeks,
blanched by the sun
and trailing their roots
The Night Cometh
© Annie Louisa Walker
Work! for the night is coming;
Work! through the morning hours;
Work! while the dew is sparkling;
Work! 'mid the springing flowers;
On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines
© William Vaughn Moody
Streets of the roaring town,
Hush for him, hus, be still!
He comes, who was stricken down
Doing the word of our will.
