Best Stiffening Poems

October: I'm eighteen, shortcutting home
through an autumn-burnished churchyard -
copper-lustred leaves, moss-skinned stone -
a jaunty swing of skater skirt and arm,
college folder square-sturdy in my hand.
In...

Read more of this work...

I shall resolve to leave this
Place now...
And steadfastly search out,
Nestling between ridge and bluff
Amidst the folds of a foreign 
Land,
Several acres of unkempt ground
Fallow and...

Read more of this work...

Rest now
O restless heart
released in ebb   to flow

ride the other side of the king tide rising
buoyant your movement in rise with the waves
Rise!...

Read more of this work...

An old Ethiopian veteran of the love wars 
once told a newlywed Kenyan kid:
If you want the infant marriage to survive,
make it to the golden...

Read more of this work...

Thump-thump of stiffening fish contorting
   In the bilge beneath the gunwale; 
 Lidless, bulging, reddened eyes, swivelling upwards, 
Protruding horribly from the straining...

Read more of this work...

I nudged my way through the throng of women and positioned myself at the starting line—an archway of variegated pink balloons.  It was mid-October,...

Read more of this work...

2,

Bourne loosely through the chill gusts,
Disordered fragments of summer's life go hurried by,
Harried to their last resting places
Into piles of brittle, browning drifts
Scattered on the...

Read more of this work...

MY VOODOO BRIDE
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS



Married only three hours still in jubilation
My beautiful bride natures finest creation
A seaplane trip to an island just east of Haiti
I...

Read more of this work...

Winter is on the tips of her fingers.
Winter is silver on her breath as she exhales,
oxygen stamped with her name, forgotten
as either one,  
stiffening...

Read more of this work...

Eclipse opened up the sea as torch of heavens flare over skies
Symphony of angels heralded the crowning jewels of love
Lovers stood still, stiffening their breaths,...

Read more of this work...

She had beautiful hands, I remember
Strong and brown and crude under the choking lamplight 
that wintry autumn of the potato blight
I saw them cringe and...

Read more of this work...

still the climbing green lianoid lass


her tender tendrils torn  


massive metal lying like a cutlass


in her lap forlorn


      ...

Read more of this work...

The energy I have created;
      A wild hungry beast
      Cowering in the shade
  ...

Read more of this work...

coming coming coming
to winterize
old jack frost
with sleepy eyes
a draft, a chill, a cold cold breeze
enough to make the strongest sneeze

slowly slowly slowly
they freeze
the rain, water,...

Read more of this work...

London, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : Londres

	…a serious and well-behaved Englishman, well-attired, handsome clothes (Victor Hugo)

(In this poem, I didn’t feel adhering strictly to...

Read more of this work...