Maybe it’s not my favorite per se, because that would have to be some pretty Frost poem that makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Harlem sticks with me because it devastates.

It reminds me to follow my dream, and when I find myself starting to make excuses, or justifying my strays, these words pop into my head:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Jim Smith was a magical soul, who used to smoke a pipe and sit in our rocking-chair. For my 10th birthday he gave me a book of poetry by Robert Frost, and this is the first poem I ever read:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay,

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

In spring of youth it was my lot

To haunt of the wide world a spot

The which I could not love the less--

So lovely was the loneliness

Of a wild lack, with black rock bound,

And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall

Upon that spot, as upon all,

And the mystic wind went by

Murmuring n melody--

The--ah! then I would awake

To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,

But a tremulous delight--

A feeling not the jewelled mine

Could teach or bribe me to define--

Nor Love--although Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,

And in its gulf a fitting grave

For him who thence could solace bring

To his lone imagining--

Whose solitary soul could make

An Eden of that dim lake.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Cold

Cold

Cold

Cold

Cold

Freezing

Freezing

Freezing

FROZEN.

"There are poem inside of you that paper can't handle."—Instagram person

I find inside my head I have to much word to say, that papers won't be enough.... words are always going..flowing....never ending ,some unspecified some special some petulant, but to me words are a miracle... I feel sometimes it's good to just keep a poem to yourself because you know you were ready for it, it does not mean the paper is ready for it because the people aren't ready for what coming next....The words.—Terra

This girlchild was born as usual

and presented dolls that did pee-pee

and miniature GE stoves and irons

and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.

Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:

You have a great big nose and fat legs.

She was healthy, tested intelligent,

possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.

She went to and fro apologizing.

Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.

She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle. Her good nature wore out like a fan belt.

So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up.

In the casket displayed on satin she lay

with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,

a turned-up petty nose,

dressed in a pink and white nightie.

Doesn't she look pretty? Everyone said.

Consummation at last.

To every woman a happy ending.

-Margie Piercy