agendaangle-downangle-leftangleRightarrow-downarrowRightbarscalendarcaret-downcartchildrenhighlightlearningResourceslistmapMarkeropenBookp1pinpoetry-magazineprintquoteLeftquoteRightslideshowtagAudiotagVideoteenstrash-o
Skip to Content

December 2009

Jorge Colombo, "Dailies," 2009

The oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world.

Buy This Issue
  • Franz Wright
  • Jill Essbaum
  • Diane Seuss
  • Nate Klug
  • Philip Levine
See Table of Contents
Image of poetry magazine cover December 2009
From this Issue
    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine To

      By Franz Wright
      Before you were I loved you
      and when you were born
      and when you took your first step
      Although I did not know
      good luck I want to say

      lone penguin keep sturdily waddling
      in the direction of those frozen mountains sister
      of desolate sanctity
      I want to...

      Read More
    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Song in my heart

      By Diane Seuss
      If there’s pee on the seat it’s my pee,
      battery’s dead I killed it, canary at the bottom
      of the cage I bury it, like God tromping the sky
      in his undershirt carrying his brass spittoon,
      raging and sobbing in...

      Read More
    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine What Isn’t Mine

      By Jill Alexander Essbaum
      Let us tunnel
      Through the rubble,

      Through the thrum.
      Let us rut through the sum

      Of who we were,
      Or are,

      Or will be in the years to come:
      A couple

      Of someones
      Who used to be in love.

      Used to be in...

      Read More

Table of Contents

POEMS
Comment
Letters to the Editor
See a problem on this page?