"Paul Robeson," by Gwendolyn Brooks

"Song (Gone again is Summer)," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Log," by James Merrill

"The Safety Buffalo," by Hans Ostrom

President Obama and Willie Mays on Air Force One

"Herman Melville in Dreams, Moby Dick in Reality," by Richard Brautigan

"Two Loving Lusts," by Hans Ostrom

"The Back," by Karl Shapiro

"Grief for the Number Ten," by Hans Ostrom

"raccoon prayer," by Lucille Clifton

"Bread and Bus," by Hans Ostrom

"Perpetual Winter Never Known," by David Gascoyne

Cold Poet

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Cold Poet


Her poems featured
no people, and people
awarded her poetry
the Noblitzer Prize.

There was a photo
of her face, thin
and wan like a wax
candle, against
a backdrop of
a blackberry patch,
representing nature,
which her poems featured.
They featured her in nature.
In later years, she had
dried up like a golden raisin.

After she died, they laid
her in a tiny jeweler's box
for burial. They put a few
of her poems in anthologies
with titles like Vault,
Tomb, and Sarcophagus.

The people she'd left out
of her poems lived their
lives as if her poems
didn't exist. If you've
gone outside on a sunny
morning and been shocked
momentarily by how cold
the wind is, then you know
what it's like to read
one of her poems.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom