Poetry

Fictional stories and poems created during after school tutoring by students of 826CHI, a Chicago free writing center for ages 6-18.

Hands on Stanzas places Chicago poets in public school classrooms and inner-city youth centers for 20 weeks. The writing and reading of poetry encourages students to explore how words can convey their own thoughts, visions and emotions. As students take ownership of language, vocabularies grow, imaginations spark, books are read, and for some, educational stumbling blocks are conquered. This year, 6,600 students in 63 residencies at 51 Chicago Public schools began their journey into the world of words. This is an anthology of their poetry. --Poetry Center of Chicago.

Prisoner authored publication from the volunteer group, Chicago Books to Women in Prison. This seventh edition focuses on "Alternative and Resistance to Criminal Justice Reform". It features poetry, art, and self reflective entries from incarcerated women.

Foreword / by Terrance Hayes -- The golden shovel / Terrance Hayes -- Selected poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. A sunset of the city -- Kitchenette building -- Boy breaking glass -- A song in the front yard -- The bean eaters -- The Anniad. After / Aracelis Girmay -- What there is to spend / Hailey Leithauser -- Appendix to the Anniad. Next time honey / Paul Martinez-Pompa -- A halo for her invisible hair / Rachel Richardson -- The artists' and models' ball. Weather report / Anne Shaw -- An aspect of love, alive in the ice and fire. First summer song / Pattiann Rogers -- An aspect of love / Renée Watson -- Ballad of Pearl May Lee. Stay, dear / Susan Wheeler -- The Ballad of Rudolph Reed. Conjunction / Andrew Motion -- The bean eaters. Resurrection / Bonnie Jo Campbell -- The parrot man / Caitlin Doyle -- The fava bean-eaters / Sandra M. Gilbert -- At the evening of life / Nikki Giovanni -- Evening / Diane Glancy -- Roadside diner : Fairfield, Maine / Jack Powers -- Next to the flatware / Christian Robinson -- New Year's Eve in Times Square / Philip Schultz -- Beverly Hills, Chicago. Golden shovel Buddha / Didi Jackson -- Stand your ground / Major Jackson -- September, Chicago / Angela Narciso Torres -- The birth in a narrow room. Child tipping forever / Jenny Boully -- The Blackstone Rangers. What is betrayal but a construct? / Judy Blundell -- The ache / Chelsea Dixon -- A love Jones in a booming economy / Randall Horton -- 1972 Ford LTD / Quraysh Ali Lansana -- Funeral sign / Mike Puican -- After the eulogy / Kelly Reuter -- Cure and Curry / Natalie Richardson -- i. Cecil Park-high as the swings ; ii. Dutch pot dancing / Debris Stevenson -- Boy breaking glass. Imagine this / Meena Alexander -- Boys breaking glass / Catherine Brogan -- Asked why I always have to be so negative I / Hannah Gamble -- Ornithology / M. Ayodele Heath -- Behind in the count / Pam Houston -- Sleeping under stars / Troy Jollimore -- The second going / Philip Levine -- Meadowlands / Erika Meitner -- Opening ceremonies, 2012 / Michael Meyerhofer -- When he doesn't come home / Deb Nystrom -- Boy breaking glass, Peckham / Clare Pollard -- Vagrant / Emmett, Jim, and Karen Shepard -- That boy is still breaking glass / David Wagoner -- So there / John Corey Whaley -- A Bronzeville mother loiters in Mississippi, Meanwhile, a Mississippi mother burns bacon. Tallahatchie / Terry Blackhawk -- Grown Up / Kwame Dawes -- Yazoo City / Raven Hogue -- Bronzeville woman in a red Hat. Anasema kwa haraka / LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs -- The maid / Eugene Gloria -- At the Capitol Hill Suites, 1985 / Maxine Kumin -- In a Red Hat / Stephanie Strickland -- The Chicago Defender sends a man to Little Rock. Bleeding brownish boy / Sharon Draper -- Meanwhile in the henhouse / Rita Williams-Garcia -- In Little Rock / Jake Adam York -- The Chicago Picasso. The seahorse / Maura Stanton -- Ars poetica composed while dressing in the dark / Kevin Stein -- Tender visits / Liane Strauss – The children of the poor. The climb / Siobhan Campbell – What will we give our children? / Brenda Cardenas – Sustenance / Kyle Dargan – A neighborhood in Chicago / Reginald Gibbons – Play the song / Laurie Ann Guerrero – Eve wept / Jancie N. Harrington – If divorce were our concerto / Ruth Ellen Kocher – At the lake’s shore, I sit with the sister, resting / Sasha Pimentel – The inconditions of love / Shazea Quraishi – On a station of the L / Don Share – “Cry, baby” Garnet Mimms & the Enchanters sang & “They sky is crying” / Bruce Smith – Women of the poor / Stephanie Sutton – Salve ship captain’s great-great granddaughter / Spring Ulmer – Lost softness softly makes a trap for us / Ronald Wallace – The Coora flower. Stay / Jericho Brown – Exhaust the little moment, Soon it dies. Two collisions / Karen Volkman – The explorer. The explorer / Adrian Matejka -- First fight, Then fiddle. First fight, Then fiddle / Lisa Williams – Garbageman : the man with the orderly mind. Instructions : say it like it is / Franny Choi -- Blue graffiti / Oliver de la Paz – Recycling / Denise Duhamel -- The occasioned contrition of a cynic / David Guterson -- Is light enough? / Lloyd Schwartz -- Truth and the garbageman / Graeme Simsion -- Is light enough? / Matthew Zapruder -- Gay chaps at the bar. Non-commissioned (a quartet) / Sandra Beasley -- Stillborn (in memory of) / CM Burroughs – Amen / Laura Mullen -- Stand your ground / Christina Pugh -- The 17 year-old & the gay bar / Danez Smith – Omen / Lewis Turco -- Jessie Mitchell’s mother. Jessie Mitchell’s father / Jaswinder Bolina -- Greatgrandfather’s woods / Miriam Nash -- Split personality / Ugochi Nwaogwugwu -- Kitchenette building. Feather and bone / Gregory Djanikian – Gray / Peter Kahn -- On my eyelashes / José Oliveraz -- Dry hours / Alicia Ostriker -- Close memory / Maya Pindyck -- We pray, and / Barbara Jane Reyes -- Who has given us life / Sasha Rogelberg -- We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan / George Szirtes -- Even if we were willing / Robert Wrigley -- The Last quatrain of the ballad of Emmett Till. After the burial : a stanza / Christian Campbell -- Len Bias, a bouquet of flowers, and Ms. Brooks / Michael Collier -- Money, Mississippi 1955 / Myra Sklarew -- Black, poured directly into the wound / Patricia Smith -- The life of Lincoln West. Variation, the birth of Lincoln West / Honor Moore -- A light and diplomatic bird. Birdie / Fikayo Balogun -- Humbug epithalamium / Traci Brimhall -- I do not want to be / Stephen Dunn – 1982 / Leontia Flynn – Storm / Nikki Grimes -- A final and unrepentant, silent, sorry bird / Dorothea Lasky -- The little-known bird of the inner eye / Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet -- Bird boy / Terese Svoboda – Sanctuary / Tana Jean Welch – Solitaire / Jane Yolen -- A lovely love. Of marriage : river, lake and vein / Nicole Cooley -- House with an X on the door / Rebecca Hazelton -- Throwing stones at the all white pool / Colleen McElroy -- The lovers of the poor. A legacy / Nathaniel Bellows – Cartoon / Alison Hawthorne Deming -- The empathy nest / Nathan Hoks -- Logistics for Thursday / Amy Lemmon -- Black Friday / Rachel McKibbens -- The wedding planners / Gregory Pardlo -- The left-hour / Leah Umansky -- A man of the middle class. Division Street / Elise Paschen -- Semi-splendid / Tracy K. Smith – Mentors. Golden nosegay / Sharon Olds – Sentence / Baron Wormser -- The mother. My mother speaks to her daughter, not yet born / Jehanne Dubrow -- Daughter-mother / Rachel Contreni Flynn -- We were gonna go through with it, and then we lost it / Adam M. Levin -- Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate / Gail Mazur -- Childless woman / Patricia McCarthy -- The ghost song / Paula Meehan -- Missing Miss Brooks / Sharon Olds -- From the hospital / Kevin Prufer -- Even-keeled and at-eased / Alberto Ríos -- My own dead / Joshua Marie Wilkinson -- The single neighbor threatens my family / Richard Zabransky -- My dreams, my works, must wait till after hell. Body of a woman, tail of a fish / Ama Codjoe -- I remember those long nights when I / Billy Collins -- Her mouth, his eyes / Andrea Hollander -- After hell / Patricia Spears Jones – ASEA / Joyelle McSweeney -- The best thing to do / Willie Perdomo -- So I wait / Richard Powers -- Send me home / Bob Shacochis -- Key to the Dollar Store / Al Young -- My own sweet good. From the sidelines / Rita Dove -- The near-Johannesburg boy. Johannesburg 2013 / Jackie Wills -- Negro hero. The killer inside me / John Koethe -- Exact change / David Lehman -- Of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery. Incarceration blues / Wesley Rothman -- Of Robert Frost. Of Gwendolyn Brooks / Jon Davis – Homage : Gwendolyn Brooks / Ishion Hutchinson -- Some glowing in the common blood / Elizabeth Macklin -- No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader / Michael Ryan -- Old Mary. Go / Tara Betts -- One wants a teller in a time like this. One wants a teller in a time like this / Bob Holman -- A penitent considers another coming of Mary. Mary / Amanda Auchter -- Primer for blacks. The hunger / Dominique Christina -- When grandma goes to the moon / Aaron Samuels -- Pygmies Are pygmies still, though percht on Alps. Cosmic party crasher / Amy Gerstler -- Pygmalion director wishes to enliven production / John Hegley -- Queen of the blues. Queen of the game / Kim Addonizio -- Riders to the blood-red wrath. From Iraq, a tattoo / Jennifer Perrine – Riot. Stolen sonnet / David Baker – Gravestones / Asia Calcagno -- Taunting the turkey vultures with love / Rachel DeWoskin -- Softer sounds / Helen Frost -- Beyond it / Liz Lochhead -- Brixton Revo 2011 / Roger Robinson -- The rites for Cousin Vit. Blue finch / Mona Arshi – Offbeat / Hoa Nguyen – Cousin / William Stobb -- There are mornings / Dan Sullivan -- Sadie and Maud. Sadie and Maud / Florence Ladd -- Maud and Sadie / Gail Carson Levine -- The second sermon on the Warpland. Medics / Danielle Cadena Deulen -- Advice from Ms. Brooks, with elaborations / Mark Doty -- Reflections on invictus / Cherise A. Pollard -- Bigly in the wild weed / Maureen Seaton -- The sermon on the Warpland. A parable of sorts / Malika Booker -- A song in the front yard. A peek at the back / John Burnside -- My life has been no smaller than my mind / Peter Cooley -- Gap-toothed woman / Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie -- Walthamstow Central / Aisling Fahey -- Our home / Lindsay Hunter – Troubled / Angela Johnson -- Twelve weeks / Jacob Polley – Statue / Jon Sands -- Back yard song / Diane Seuss -- Song in the back yard / Evie Shockley -- Careful the blood / Jeanann Verlee -- Somewhere where / Fred Wah -- The sonnet-ballad. Deployed / Nick Lantz -- The names of leaves in war / Jamaal May -- Breaking house / Michele Parker Randall – Dusk / Virginia Euwer Wolff – Moon / Timothy Yu -- Speech to the young, speech to the progress-toward. Bird-feeder / Marilyn Nelson -- Still do I keep my look, my identity. I still don’t know / Moniza Alvi -- The artist / Raymond Antrobus -- Third infidelity / Hannah Srajer -- Strong men, riding horses. Pasted to stars already / Oni Buchanan -- Strong men, riding horses / Tishani Doshi -- The strong strong men riding strong strong horses after the West / Douglas Kearney -- The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith. Her secret / Patience Agbabi -- One night stand / Teri Cross Davis -- Note to the unconceived / Marty McConnell -- Hot water / Eileen Myles – Judas / Lawrence Raab -- The narcissist breaks up / Ravi Shankar -- For Gwendolyn Brooks / Dara Wier -- A sunset of the city. Yard sale / Elizabeth Berg -- The sun had dimmed already / Maxine Chernoff – Somerset / Daniel Donaghy -- A circle finds its way and / Percival Everett -- In honor of Gwendolyn Brooks : a shovel poem / Maria Mazziotti Gillan -- Twang they, And I incline this ear to tin / Fanny Howe -- This feels permanent / Langston Kerman – Lapse / Dorianne Laux -- Twig by Twig / Lee Martin -- Just a friend after sunset / E. Ethelbert Miller -- Golden shovel / Kamilah Aisha Moon -- Awaiting dawn / Nii Ayikwei Parkes -- One day soon / Linda Pastan -- American realness / Kathleen Rooney -- Travel literature / Fiona Sampson – Funland / Martha Serpas – Already / Lee Upton – Avow / Julie Marie Wade -- Cold sore / Danielle Zipkin -- Throwing out the flowers. Over and over and all / Eleanor Wilner -- To an old black woman, homeless, and indistinct. Necessarily / Yona Harvey -- To be in love. Two poems for Alec / Julia Glass -- Hotel lobby, April evening / Maura Snell -- To be in love / Tony Trigilio -- To black women. She never saw life as hard / Sharon G. Flake -- To the young who want to die. Oath / Bob Hicok – Truth. What I would ask of Manman Brigitte after seeing the African burial ground / Camara Brown -- No apps for sunlight / Inua Ellams -- The dark hangs heavily / Chris Haven -- True & false / Ellen Doré Watson – Truth / Indigo Williams -- The vacant lot. The way he lived now / Sue Dymoke -- Memento mori / Philip Gross -- The lot, vacant then / Francine J. Harris -- We real cool. 1950 : Norco, Louisiana / Mary Calvin -- Parisian shuffle / Stuart Dischell -- Because it looked hotter that way / Camille T. Dungy --An American sunrise / Joy Harjo -- As young poets in Chicago / Edward Hirsch -- How cool are we? / Ellen Hopkins -- The old NZ / Gahl Liberzon -- Hansel in college / Tyler Mills -- Cool kids / Dorothy Moore -- Thanks to Miss Brooks / Sharon Olds -- The golden shovel (to bury the ghost) / Haley Patail -- Kriolising Kulcha / Kadija Sesay -- Jessie from the golden shovel / Mags Webster -- We, the Basij / Sholeh Wolpé -- When you have forgotten Sunday : the love story. Orb-weaver spiders, in early spring / Brenda Hillman – Unforgivable / Alyssa Kelly -- Before that Sunday / Marcus Sedgwick -- A love story / Leona Sevick – XV. Places never gathered / Dan Beachy-Quick -- You did not know you were Afrika. She shall not be / Wang Ping -- Young Afrikans. Neo-Afronaut anthem / Dexter L. Booth -- The real cool / Kimiko Hahn -- Non-Brooks golden shovels. Golden shovel / Hana Beachy-Quick -- On the other side of that window / Curtis Crisler – Parenthood / Phil Dacey -- Last night on earth we go to Wendy’s / Kendra DeColo -- It takes so little / Sharon Dolin -- Sky burial / Nick Flynn -- She threw verbs and arrows at my / Anthony Joseph -- Death in Brain / Ian Khadan -- Middle dreams / Toni Asante Lightfoot -- At Johnnie’s after basketball practice / Billy Lombardo -- The shepherd . . . / Nick Makoha -- The road to Wales / Blake Morrison – Immigrant / John O’Connor -- Square de la Place Dupleix / Pascale Petit -- Social security / Kevin Simmonds – Headway / Dorothea Smartt -- Even a broken clock is right twice a day / Lisa Russ Spaar -- Robert Johnson’s double-edged shovel / David St. John -- Poem with endwords by Reginald Shephard / Jean Valentine -- Of ownership / Karen McCarthy Woolf -- Pedagogy of a whoopin / Avery R. Young -- Variation and expansions on the form. Double golden shovel / Raphael Allison -- Behind the scenes / Julia Alvarez -- Morning (a twisted shovel) / Ellen Bass -- Frijolero ex-pats / Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor -- Sadie and Maud, redux / Marilyn Chin -- Golden shovel borrowed from Derek Walcott and Gwendolyn Brooks / Fred D’Aguiar -- The devil’s own / Calvin Forbes -- When a grief has come / David Gilmer -- Outside St. Dominic’s Priory. Snapshot, July 2015 / Keith Jarrett -- People who have no children can be hard / A. Van Jordan -- Selected Psalms from the Book of Brooks / Amit Majmudar – Accident / Carol Muske-Dukes -- The art of the stroke: / Molly Peacock – Net / Tom Sleigh – Father / Jacinda Townsend -- A chat with the endwords / Catherine Wagner -- A private service announcement / Buddy Wakefield -- That’s Mr. Robert Johnson to you / Tyrone Williams.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life -- Heigh-ho, heigh-ho -- Epic mountain hoax -- Mountain to mountain -- Mono-polytheism -- Invocation -- perfect shadow -- $1 exceptional coffee -- Ultra-confessional -- 1 + 1 = 3 -- Calcium rush -- Gradually, gills -- Ambien -- pill's oval portrait -- Etudes -- To do -- John Coltrane's central park west -- Astor Piazzolla -- Gone but not forgiven -- Competing lists -- Word and sentence -- Found in translation -- poetics of optics -- laminated lament -- Vaya con Dios -- Perversely patriotic -- Bad folk song -- Two dozen roses for Jackson Mac Low : a cento -- fragrance grifters -- Unisex colognes -- Echo -- Legacy -- Almonds -- Ciao Bella chocolate sorbet -- Pre-Raphaelite pinups -- Conversations with fountains -- sheep of days -- Bent orbit -- Tao -- Invoice -- date with Robbe-Grillet -- My illustrious Gargoyle ancestors -- Folk dance -- Maria Callas -- Another form of suicidal behavior -- Lesbian Corn -- Approaching orgasm -- Martha Graham -- Crusade -- At the end of summer -- At the mall -- Crickets crush woman -- In a monotonous dream -- Puritans -- Being sick together -- Surface tension -- foreign legion -- After a promising youth -- Things to do in the Bible -- Breakfast with Jerome -- You go to my head -- Escape from women's prison -- Aleister Crowley slept here -- Bouquet of objects -- Pale yellow -- For David Hockney -- Brand X -- Men in camisoles -- Dear Michael -- In the mail today -- After Herrick -- Destinations -- Art about fear -- Up the ladder of enlightenment -- My father sees a UFO -- Ninety percent of all serial killers -- Mulberry street -- Prescription -- lemon -- Decoy -- After Bacon -- Ah! -- To Harry Crosby at the Hotel Des Artistes -- Sometimes I get distracted -- Detail -- Self portrait as you -- Pink shutters -- Thesis sentence -- Beauty secret -- Monologue : Frank O'Hara -- Table of contents for an imaginary book -- Second thoughts -- Armani weather -- Remorse after shopping -- Wang Wei's moon -- Almost transparent -- Cupboard/shrine -- From Lorine -- Fennel -- Starting to Rain -- Letter of recommendation -- Voice-over -- origami of time -- Jerome meditating -- National poetry month -- Autobiographical poem -- banal -- seven veils of spring -- Negative capabilities -- Asking for a raise -- I interview Elaine Equi on the four elements -- Opaque saints -- quiet poem -- sensuous reader -- objects in catalogs -- objects in Japanese novels -- objects in fairy tales -- Wittgenstein's colors -- burden of bad objects -- My taste -- Everywhere today we see a lack of commitment -- "Your Purple Arrives" -- O patriarchy -- killers inside me -- Women and magic -- Early influence -- Furniture fantasy -- Take-out fantasy -- Alien fantasy -- Out of the cloud chamber -- lost poems -- bend in the light -- Intersections -- sentimental song -- Trenton local -- Dessert -- For August in April -- Return of the sensuous reader -- After and in keeping with H.D. -- Career -- Reset -- Variations on the horizon -- Okay -- monster dances -- Cannibals in space -- Poem beginning with a line by James Wright -- most beautiful blonde in the world -- Ode to Chicago -- Clown -- Then I became the weathergirl -- For Hollis Sigler -- Waiting on you -- Yes or no -- Hi-fashion girl -- Arranged affair -- Amber street -- Poem -- Dolor -- plan.

The Rhythm of Everyday Things is a book of poetry by Sandra Santiago. It is about her experiences growing up in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and living as a woman.

An anthology by the participants of the Friday morning writer's workshop at Chicago Public Library's Budlong Woods Branch. Each poem, essay, and story carry with it the mantra, "every person is a poet and philosopher."

Hearts in Transit is a collection of poetry by Kathleen Markland and Cynthia Frezek.

Blasphemer is a collection of poetry by Bill Yarrow. "Is this book blasphemous? it takes on God, religion, love, death, sex, parents, writers, literature, form, purpose, and order. Is Bill Yarrow a blasphemer? You Decide." *