is poetic exaggeration for dramatic effect.
“I wanted to tell her how my stomach burned
acidic holes at the thought of speaking in class,
speaking in an accent, speaking out of turn,
how I was tearing, splitting myself apart
with the slow-simmering guilt of being happy
despite it all.”
—Lisa Parker, from “Snapping Beans”
“in this heat anything might happen:
you could spoon tar from the road,
tacky and molten”
—Paul Guest, from “Tuscaloosa”
“We sweat and pull at each other, climb
with our fingers the slippery ladders of rib.
Wherever our bodies touch, the flesh
comes alive.”
—Dorianne Laux, from “This Close”
“A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking”
— Richard Wilbur, from “The Writer”
“they hear the ongoing drone of a star in its nearly endless fall through space; they hear seedlings break through the crust of the earth in split-second thumps, and in another part of the world, the thud of billions of leaves hitting the ground, apart and together, in the intricate rhythmic patterns we cannot hear. Their feet, knees, hips, enact the rhythms of the universe. Their waving arms signal the sea and pull its great waves ashore.”
—Lisel Mueller, from “The Deaf Dancing to Rock”
“I’ll sing
That long, low note that makes the sun come up.”
—Mary B. Campbell, from “Sexual Terrorist”
“I want to make so much noise
That even God can’t interrupt
And the 24-hour business of heaven
Just grinds to a halt”
—Mary B. Campbell, from “Sexual Terrorist”
“The muck we uncover is dense enough to drown mammoths”
—Kelly Magee, from “The Muck Divers”
“I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.”
—Gary Soto, from “Oranges”
“three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.”
—Li-Young Lee, from “Persimmons”
“I cling to you
as if I were a burning ship and you
could save me, as if I won’t go sliding down
beneath you soon; as if our lives were made of rise
and fall, and we could ride this out forever,
with longing’s thunder rolling heavy in our arms.”
—Liz Rosenberg, from “Married Love”
“Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.”
—James Wright, from “A Blessing”
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