A is a comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word
such as like or as.
“that red shirt,
stained from sweat, the crying of the armpits”
—Ai, from “Why Can’t I Leave You?”
“If it were May, hydrangeas and jacaranda
flowers in the streetside trees would be
blooming through the smog of late spring.
Wisteria in Masuda’s front yard would be
shaking out the long tresses of its purple hair”
—Garrett Hongo, from “Yellow Light”
“if I can’t make you happy,
come close between my thighs
and let me laugh for you from my second mouth.”
—Ai, from “Why Can’t I Leave You?”
“I press a button,
and this black flower
with its warped pistil
broods over me,
tears dripping from a dozen
silver stamens.”
—Duane Ackerson, from “Umbrella”
“You lay there, fastened to the tracks…
You waited for the thunder of wheel and bone,
the axles sparking, fire in your spine.”
—Jay Parini, from “Coal Train”
“by the black river,
by mud water in which no one ever swims—
time is distant music; is echo
of a broken thing; yanks us muddied up
from sleep”
—Paul Guest, from “Tuscaloosa”
“the soft
insides of your thighs. What I want
I simply reach out and take, no delicacy now,
the dark human bread I eat handful
by greedy handful. Eyes, fingers, mouths,
sweet leeches of desire.”
—Dorianne Laux, from “This Close”
“the indifferent sun, that seed-heavy sack”
—Judy Jordan, from “A Short Drop to Nothing”
“the white smoke of your breath
rising like a ghost.”
—Chris Tusa, from “Coma”
“It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed”
—Sharon Olds, from “The Pope’s Penis”
“full-breasted tulips
open their pink blouses”
—Brigit Pegeen Kelly, from “Doing Laundry on Sunday”
“whose eyes were always covered
with the bruised petals of her lids”
—Anita Endrezze, from “The Girl who Loved the Sky”
“I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed”
—Mary Oliver, from “Sleeping in the Forest”
“I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.”
—Billy Collins, from “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes”
“the white fire of the stars”
—Mary Oliver, from “Sleeping in the Forest”
“Her face was a purple rubber mask
melting off her head, scars rippling down
where the fire seared her freak face,
leaving her a carnival where high school boys
paid a quarter to look, and look away.”
—Martín Espada, from “Rednecks”
“The trees are uncurling their first
green messages”
—Liz Rosenberg, from “Married Love”
“The screen door a telegraph for the wind.”
—Kevin Goodan, from “Tonasket Elegy”
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