Anxious poems

Anxious poems — a collection of the best works on Poemship.

Poem language

Any author

Keywords

With audio

Sort

Dave Bonta

Abuzz

busy morning at home in the almost midnight ear

Dave Bonta

Hundreds of ladybugs huddle together in clumps in the corners where wall & ceiling meet. I point the black tube like a magic wand, a reverse rifle, & the beetles disappear with the briefest of rattles down the vacuum’s plastic throat. This is nothing like hunting, no meditative wait, no tense silence or rush of adrenaline. Snuffing out these house invaders, I feel nothing. I am alone with the sound of the cleaner, which cancels out every competing thought. If there were sound in space, a star would howl like this when it collapsed into itself: detritus from the ceiling, meet the detritus from the floor. Bright clot of color, flame, here’s a sackful of dust in which to gutter.

Dave Bonta

In the Mountains of the Lion

Imagine having to go on with no way to touch. Giving birth to the child of who knows which stoned soldier, & never knowing the silky feel of his skin, whether to caress or to shove away, away. I let him nurse to ease the swelling in my breasts. I licked him like a cat — it was all the salt I could get. Were they not terrible, those severed hands, when they stood back up at last & began to point?

Dave Bonta

Citizen X

I am finite as my picture frame I sit full of shadows and break my neck looking over my shoulder at a loss how we all come to be in a new rogue world

Dave Bonta

Ravens in winter

ravens hang out in dead hope of an ox full of news and folly which will keep them all winter full of midnight settling into a bed thin as a purse

Dave Bonta

Losing strategy

flee fight flee flee flee flee flee flee FIGHT flee fight flee flee flee flee fight fight fight fight flee fight flee fight

Dave Bonta

Heat wave

I am in the oven a whole month hungry I hunt a new country under the ice on my right eye

Dave Bonta

On the Birthday of Death

There was a flash, so bright — as if from the world’s largest camera, come to capture everyone in their work clothes. We children ran to the top field & turned & looked. What new kind of cloud was this? What new kind of tree? It stood for hours on the horizon, brewing its own weather, we guessed, or setting fruit. No one could imagine just how strong the wind, how terrible the rain. But we were farmers’ kids. When we saw white birds streaming away toward the west, we knew what to think.

Dave Bonta

Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem

Or try:

Anxious poems

Abuzz

Vacuuming the beetles

In the Mountains of the Lion

Citizen X

Ravens in winter

Losing strategy

Heat wave

On the Birthday of Death

Indecision

Perplexed

Liver

Teeth of the storm

Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem