From Heather McHugh:

For beauty’s sake, assault and drive and burn
the devil from the simply perfect sun.
Demand a birthmark on the skin of love,
a tremble in the touch, in come a cry,
and let the silverware of nights be flecked,
the moon pocked to distribute more or less
indwelling alloys of its dim and shine
by nip and tuck, by chance’s dance of laws.

– In Praise of Pain

From Helen Mesa:

Dream your hand plucks the bloom,
its widest petals like porcelain,
and a halo of bees skims your arms.
Upon waking, walk to the docks,
the bloom heavy behind your ear,
and breathe in its sweet persistence,
its scent of sea salt and gutted fish.

– Legend

From Yusef Komunyakaa:

But crawl out of your hide,
walk upright like a man,
& you may ask if hunger is the only passion
as you again lose yourself
in a white field’s point of view.

In this glacial quiet
nothing moves except—
then a flash of eyes & nerves.

– Snow Tiger

From Kenneth Rexroth:

Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.

– Falling Leaves and Early Snow

From Jonathan Endurance:

my mother never wanted me to know

i was born inside an eagle’s claws
i am saying every letter of my name

has a sharp edge & blood gushes from
everything i touch

i open my window into a field of dust
the sun chokes on my shoulder blade

i invade the boneyard with holy books

– Aubade in the Boneyard

From Michael Wasson:

10. Here on my knees I look for the single animal: you left
ravaged at the edge of a meadow

9. Is everything accounted for? The fingers dipped
beneath the torso—to keep this body bright

8. Every breath we are desperate to take
sounds as if a war lost against a country of promise

7. Discarded halos: the light you remember
in your head—you feed on what is crushed between the teeth

– Countdown as Slow Kisses

From Louise Glück:

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises

– All Hallows