1. “After Love” by Sara Teasdale
Excerpt: There is no magic any more, We meet as other people do, You work no miracle for me Nor I for you.
2. “The Break Up Poem” by Rage Almighty
3. “Oxymoronic Love” by Jennifer Militello
Excerpt: Hatred is the new love. Rage is right. Touch
4. “The Fist” by Derek Walcott
Excerpt: This fist clenched round my heart loosens a little, and I gasp brightness; but it tightens again. When have I ever not loved the pain of love? But this has moved
5. “104” from The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur
A post shared by rupi kaur (@rupikaur_) on Jun 1, 2018 at 2:58pm PDT
6. “Stay With Me” by Bianca Phipps
7. “Heavy” by Mary Oliver
Excerpt: That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had his hand in this,
8. A poem from The Princess Saves Herself in This One by Amanda Lovelace
https://www.instagram.com/p/BlYUE4RgzU5/
9. “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
10. “My Honest Poem” by Rudy Francisco
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
11. “Sonnet 139” by William Shakespeare
Excerpt: O, call not me to justify the wrong That thy unkindness lays upon my heart; Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue; Use power with power, and slay me not by art.
12. “Prism” by Andrea Gibson
13. “Never Give ALl the Heart” by W.B. Yeats
Excerpt: Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
14. “Movement Song” by Audre Lorde
15. “For Women Who Are Difficult to Love” by Warsan Shire
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck moving away from me beyond anger or failure your face in the evening schools of longing through mornings of wish and ripen we were always saying goodbye in the blood in the bone over coffee before dashing for elevators going in opposite directions without goodbyes.
16. “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath
Excerpt: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
17. “Local News: Woman Dies in Chimney” by Kristin Tracy
18. “The Breakup” by Kyla Jenee Lacey
They broke up and she, either fed up or drunk or undone, ached to get back inside. Officials surmise she climbed a ladder to his roof, removed the chimney cap and entered feet first. Long story short, she died there. Stuck. Like a tragic Santa. Struggling for days, the news explains. It was a smell that led to the discovery of her body. One neighbor speaks directly into the microphone, asks how a person
19. “This Was Once a Love Poem” by Jane Hirshfield
Excerpt: This was once a love poem, before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short, before it found itself sitting, perplexed and a little embarrassed, on the fender of a parked car, while many people passed by without turning their heads.
20. “Are All the Breakups in Your Poems Real?” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Excerpt: If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick, the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse— then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance, bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them— and when I say I am married, it means I married all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.
21. “You Fit Into Me” by Margaret Atwood
You fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye
22. Poem from Pillow Thoughts by Courtney Peppernell
A post shared by Courtney Peppernell (@courtneypeppernell) on Dec 20, 2018 at 7:02am PST
23. “A Winter’s Tale” by D.H. Lawrence
Excerpt: Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow, And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge; Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge.
24. “Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi” by Nathan McClain
Excerpt: Near the entrance, a patch of tall grass. Near the tall grass, long-stemmed plants; each bending an ear-shaped cone to the pond’s surface. If you looked closely, you could make out silvery koi swishing toward the clouded pond’s edge
25. “I Wanted to Make Myself Like the Ravine” by Hannah Gamble
Excerpt: I wanted to make myself like the ravine so that all good things would flow into me. Because the ravine is lowly, it receives an abundance.
