Haven’t they moved like rivers—
like Glory, like light—
over the seven days of your body?
And wasn’t that good?
Them at your hips—
isn’t this what God felt when he pressed together
the first Beloved: Everything.
Fever. Vapor. Atman. Pulsus. Finally,
a sin
poem index
occasions
- Anniversary
- Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month
- Autumn
- Birthdays
- Black History Month
- Breakfast
- Breakups
- Chanukah
- Christmas
- Dinner
- Earth Day
- Easter
- Election Day
- Farewell
- Father's Day
- Fourth of July
- Funerals
- Graduation
- Halloween
- Hispanic Heritage Month
- LGBTQ Pride Month
- Lunch
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day
- Memorial Day
- Mother's Day
- Native American Heritage Month
- New Year's
- September 11
- Spring
- Summer
- Thanksgiving
- Vacations
- Valentine's Day
- Veterans Day
- Weddings
- Winter
- Women's History Month
themes
- Afterlife
- Aging
- Ambition
- America
- American Revolution
- Americana
- Ancestry
- Anger
- Animals
- Anxiety
- Apocalypse
- Audio
- Beauty
- Beginning
- Birds
- Body
- Brothers
- Buildings
- Carpe Diem
- Cats
- Childhood
- Cities
- Clothing
- Cooking
- Creation
- Dance
- Daughters
- Death
- Deception
- Desire
- Despair
- Divorce
- Dogs
- Doubt
- Dreams
- Drinking
- Drugs
- Earth
- Eating
- Economy
- Enemies
- Environment
- Existential
- Family
- Fathers
- Flight
- Flowers
- For Children
- For Mom
- For Teens
- Friendship
- Future
- Gardens
- Gender
- Ghosts
- Gratitude
- Grief
- Gun Violence
- Happiness
- Heartache
- Heroes
- High School
- History
- Home
- Hope
- Humor
- Identity
- Illness
- Immigration
- Infidelity
- Innocence
- Jealousy
- Landscapes
- Language
- LGBTQ
- Loneliness
- Loss
- Love
- Love, Contemporary
- Luck
- Lust
- Marriage
- Math
- Memories
- Migration
- Miracles
- Money
- Mothers
- Mourning
- Movies
- Moving
- Music
- Myth
- National Parks
- Nature
- New York City
- Night
- Nostalgia
- Oblivion
- Oceans
- Old Age
- Pacifism
- Parenting
- Past
- Pastoral
- Patience
- Pets
- Plants
- Politics
- Popular Culture
- Public Domain
- Reading
- Rebellion
- Regret
- Religion
- Romance
- Sadness
- School
- Science
- Self
- Sex
- Silence
- Sisters
- Social Justice
- Sons
- Space
- Spanish
- Spirituality
- Sports
- Storms
- Suburbia
- Survival
- Teaching
- Technology
- Theft
- Thought
- Time
- Tragedy
- Translation
- Travel
- Turmoil
- Underworld
- Vanity
- Violence
- Visual Art
- War
- Weather
- Work
- Writing
forms
- Abecedarian
- Acrostic
- Anaphora
- Ars Poetica
- Ballad
- Ballade
- Blues Poem
- Bop
- Cento
- Chance Operations
- Cinquain
- Doha
- Dramatic Monologue
- Ekphrastic
- Elegy
- Epic
- Epigram
- Epistle
- Erasure
- Found Poem
- Ghazal
- Haiku
- Limerick
- Ode
- Pantoum
- Prose Poem
- Renga
- Rondeau
- Sapphic
- Sestina
- Sonnet
- Tanka
- Terza Rima
- Triolet
- Villanelle
schools & movements
- Nuyorican Poetry
- Objectivists
- OULIPO
- Poets of Exile
- Romanticism
- New York School
- New Formalism
- Misty Poets
- Modernism
- Modernismo
- Négritude
- San Francisco Renaissance
- Slam/Spoken Word
- Surrealism
- Symbolists
- Translators
- Victorian
- Metaphysical Poet
- Language Poetry
- Confessional Poetry
- Contemporary
- Cowboy Poetry
- Dark Room Collective
- Concrete Poetry
- Conceptual Poetry
- Augustan
- Beat
- Black Arts
- Black Mountain
- Ethnopoetics
- Fireside Poet
- Harlem Renaissance
- Imagism
- Jazz Poetry
- Kanaka Maoli poetry
- Futurism
- Fugitives
- First World War
- Flarf
- Formalism
- Acmeism
poet
Natalie Diaz
Natalie Diaz is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). She teaches at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
by this poet
poem
2013
poem
2012
He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.
O God, he said, O God.
He wants to kill me, Mom.
When Mom unlocked and opened the front door
at 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown, Dad was asleep.
He wants to kill me, he told her poem
2015
I have gazed the black flower blooming
her animal eye. Gacela oscura. Negra llorona.
Along the clayen banks I follow her-astonished,
gathering grief’s petals she lets fall like horns.
Why not now go toward the things I love?
Like Jacob’s angel, I touched the garnet of her wrist,
and