What was it you wanted he calls out the door as I walk toward his house, which tilts uphill. I just wanted to ask, I start to say — but he cuts me off, tells me he doesn’t talk to strangers, says that I should go away. I tell him I like his old car, I name the year and model, and soon he is shaking my hand,
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
- 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
Wyn Cooper

Wyn Cooper is the author of five poetry collections: Mars Poetica (White Pine Press, 2018), Chaos is the New Calm (BOA Editions, 2010), Postcards from the Interior (BOA Editions, 2005), The Way Back (White Pine Press, 2000), and The Country of Here Below (Ahsahta Press, 1987). He divides his time between Vermont and Massachusetts.
by this poet
poem
2005
poem
2010
Chaos is the new calm violence the new balm to be spread on lips unused to a kiss. Left is the new right as I brace for a fight with a man who stands on his remaining hand. Fetid harbor harbor me until someone is free to drive me away from what happened today
poem
2012
Imagine you're on Mars, looking at earth, a swirl of colors in the distance. Tell us what you miss most, or least. Let your feelings rise to the surface. Skim that surface with a tiny net. Now you're getting the hang of it. Tell us your story slantwise, streetwise, in the disguise of an astronaut in his suit