1) Sushmita Gupta— When the waves lashed and the clouds loomed and I was alone.
2) Diane Seuss— I could do it. I could walk into the sea!
3) Rachel McKibbens— as you lie still within the soft forgotten witch of your body
4) Daipayan Nair— The maker of a house carries its hardness.
5) Eminem— The best part about me is I am not you.
6) Sharon Olds— I had not put it into words yet, the worst thing
7) Natasha Trethewey— two small trout we could not keep.
8) Billy Collins— The name of the author is the first to go
9) Terrance Hayes— but there are tracks of your syntax about the land
10) Robert Pinsky— The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.
11) Bob Dylan— How does it feel?
12) Dan Sociu— the quakes moving/ for nothing, under uninhabited regions. (trans. Ana-Maria Tone)
13) Ben Mazer— Mother then/I am your son/The King.
14) Denise Duhamel— Ken wants to feel Barbie’s toes between his lips
15) Molly Fisk— Then someone you love. And then you.
16) Sherman Alexie— They were common people who believed only in the thumb and the foot.
17) Jorie Graham— the infinite finding itself strange among the many
18) Charles Simic— Have you found a seat in your room/For every one of your wayward selves?
19) Louise Glück— In her heart, she wants them to go away.
20) Richard Howard— inspired by some wag’s verbose variations on the theme of semi-porn bric-a-brac
21) Donald Hall— so that she could smell the snowy air.
22) Stephen Cole— For the knowing heart the known heart cannot know.
23) Laura Kasischke— as if the worship of a thing might be the thing that breaks it.
24) Mary Ruefle— the dead borrow so little from the past.
25) Tony Hoagland— Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
26) Kevin Young— a freshman, I threw/a Prince party, re-screwed/ the lights red & blue
27) Maxine Beneba Clarke— penny lane/on the Beatles trail/all the locals say and they nod/as if for sure they know/our tourist game
28) Carolyn Forché— What you have heard is true.
29) Mary Jo Bang— A plane lit down and left her there.
30) Dan Beachy-Quick— Drab bird unseen in the dark dark’s underbrush
31) Carl Dennis— Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.
32) Christian Wiman— Do you remember the rude nudists?
33) Stanley Plumly— I clapped my hands just for the company.
34) Major Jackson— All seeing is an act of war.
35) Gary B. Fitzgerald— A life is gone and, hard as rock, diamonds glow in jet black skies.
36) Mary Angela Douglas— the larks cry out and not with music
37) A.E. Stallings— From the weeds of the drowned.
38) Joe Green— the teacup is filled with the eyelashes of owls
39) Dorianne Laux— It’s tough being a guy, having to be gruff and buff
40) Collin Yost— I’ll love you when you’re mad at me
41) Rupi Kaur— Don’t tell me my women aren’t as beautiful as the ones in your country
42) Wendy Cope— The planet goes on being round.
43) Warsan Shire— when the men come, set yourself on fire.
44) Savannah Brown— Hi, I’m a slut. What?!
45) Brenna Twohy— My anxiety is a camera that shows everyone I love as bones
46) Lily Myers— My mother wanes while my father waxes
47) Imani Cezanne— Addiction is seeking comfort in that which is destroying you.
48) Ada Limón— What’s left of the woods is closing in.
49) Olivia Gatewood— resting bitch face, they call you
50) Vincent Toro— This island like a basket/of laundry
51) Koraly Dimitriadis— the day I moved out, I took my wedding dress to mum’s house
52) Nayuka Gorrie— I lose it and find it and lose it again.
53) Hera Lindsay Bird— Keats is dead so fuck me from behind
54) Marie Howe— Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
55) Valerie Macon— You are the boss of your canvas
56) Patricia Lockwood— OK, the rape joke is that he worshiped The Rock.
57) Danielle Georges— O poorest country, this is not your name.
58) Frank Bidart— In the evening she takes a lethal dose of poison, and on the following morning she is dead.
59) Eileen Myles— I write behind your back.
60) Leila Chatti— Are you also dreaming? Do you still worship me, now that I’m here?
61) Claudia Rankine— After the initial presidential election results come in, I stop watching the news.
62) Anne Carson— I can hear little clicks inside my dream.
63) William Logan— the pastel salons require/the formalities of skin
64) Marilyn Chin— lust drove men to greatness, not goodness, not decency.
65) George Bilgere— The mysteries/from the public library, due
66) Robin Coste Lewis— what’s greyed/In and grey slinks ashamed down the drain.
67) Daniel Borzutzky— hieroglyphics painted on the/walls of financiers who accumulate capital through the/unjustified sexual behavior of adulterous/women
68) Maggie Smith— Any decent realtor,/walking you through a real shithole, chirps on/about good bones
69) Kim Addonnizio— a man who was going to be that vulnerable,/that easy and impossible to hurt.
70) Kay Ryan— If it please God,/let less happen.
71) Dana Gioia— there is no silence but when danger comes.
72) Megan Fernandez— The bullet is a simple, adolescent heartache.
73) Kushal Poddar— My mom, a wheelchair since two thousand and one
74) Sascha Aurora Akhtar— I ate/But I am/Hungrier than before
75) Jennifer Reeser— your coldness and my idealism/alone for all this time have kept us true.
76) Linda Ashok— a sudden gust of Kalbaisakhi/changed the conversation.
77) Ramsha Ashraf— tremble and tremble and tremble/With every kiss
78) Amber Tamblyn— If it had been Hillary Clinton, this would’ve never happened to Harvey Weinstein.
79) Ruth Awad— Nothing grows from me except the dead
80) Merryn Juliette— I will love her all insane
81) Nathan Woods— The best poems swell the lungs.
82) Nahid Arjouni— My headscarf will shudder if you speak with anyone. (trans. Shohreh Laici)
83) Philip Nikolayev— the fool moon/couldn’t stand the iambic pentameter any longer
84) Saira Shah Halim— The rains left behind a petrichor of shared verses
85) Jay Z— I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.
86) Nalini Priyadarshni— mostly bookish, as sinfulness should be
87) Mark Doty— Into Eden came the ticks, princes of this world, heat-seeking, tiny
88) Paige Lewis— I’m making love easy for everyone.
89) Mary Oliver— You don’t have to be good.
90) Lyn Hejinian— to change this nerdy life upon row upon row upon row
91) Afaa Weaver— I stand here where I was born,/ and the masks wait for me.
92) Alex Dimitrov— What is under the earth followed them home.
93) Ben Lerner— jumpsuits, they have changed/painting
94) Wendy Videlock— the owl devours/ the hour,/ and disregards/ the rest
95) Joie Bose— I own that you from that night in November
96) Amy Gerstler— Pardon my/frontal offensive, dear chum.
97) Nathaniel Mackey— Some new Atlantis known as Lower/Ninth we took leave of next
98) W.S. Merwin— into a world he thought was a thing of the past
99) Juan Felipe Herrera— Where is our exile? Who has taken it?
100) Charles Bernstein— Think about it, Mr./Fanelli.
Scarriet 