The Poetry Coalition, an alliance of more than 25 independent poetry organizations across the United States, is exploring the theme “and so much lost you’d think / beauty had left a lesson: Poetry & Grief” in a series of virtual and in-person programs in March, April, and May 2023.
As part of this initiative, CLMP asked our member literary magazines to recommend poems about grief—including grief for departed friends and family, for lost love, for future heartache, and more.
“Sweet Potato Pie” by DeMisty D. Bellinger
West Trestle Review
My last phone call to you,
I talked and you could not
If you could speak, I would have asked,
how’d you get the potatoes so smooth
“Cyborg Attending Mermaid Festival without Inserting a Breathing Language” by Zaynab Bobi
ANMLY
yes, my bones raced
the ocean tides to a mermaid
festival. yes, i activated
the swimming tools
“Billy Graham Elegy” by Jaswinder Bolina
Electric Literature
Nobody much mentions the floor of the Sistine Chapel
that’s touched so many more than the docents or the ceiling
or the premonitions on the wall. Come papal loafer
“Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
POETRY
Do not care if you just arrive in your skeleton.
Would love to take a walk with you. Miss you.
Would love to make you shrimp saganaki.
Like you used to make me when you were alive.
“Acapulco” by Andrea Cohen
The Hopkins Review
He was talking about the random
axe of God, his hand slamming
the table like a battle axe, and though
I was a nonbeliever, I believed
“Stratagem” by Elizabeth J. Coleman
Baltimore Review
I hung his photograph on the wall
above his notepad, signet ring,
stethoscope, ten shaving brushes.
That was my stratagem for grief.
“The Windsurfer” by Chelsea Dingman
Raleigh Review
My husband is made of cloth, the sea
staining his skin with salt
as it exhales. Pale, he’s used
to falling from the sky, wings
“A Postmortem Guide” by Stephen Dunn
The Georgia Review
Do not praise me for my exceptional serenity.
Can’t you see I’ve turned away
from the large excitements,
and have accepted all the troubles?
“Abdel Halim Performs a Private Concert for My Mother” by Hazem Fahmy
Boston Review
Once, in a stolen land that wanted
my name dead, I knew
nothing of drums and strings. Once
“Chuseok 추석” by Joan Kwon Glass
West Trestle Review
Today my uncle and his wife will visit
my grandparents’ tomb the way they do every year.
“Trans Day of Remembrance” by Golden
ANMLY
I put the dead back back
—searching my eye sockets
for tendons & tissue to stop the wet
tribute. 11.18.2018.
“Disappearing Act” by Emily Hockaday
Electric Literature
My father gathers the corners
of the silk handkerchief;
his hands smell of cloying wort
“Boy, Stepping from the Shower, a Towel Around His Waist” by Don Hogle
Full Bleed
Thirty years after,
you called to apologize,
asked my email address.
“Mississippi, Missing, Missy, Miss” by K. Iver
Boston Review
I drive from the graveside to my apartment,
59 miles from your body. Your villain has yet
to go public. She’s larger than the highway.
“Phosphorescence” by Zhu Jian
Translated by Liang Yujing
Bellevue Literary Review
Passing by the burial ground,
I see some flickers of light.
A friend tells me
it’s the bones that flash.
“The Imminent Decline of Everything We’ve Understood to Be What Governs Our Privileged Daily Lives” by Daniel Khalastchi
Paper Brigade
I don’t think you will leave me
for the neighbor because
I actually think you will leave
me for him. I think you will leave
“After Another School Shooting, I Drive the Back Roads of New Hampshire” by Deborah Murphy
Bellevue Literary Review
Late June fields greening
under a mottled sky.
An oriole slashes orange
against a shingled Cape Cod.
“To Lose” by Veronica Nation
Capsule Stories
The charge of daylight brings morning.
From the unmoving dust, I see time,
which has passed and settled and set
“Other~Land” by Rashna Wadia
Terrain.org
in america
i’m always
drowning
in declarations
“My First Gun” by Afaa Michael Weaver
The Hopkins Review
Not even a week out of prison he sticking
the thing in my face, six-inch barrel, twenty-two
or thirty-eight, ages I just might not make.
