“I saw the gooseflesh on my skin. Had a ghost passed over? No, it was the poetry,” wrote Sylvia Plath. The poems featured below reach us on this visceral level. One poem’s speaker plants flowers to prove he still exists, unlike so many other black men who are gone too soon; another trains himself to dream of his father; and another assures his love that they will meet again, “where some unnamable star awaits / to hoist us both in its palm / and hold us close in a gaze.” These Top Five Poems of the Week offer passion, grief, discovery, and all poetry’s intimate gifts of connection.
The Poem of the Week series for 2019–2020 starts on October 28. If you would like to send a poem for consideration as a Poem of the Week, please see our Guidelines. Each October the top five Poems of the Week are selected for special notice.
Congratulations to the winners.
Jericho Brown
The Tradition
We thought fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt.
Victoria Chang
Obit
Did the blood rush to my face or to my fingertips?
Leila Chatti
The Doe
When I saw her, I was witness and weapon both.
Shangyang Fang
Training
A psychologist told me we can train our dreams.
Philip Metres
I Will Meet You at the End
We will rupture the calendar and demolish the clocks.
