“When you read something beautiful you find coexistence,” wrote poet Mahmoud Darwish. This year’s Top Five Poems of the Week include a shrewd and visceral description of physical alienation; a frank portrait of sadness tempered by the intimacy shared between brothers; a profound revelation as it unfolds for a mother and son driving through the rain-slicked streets; a probing look under the surface of ordinary things to discover a deeper life; and a lovely praise poem to everything an apple harvest has to offer us. Now more than ever we need the gifts that poetry can bestow: empathy, wonder, enlightenment. We know you will enjoy these fine offerings.
The Poem of the Week series for 2021–2022 starts on October 25. 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.
Natalie Eilbert
Intercourse
I love like I’m a girl emptied of values.
William Fargason
When My Brother Tells Me I'm Obsessed with Sadness
It’s hard not to be obsessed with your own shadow.
Laura Kasischke
Prayer
The house we used to live in still exists in a snapshot.
Rosalie Moffett
Resolution
The mind’s inheritance is everything the body lets in.
Makshya Tolbert
Ursula granger and i walk mulberry row during bottling season
Tell me how to save my elegies for bottling season.
