At Least by Raymond Carver
“I hate to seem greedy—I have so much / to be thankful for already.” — Raymond Carver
In My Next Life Let Me Be a Tomato by Natasha Rao
“I want to be unabashed, audacious, to gobble / space, to blush deeper each day in the sun, knowing / I’ll end up in an eager mouth.”
The Courtesan’s Reply – Tambulasena by Shazea Quraishi
“Water drips down / my back. He grasps the rope / of my hair and climbs.”
Postcards to the Other Brown Girl in My Weightlifting Class by Tarfia Faizullah
"I do not want / to give myself—I want to be stem, / stamen, petal, not blossom, not bloom—"
Transformation by Adam Zagajewski
"I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper, / pondering the riddle of power / and the reasons for obedience."
September a week in by Hala Alyan
"I’m trying to be enough / for this body: one heartbeat, flung like a shovel into the day."
Poem About Your Laugh by Susan Glickman
"When you laugh it is all the unsynchronized clocks / in the watchmaker's shop / striking their dissident hours"
I Remember the Carrots by Ada Limón
"I loved them: my own bright dead things. / I’m thirty-five and remember all that I’ve done wrong."
Yevtushenko, On A Rainy Day by Benilda S. Santos
"He is saying between quotation marks / that look like droplets of rain / suspended near the edge / of my windowpane, / he is saying, // “And I run like mad / Never catching up with myself.”"