Elegy

Reflorescence
The eagle is a vulture now, circling the neon rot of the strip, where liberty is a coupon code pressed between a thumb and a thirsty lip.
By Meko James 7 months ago in Poets
Still Here. Runner-Up in After It’s Gone Challenge.
The morning was so gray, weighty— the clouds kept a promise to pin me. My spirit unleavened, hearing the cry of my sister asking
By Pixel Floyd7 months ago in Poets
To my Mother and Father
I speak your names into the quiet, hoping for a celestial sign ~ Fully knowing it to be wishful thinking ~ this yearning that I could summon you back...
By Novel Allen7 months ago in Poets
After They Are Gone
Write an elegy poem that mourns a person, place, time, or idea that has been lost. My mother, my sister and my youngest brother are all gone
By Denise E Lindquist7 months ago in Poets
R.I.P To The Girl Who Gave a Fuck. Runner-Up in After It’s Gone Challenge.
Her death came slowly through the years a folding of her frame To fit within the narrow halls and answer to her name 🪦
By Sara Wilson7 months ago in Poets
Reliquiae (The Remnants). Runner-Up in What Comes Back Challenge. Top Story - April 2026.
memorially broken pieces sensorially spectral or shrapnel remnants shards create charades façades fragmental particles
By Paul Stewart7 months ago in Poets
un-Till
I am a house that watched its own foundation crack, a soil that stole a sweetness it could never return. I remember the Tallahatchie not as a river,
By Meko James 7 months ago in Poets
Elegy for a Country Once at Peace
There was a morning, once, when we rose unafraid, when dawn came like a friend who knocks at the door, certain of its welcome. We opened our eyes to a country still whole, to the people who had learned, by long and faithful labor, how to live beside each other in the ordinary grace of the uneventful day. Oh, what were we then, who did not know how rare a thing it is to dread so little? The newspaper passed beneath the elm in autumn, and its news was only news, only the slow procession of the known and mild. We received it calmly, the way a still pond receives the rain and settles back to calm.
By Tim Carmichael7 months ago in Poets
The Second Grave
They said I disappeared like a body lost in the tide wrong place, wrong time, wrong boy buried me alive But the dark has a way of teaching what the light never could Like how silence sharpens teeth and how to make it look good I counted every heartbeat like coins I couldn’t spend till I found a map in the madness and the making of an end Now I dress in velvet shadows A new name stitched in gold you built a cage around me once now I’m the story told I found more than just a fortune in that cold, forgotten place I found the kind of anger that rewrites a face They say dig two graves, darling if you’re hunting for revenge but I’ve been dead before you this is just where I begin I don’t need your mercy I don’t need the truth you buried me a victim I came back as proof There’s a fire in the diamonds there’s a pulse beneath the sea you took everything I was now look what you made me be No body, no witness no mercy, no crime just a ledger in my head and I’m balancing the lines So go ahead and pray for me say I’ve lost my way but I found a crown in exile and I’m wearing it today They say dig two graves, darling make the second one your own but I climbed out of the first one just to claim what I’m owed And if I fade when it’s over if there’s nothing left of me— just know I chose the ending when you chose to bury me
By Brie Boleyn7 months ago in Poets
What the Mirror Kept
Here lies the girl who once ran barefoot through summers that belonged to her alone, before she learned to make herself small enough to fit inside another's disappointment.
By RC Adamson7 months ago in Poets
A Childhood So Bitter.
I still remember the voicemail I got. My brother simply telling me you’re gone. I didn’t expect to receive that message. I woke up confused, angry, I’d attest it.
By Aliceandra7 months ago in Poets
Before We Put the World in Our Pocket. Runner-Up in After It’s Gone Challenge.
We watched the raindrops on the window and stared into space in line at the bank Little did we know that boredom was the freedom of an uncluttered mind
By Leslie Writes7 months ago in Poets