poetry reading

Bit of a departure here at for a song today. Goodreads hosts a poetry contest, and I was just blown away by a few of the pieces. I believe the three below were all finalists in last year's competition? I like poetry very much, but don’t dedicate much time to that interest. Do any of you have suggestions for where I start? I do like when sources I trust pull together ones worth reading. Especially love the last one.

Hope you all enjoy.

MATCH GIRL

At this time of night no one buys matches

If they have cash to burn. They’re all at home

Fires newly lit in glowing iron stoves

Fat bellies apple-red and satisfied

The cold of morning still nine hours away

When they give birth to ashes, sleep, and dream.

My matches sleep in rows, lie head-to-toe

In box-beds. Night-caps of white phosphorus

Warm them until they rise to meet the sun

As equals. The vapors of their making

Eat their makers' bones. “Brief lives are best,”

They say and say and say until they die.

I pass a clutch of men, their tin-can stove

Of pigeon stew too meager for them all—

Just six of them, but might as well be sixty.

They simmer with the promise of a brawl

While my stomach yowls, loud as tomcat lust.

There are no cats here since the winter came.

My matches wake to violence and light

And a sound like the hissing of great cats

And burn until they die. They promise only

To burn, but not for how long, or how well

And yet they cost the same. You cannot know.

You cannot know until you strike the match.

I strike the first one on an iron stair, 

The second in an alley, then the rest. 

In each flare, with each whiff of sulphur breath

I see a dream of plenty, kind visions

Of family, until it gutters, dies

And falls to join the others, each the same:

The cold black nodding head, the bright white wood

The length that’s left to burn, that never will. 

--Aaron Swenson

DATE NIGHT

It's getting cold. Put some brandy

in that flask. We'll get a sub

on the way out of town if you're

hungry. I like those boots.

We're going up to the Seven

Sisters. It's a limestone cliff

where the Mississinewa River

carved columns in the rock.

The sunset shadows move across

like a gate. There's never

anyone there. The nearest house

is a mile away, and I know the guy

who lives in it. He isn't going

to say anything. We'll have fun.

And bring that little purse gun

of yours. I'll show you how close

you have to get to hit something.

--Dylan CC

JANE EYRE, UNBANNED

—upon hearing of a bill to ban books with gay characters in Alabama libraries

You think of Mr. Rochester, mad wives

in attics, Jane herself, as plain as flan.

You don’t remember Helen Burns, Jane’s friend

from school. Reader, I married her. I pressed

my eighth-grade self between those pages like

a flower, left for later hands. Helen.

"I like to have you near me," she would cough,

romantically consumptive, after Jane

sneaked to her sick-bed. "Are you warm, darling?"

We’ll always find ourselves inside the book,

no matter what the book, no matter how

little we’re given. I was twelve; gay meant

nothing to me. I only knew I’d go

to Lowood Institution, rise at dawn,

bare knuckles to the switch, choke down the gruel,

pray to the bell, if this meant I could hold

another girl all night, if I could clasp—

this even if she died there while I slept,

this even if I died there in my sleep.

--Emily Lloyd