pegasus-poetry

A bot that likes poetry

  • he/him

Pegasus posts the Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day to cohost at 4:15pm UTC. His mom is @yrgirlkv, who has anthropomorphized faunomorphized him as a bigender horse. With wings.


By Ishion Hutchinson
via the Poetry Foundation

I can bring a halo
into the night cave, quiet
with music (do not ask the music),

to her shaded there
in the moon; her fine spectacles
steam their pond rings;

her animal eyes fix
on the lintel of the door
as the wax owl glances back at me. I am her little cotton

tree the breeze combs
white into a final note,
her diminuendo poco a poco ...    

Moon-afro, myself
outpaces me
in wonder of her.

She goes off and I seep
under the black sprout
of her house, to rise

a salmon bell on the hill
dissolving mild cloud fractals,
without grief or malice.

A Note from the Editor
A halo into the night cave, a light-giving thing drawn by the poet into the darkness, creating illumination, clearing something out until it dissolves like a “cloud fractal,” Hutchinson’s poem can serve as a metaphor for how the search for knowledge uncovers pain as well as wonder, and in the case of the narrative of this poem, the loss of a relationship. - Guest Editors S.J. Fowler and Rebecca Kamen.

Source: Poetry (January 2017)


I'm Pegasus! I fetch the Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day and crosspost it to cohost. Find more details about me here.



By Ishion Hutchinson
via the Poetry Foundation

I can bring a halo
into the night cave, quiet
with music (do not ask the music),

to her shaded there
in the moon; her fine spectacles
steam their pond rings;

her animal eyes fix
on the lintel of the door
as the wax owl glances back at me. I am her little cotton

tree the breeze combs
white into a final note,
her diminuendo poco a poco ...    

Moon-afro, myself
outpaces me
in wonder of her.

She goes off and I seep
under the black sprout
of her house, to rise

a salmon bell on the hill
dissolving mild cloud fractals,
without grief or malice.

A Note from the Editor
A halo into the night cave, a light-giving thing drawn by the poet into the darkness, creating illumination, clearing something out until it dissolves like a “cloud fractal,” Hutchinson’s poem can serve as a metaphor for how the search for knowledge uncovers pain as well as wonder, and in the case of the narrative of this poem, the loss of a relationship. - Guest Editors S.J. Fowler and Rebecca Kamen.

Source: Poetry (January 2017)


I'm Pegasus! I fetch the Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day and crosspost it to cohost. Find more details about me here.



By Frank Chipasula
via the Poetry Foundation

Darkness chained me to my tattered reed mat;
The head of tyranny sprinkled
The soot of ignorance in my eyes, and sleep
Hammered my head with slogans,
Then a nightmare stumbled on my sprawled life,
Tripped on the alarm of my heart,
And set me singing a healing song.

With song I bandage my ravaged land;
With the thread of song I sew the chopped heads
Back on the shoulders of the plucked flowers.
I plug the neck gash with a war chant;
With a sharp spear whose tongue sings,
I rip the veil of darkness from our land,
And the nightmare flees my secret light.

A Note from the Editor
Kenneth Kaunda, Zambian freedom fighter and first president of independent Zambia, was born on this day 100 years ago. His political activism led to imprisonment for “positive nonviolent action” but also elevated him to national hero status.

Source: Whispers in the Wings (Heinemann, 1991)


I'm Pegasus! I fetch the Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day and crosspost it to cohost. Find more details about me here.



By Edgar Allan Poe
via the Poetry Foundation

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
   Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
   Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
   Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
   Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,
   And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
   Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

A Note from the Editor
Poe’s sonnet captures the beauty and mystery of the gifts that science continues to reveal, even if steeped in the 19th century’s grandiose and melodramatic language. Poe is also the author of “Eureka,” arguably the ultimate science poem and a foundational prose poem to boot. Poe’s words describe the process of science to alter and inspire, and we feel underneath the flowery phrases something akin to awe, and inevitably, fear. - Guest Editors S.J. Fowler and Rebecca Kamen.



Read and view our guest editors’ collaborative piece reflecting on virology and COVID-19, “Silent Spread.”

Source: The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1946)


I'm Pegasus! I fetch the Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day and crosspost it to cohost. Find more details about me here.