Potential Titles: Yusef Komunyakaa

[somethingdarker]

The devil was sharpening his blade - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Turning life into gray moss - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

But don't forgive my hands - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Unraveled this rainy night - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Flesh interrogating a stone - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

With the salt of love in my eyes - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Trying to hold too much light - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Out of four other shades of grace - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Firing bullets of wet light - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Could taste him in the dust - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

The usury of honey - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

In that air made of loneliness - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Eleven kinds of fear - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Without heart or history - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Questioned the evening star - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Inherited the benefit of the doubt - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

Lived in a room of mirrors - Yusef Komunyakaa "Autobiography of My Alter Ego"

The hills my brothers & I created - Yusef Komunyakaa "Believing in Iron"

But we couldn't stop believing in iron - Yusef Komunyakaa "Believing in Iron"

Vines strong as a dozen sharecroppers - Yusef Komunyakaa "Believing in Iron"

Our wheelbarrow groaning under a new load - Yusef Komunyakaa "Believing in Iron"

Iron left men bent so close to the earth - Yusef Komunyakaa "Believing in Iron"

The ore under their breath weighed down the gray sky - Yusef Komunyakaa "Believing in Iron"

Over trees with blooms too red to look at - Yusef Komunyakaa "Believing in Iron"

Lost in a limbo of slow water torture - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blind Fish"

Condemned to circle contours of a god's state of mind - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blind Fish"

A deck of cards shuffled by a pro - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blind Fish"

You come forth like falling leaves - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blind Fish"

How do you see into darkness? - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blind Fish"

The shape of gone, of never been born - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blind Fish"

Would hold a swarm of words inside his belly - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

Blues & sorrow song called out of the deep night - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

Till the gods cried out in someone's sleep - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

Discussing the weather with demons & angels - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

Squinting down into iron grates - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

Along the fast streets of luminous encounters - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

Then walked out of himself dreaming - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

To turn a midnight corner & never come back - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

A look that shoved a blade into his heart - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

I know something about talking with ghosts - Yusef Komunyakaa "Blue Dementia"

Trust the water to break - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Body Remembers"

With sweetness shivering - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Body Remembers"

Because I know salt - Yusef Komunyakaa "Canticle"

Twelve ways to be wrong - Yusef Komunyakaa "Canticle"

Down to each numbered bone - Yusef Komunyakaa "Canticle"

Listened hours to the sea talk - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

It followed us along polluted beaches - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

Half lost in Van Gogh's swarm of colors - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

All his books & papers going to dust - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

Obscene because it was built to endure time - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

Stronger than their houses & altars - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

The seeds of okra in trade winds headed to a new world - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

I walked back into the throng of strangers - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

All their high gods knelt on the ground - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

There's a tyranny of language in my fluted bones - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

I'll break you most dearly with sweet words - Yusef Komunyakaa "Cape Coast Castle"

Shaped for secret oaths - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Clay Army"

Into the old lost seasons - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Clay Army"

Unbridled by time - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Clay Army"

Furnished with shadows - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Clay Army"

Memory the pigment of dust - Yusef Komunyakaa "Clouds"

Searching for property lines drawn in blood - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

A hint of resolve crisscrossing a border - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Find clues in the taste of breadfruit - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

The haze of Wall Street touching clouds of double consciousness - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Searching for clues to govern seagulls - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Henchmen busy with locks & chains - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

In a ghost schooner's nocturnal calm - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Someone who won't speak of milk & honey - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Beyond pillars of salt raised in a dream - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Broken, leaking deeds, songs & testaments - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Justice stood in the shoes of mercy - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Doubt was bandaged up & put to bed - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Craving wisdom, he bites into memory - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Moving from reverie to reverie - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Learning why one envies the octopus for its ink - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

How a man's skin becomes the final page - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems"

Snow falling inside two minds - Yusef Komunyakaa "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova"

A touch of dawn was again nightfall - Yusef Komunyakaa "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova"

Their room furnished with scattered papers - Yusef Komunyakaa "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova"

Reflect the burning icy stars of poetry - Yusef Komunyakaa "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova"

Where privilege & squalor lived beneath the same ornate ceiling - Yusef Komunyakaa "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova"

Lit the air around those neoclassic nights - Yusef Komunyakaa "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova"

& anger almost kept them warm - Yusef Komunyakaa "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova"

Where tears brought them to laughter - Yusef Komunyakaa "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova"

Rides a shadow at daybreak - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Devil Comes on Horseback"

A windmill of torches - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Devil Comes on Horseback"

Beg with words of the unborn - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Devil Comes on Horseback"

Hiding inside the black granite - Yusef Komunyakaa "Facing It"

The profile of night slanted against morning - Yusef Komunyakaa "Facing It"

Depending on the light to make a difference - Yusef Komunyakaa "Facing It"

To find my own in letters like smoke - Yusef Komunyakaa "Facing It"

Lost his right arm inside the stone - Yusef Komunyakaa "Facing It"

In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names - Yusef Komunyakaa "Facing It"

Sit in the ghostly chair in a big room of unnatural things - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

Before I entered their blue house for the third time - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

In raw wood & metal remembering her shape - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

A dance to take away hurt in memory - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

How Frida had risen to see her double world - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

I am dreams painted onto the skin - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

As one's body leaned on a promise - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

As a young woman who knew steel - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

Ask why he sold her painted visions - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

Paint a dark, salty blood of surreal skies & wet soil - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

Dewy blooms with a knowledge of her ancients - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

My body forever pierced by some iron spear - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

Casting it all in a mirror - Yusef Komunyakaa "Frida's Earth Mother"

Days of splintered shadows - Yusef Komunyakaa "Guernica"

Whispering a stone's promise - Yusef Komunyakaa "Guernica"

The brain's glacial weather - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Helmet"

To make the light pivot - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Helmet"

Made the shadows kneel - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Helmet"

Blur the club into a blue fantasia - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

As if a cat traversed my path beneath the evening star - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

Lost among November cotton flowers - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

The trumpet's almost kissed by enough pain - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

A few more years, a few more ghosts to embrace - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

Counting each drop of sweat paid in tribute - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

Jasmine rising from a valley somewhere in Egypt - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

A white moon opening countless false mouths of laughter - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

With the headlights of trucks aimed at their backs - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

The knowing scent hidden in each bloom - Yusef Komunyakaa "Jasmine"

Broken out of ice - Yusef Komunyakaa ‘from “The Last Bohemian of Avenue A”’

Speaking pain & joy - Yusef Komunyakaa ‘from “The Last Bohemian of Avenue A”’

At the foot of Babel - Yusef Komunyakaa ‘from “The Last Bohemian of Avenue A”’

Teach the shadows - Yusef Komunyakaa ‘from “The Last Bohemian of Avenue A”’

A goddess in a world mastered by repetition - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Leopard"

Pacing off light hidden in darkness - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Leopard"

An answer of the oldest unspoken question - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Leopard"

Listening for a falling star, a river running over stones - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Leopard"

The mitigated laws of kingdom, district, & tribe - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Leopard"

Crouches down inside her longing - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Leopard"

One great leap away from a wild, simple knowledge - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Leopard"

Blood-lit veins on leaves left quivering - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Leopard"

Out of dust & chance - Yusef Komunyakaa "Love in the Time of War"

At a gate of truth in myth - Yusef Komunyakaa "Love in the Time of War"

Lost themselves in reflected rivers - Yusef Komunyakaa "Love in the Time of War"

Weighing the planet in his palm - Yusef Komunyakaa "Love in the Time of War"

Can't unbutton promises - Yusef Komunyakaa "Love in the Time of War"

Your effigy of moonlight - Yusef Komunyakaa "Love in the Time of War"

Into a breathless country - Yusef Komunyakaa "Love in the Time of War"

Cutting black shapes into the sky - Yusef Komunyakaa "Nighthawks"

The wet silver of quick wings open against eternity - Yusef Komunyakaa "Nighthawks"

As if to erase an end with a beginning - Yusef Komunyakaa "Nighthawks"

Several lifetimes behind him - Yusef Komunyakaa "Ota Benga at Edenkraal"

Not sure of the paths & turns taken - Yusef Komunyakaa "Ota Benga at Edenkraal"

Woozy in a swarm of hues - Yusef Komunyakaa "Ota Benga at Edenkraal"

Could hear a drum underneath these voices - Yusef Komunyakaa "Ota Benga at Edenkraal"

Showed them the secret of stealing honey - Yusef Komunyakaa "Ota Benga at Edenkraal"

A hoot owl called to the moon - Yusef Komunyakaa "Ota Benga at Edenkraal"

He bowed to the shine of the gun - Yusef Komunyakaa "Ota Benga at Edenkraal"

Where the false terrain begins - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Panorama"

Unfurled in the wounded daylight - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Panorama"

Listen to the wind beg - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Surge"

The tree between me & a sniper's bullet - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

Telling me which foot to put down first - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

Deflecting the ricochet against that anarchy of dusk - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

Wrapped up in a woman's wild colors - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

Gleaming metal reflecting how it is to be broken - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

As we played some deadly game for blind gods - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

I'm still falling through its silence - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

Why the intrepid sun touched the bayonet - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

Something stood among those lost trees - Yusef Komunyakaa "Thanks"

Embossed letters to ghosts - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Towers"

Plumes of disbelieving dust - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Towers"

When happiness is caught off guard - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Towers"

Into tombs of burning silence - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Towers"

Blinded by the moon's indifference - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Towers"

Save your heart from the crows - Yusef Komunyakaa "Warhorses"

As gods out of a dream - Yusef Komunyakaa "Warhorses"

Corralled by the dead - Yusef Komunyakaa "Warhorses"

Into an undreamt vista of stardust - Yusef Komunyakaa "Warhorses"

He has bribed the thorns - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Warlord's Garden"

Form a galaxy of fantasies - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Warlord's Garden"

A key to a door in the sky - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Sonorous as the queen bee's fat hum - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

The dragon trapped below iron, bricks, & wood - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Blue jays & redbirds wove light through leaves - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Something dead under the foundation - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Walk across the field of goldenrod and mustard weeds - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Burned sweat and salt into afternoon - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Wild geese moved like a wedge between sky and sagebrush - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Pyramids of russet sawdust formed - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Under corrugated blowpipes fifty feet high - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Controlling clocks on kitchen walls - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

His dreams slouched into an aftershock - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Oscillating dances in a broken room - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

A canvas zigzagged with questions - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

As dusky birds brushed blues into a montage - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

The psychosis behind Birth of a Nation - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Left the gladioli & zinnias maimed - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Double dares took root in night soil - Yusef Komunyakaa "The Whistle"

Belongs to a girl still burning inside my head - Yusef Komunyakaa "You and I Are Disappearing"

A skirt of flames dances around her at dusk - Yusef Komunyakaa "You and I Are Disappearing"

While she burns like a sack of dry ice - Yusef Komunyakaa "You and I Are Disappearing"

A tiger under a rainbow at nightfall - Yusef Komunyakaa "You and I Are Disappearing"

Burns like a shot of vodka - Yusef Komunyakaa "You and I Are Disappearing"

A burning bush driven by a godawful wind - Yusef Komunyakaa "You and I Are Disappearing"


A bouquet of myrrh, viper flesh, & honey - Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung "from 'Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters'"

Back through the silver mirror - Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung "from 'Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters'"


Poet's Wikipedia page.


Navigation Links:
Go to K author index.
Go to author indices.
Go to word indices.
Go to category indices.