Potential Titles: Musical Instruments [Category]

As always, broadly defined.

Accordian:
Raining on the accordion chest of the sea - Cynthia Dewi Oka "American Abyss"

Alto:
One alto note of joy is gone - Annie Fellows Johnston "October"

Bagpipe:
Who pours out his soul through the bagpipes - Oliver Herford "An Alphabet of Celebrities"

And omened bagpipe screaming - Iris Tree "[What have I to do with them]"

Band.

Banjo:
Make our rag-time banjo hum - George Reginald Margetson "Stanzas from The Fledgling Bard and The Poetry Society"

Sang rhapsodies on an old banjo - Richard Solomon "How Nightmares Began"

Bard.

Baritone:
Solo of magma, baritone of fantasia - Diane Mehta "Landscape with Double Bow"

Remember the ram's horn baritone - Brandon Som "Resistors"

Bass:
Distorted trumpet, torn bass line - Carl Adamshick "New year's morning"

Bass tremors of a memory - Julie Babcock "Bright Light"

The fly's bass turned a lion's roar - John Clare "I Hid My Love"

As the bass player knocked out the bottom line - David St. John "Los Angeles, 1954"

Bassoon:
noon the implacable bassoon - E. E. Cummings "Songs (III)"

With his deep bassoon chimes in the frog - Alfred B. Street "One of the 'Southern Tier of Counties'" [Graham's Magazine v.XXII no.12, Dec. 1848]

Bell.

Big Band:
In the mote that made the big band bang - Mike Allen "Pulse"

Bugle.

Calliope:
The gaudy calliope of the mind - Anthony Butts "All Saints' Day"

Blowing a calliope of promises - Conrad Hilberry "Four Kentucky Poems: Rivers"

To keep the calliope of dreams from sounding - Kiki Petrosino "Young"

Castanet:
Castanets from a jukebox we couldn't see - Edgar Kunz "Tuning"

Cello:
The song of a cello played by flame - William Brewer "Appalachia, Your Genesis"

A cello forgiving one note as it goes - Jane Hirshfield "Zero Plus Anything Is a World"

Were banging God's Throne with their cellos - Herbert E. Palmer "Air Raid"

When cellos shoulder the tune - A.E. Stallings "Prelude"

Chime.

Choir/Chorus.

Clarinet:
The last note of a clarinet - fahima ife "means of evasion"

The e-flat clarinet chases time - Joan Larkin "The Combo"

The music of rum and a sad clarinet - Alden Nowlen "The Last Waltz"

Clarion.

Contralto:
Vibrating like a dusty contralto - Linda Susan Jackson "Nailing Things Down"

A hundred thousand pure contraltos - Mary Oliver "Stars"

Cornet:
Lifted his ordinary cornet and blew the world away - T.R. Hummer "Who Remembers Davenport"

Coronet.

Cymbal:
The shallow sound of cymbal-stroke - Edward Dowden "Eurydice"

In the wild thyme crash cymbals - Louis Golding "Shepherd Singing Ragtime"

Dinner-Bell:
Before they ring the dinner-bells - "Secrets" [A Jolly Jingle Book (ed. by Laura Chandler). 1913]

Drum.

Dulcimer:
Touched aeolian dulcimers - Sidney Royse Lysaght "The Forest"

Jealous of that dulcimer - Diane Raptosh "Ours Is the Age of Pre-Post-Hope"

Fiddle.

Flute.

French Horn:
Through the spiral of a French horn - Christopher Kondrich "Division of Labor"

Gong:
The cuckoos beat their brazen gongs - John Davidson "Down-a-down"

The echoing song of a coppery gong - Edward Lear "The Jumblies"

And smite horizons like a gong - Lola Ridge "Firehead part I: He 1: Midafternoon"

Grand Piano:
A grand piano balancing on the tip of a fishhook - John McCarthy "Pickup Truck"

Guitar.

Harmonica:
Informed by a faint harmonica grieving - Diane DeCillis "Quiet Rooms"

Poetry housed in a harmonica - Joseph O. Legaspi "Whom You Love"

Harmonium:
An untuned harmonium that Muzaks our nights and days - Charles Wright "Music for Midsummer's Eve"

Harp.

Harpsicord:
Pirouetted with piquant harpsichord arpeggios - Juan Felipe Herrera "Saturday Night at the Buddhist Cinema"

the harpsichord of dead lovers - Frank Stanford "The Mind Reader"

Horn.

Hornpipe:
With a hornpipe in its heels - Herbert Randall "Off"

Instrument.

Jukebox:
Punched the saddest numbers on the jukebox - Mary Karr "Diogenes the Bartender Closes Up"

Castanets from a jukebox we couldn't see - Edgar Kunz "Tuning"

Watch your heart like a jukebox - Frank Stanford "The Visitors of Night"

Need a jukebox for a throat - Jake Adam York "Letter Written in Black Water and Pearl"

Kazoo:
Covering Beowulf's greatest hits on your tin kazoo - Catherynne M. Valente "What the Dragon Said: A Love Story"

Kettle-Drum:
We shall know by the kettle-drums - R.L. Gales "Waiting for the Kings"

All the merry kettle-drums - John Masefield "Cavalier"

Lute.

Lyre.

Mandolin:
Lulled by a jester's mandolin - Iris Tree "[I should like to say to the world]"

Minstrel.

Oboe:
A concerto's saddest oboe - Erin Belieu "As for the Heart"

As the oboe lights the pure torch - A.E. Stallings "Prelude"

Orchestra.

Organ.

Pan-Pipe:
My own bouts of pan-pipe sickness - Grace Nichols "Lost in Translation"

Pennywhistle:
A siren song turned pennywhistle - Cynthia Zarin "Ouija Board"

Piano.

Pipe.

Saxophone.

Siren.

Sleigh-Bell:
Ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow - Robert Frost "Hyla Brook"

Soprano:
Her soprano spare and sharp in the night air - Danusha Laméris "Bonfire Opera"

A line of melody sings soprano - Judy Patterson Wenzel "Brussels"

Mozart's soprano stitches the heart together - John Moncure Wettarau "Wally's Poem"

Tambourine.

Tenor.

Timbale:
Loud timbales and drums blasting down - Major Jackson "Mighty Pawns"

Trombone.

Troubadour:
A troubadour upon the elm - Emily Dickinson "Book 1: Nature I"

The Troubadour's wild song is waking - Felicia Hemans "The Troubadour and Richard Coeur de Lion"

The beauty of clashing troubadours - Mari Ness "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Dragon"

From the mouth of a wax museum troubadour - Diane Seuss "Folk Song"

Trumpet.

Tuba:
Our tubas concerned with what's original - Vickie Vertiz "Under the Spell of Conjunto"

Ukulele:
A chorus of trumpets and ukuleles - John McCarthy "On the Day I Left Town"

Torches at the kingdom's ukelele gate - Carol Muske-Dukes "After Skate"

Viol.

Viola:
To revel in the viola and violin - Clive Bell "Letter to a Lady II"

We all danced with straw stuffed violas - Juan Felipe Herrera "Saturday Night at the Buddhist Cinema"

Violin.

Voice.

Whistle.

Wind Chime:
Joining the orchestra of wind chimes & rattling window panes - Geoffrey Jacques "Amulet"

With the trellis heavied by wind chimes - Janine Joseph "The Persistence of Symptoms"

Woodwind:
A woodwind inside the empire of still people - fahima ife "means of evasion"

Xylophone:
A xylophone jingle of the ice - Jaswinder Bolina "Make Believe"

Play a tune on xylophonic ribs - Drew Pisarra "Sonnet 8"

Zither:
Zither of chromatic scale - A.E. Stallings "Momentary"


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Potential Titles: Musical Tools and Terms [Category]

Adagio:
Why do you play that long beautiful adagio - Alfred Kreymborg "Improvisation"

The adagio echoes in that whitewashed cave - Alexandra Lytton Regalado "The Garden of Earthly Delights"

Amplify:
Insistence, amplification of - Douglas Kearney "The Irregular and/or Anti- and Ante- Regulative"

Arpeggio:
Wading love's amber arpeggios - Terry Blackhawk "Sonny Rollins and the redemptive handrail"

Pirouetted with piquant harpsichord arpeggios - Juan Felipe Herrera "Saturday Night at the Buddhist Cinema"

An arpeggio climbing the ladder of sky - Danusha Laméris "Bonfire Opera"

The invisible arpeggio of a hummingbird's wing - Kiki Petrosino "The Wish"

Arrhythmic:
While one temple pulses an arrhythmic lament - Teri Ellen Cross Davis "Migraines have their say"

Backbeat:
The backbeat of a world of great machines - Roz Kaveney "Twelve Steampunk Sonnets: Things Lost"

Cadence.

Cassette:
Suitcases full of spices and cassettes - Hala Alyan "The Female of the Species"

Chord.

Crescendo.

Croon.

Dance.

Descant:
Their amorous descant join - Thomas Gray "On the Death of Richard West"

To drink in all thy bold descant - Robert Nichols "A Faun's Holiday"

Diapason.

Discord.

Dissonance:
An insignificant harmony or dissonance - Alfred Kreymborg "Under Glass"

The dissonance of unbridled wind - Philip Schultz "Luxury: Three"

E-Flat:
The e-flat clarinet chases time - Joan Larkin "The Combo"

Encore:
Still he writes an encore - Cintia Santana "apocalyptic lyric"

The floating notes of festival encores - Amber Tamblyn "To a New Dawning"

Glissando:
That otherworldly moaning glissando - Daniel Zeiders "Tornado Sirens"

Half-note:
Half-note in the flood - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Hvmken 1"

Harmonics:
The witchcraft of harmonic sound - W.H.C. Hosmer "The Might of Song"

Plucked entirely in harmonics - Hoa Nguyen "Learning the Dan Bau"

Harmony.

Jingle.

Major:
Danced into your warm major chords and velvet vibrato - Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li "Ave Maria"

Metronome.

Minor.

Minor-key:
Lost and missed in minor-key pentameter - Debra Allbery "Sidereal"

Music.

Note.

Octave.

Off-Key:
Played the makings of a masterpiece off-key - Emily Ruth Verona "A Shiva"

Percussion:
Whistle a melody against the percussion - Rachelle Cruz "Aswang Paces Outside of Kaiser Permanente Hospital"

the rum barrel hollowed out and beaten into percussion - Malcolm Friend "Caliban Theory"

Pizzicato:
A pizzicato off the thin strings of hope - Christopher Buckley "Prayer To Escape The East"

Playlist:
A playlist that unfolded across her decades - Yee Heng Yeh "Song"

Quarter Note:
All burning in the quarter notes - Stephen Kuusisto "Essay on November"

Rhyme.

Rhythm.

Riff:
Another riff about the now of then - Diane DeCillis "Quiet Rooms"

Sing/Sang/Sung.

Skirl:
let him pass as ravens skirl in his wake - Deborah L. Davitt "Unbound" [Strange Horizons 24 Feb. 2025]

Sound.

Staccato:
Repeat their joyous, staccato syllables - Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge "Singing"

Fire set by the staccato of man's rhythm - Paul Cameron Brown "Fortress Snow"

Chatters in mechanical staccato - Ernest Hemingway "Mitraigliatrice"

Piping in silvery thin sweet staccato - Lola Ridge "The Ghetto"

Strum.

Tempo:
Over the dream of a collective tempo - Diane Mehta "Gala Noise"

Thrum:
Thrumming in spacious forever - Adam Fell "Sorry I Don't Feel Like Talking About Golf Today"

The thrumming wilderness of self - Donika Kelly "Out West"

Wake to hear the engines of the night thrumming - Stanley Kunitz "The Abduction"

A resonance of thrumming spruce - Kiki Petrosino "Vigil"

Timbre:
The tone and the timbre - Cristina Rivera Garza "Saturday, April 17, 2010 12:49" transl. by Ilana Luna and Cheyla Samuelson

But the blood has suspended its timbre - D.H. Lawrence "Evolutions of Soldiers"

The hollow timbre of any submerged god - Jamaal May "Letter to Matthew

Treble:
Treble circumstance must confirm the verdict - Countee Cullen "To My Fairer Brethren"

The treble of the rills - John Greenleaf Whittier "The Pipes at Lucknow"

Nets a flustered treble note - Cynthia Zarin "Orbit"

Tremolo:
Where the wail and tremolo of loon song collect - Keith Taylor "The Guest Cabin"

Trill.

Tune.

Vibrato:
Danced into your warm major chords and velvet vibrato - Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li "Ave Maria"

A unanimous vibrato of frogs - Pablo Neruda "Lautreamont Reconquered" transl. by Maria Jacketti

Warble.


Navigation Links:
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Potential Titles: Money/Finance Adjacent [category]

Account.

Advertise:
A misguided advertisement for new desires - Zaina Alsous "Subjunctive"

The only advertised long term solution - Anahita Monfared "The Manic Depressive's Alphabet"

Camouflaged as a vodka ad - Philip Schultz "Aardvarks"

Advertise a propensity for dark-red - Crystal Sidell "The Truth About Doppelgangers"

Alimony:
The self stripped of alimonies, stripped of pearls - Amie Whittemore "Lunar Eclipse"

Appraise:
Appraise the aggravated fortune of the stranded millions - Bruce Boston "The Canticles of Rage"

Appraising indolent idol's eye - Lola Ridge "Manhattan Lights"

And later men appraise me in the quarrels of poets - Humbert Wolfe "Dedication [for Shylock Reasons with Mr. Chesterton]"

Auction:
Auctioned into bone notes - Zaina Alsous "Dead as a Dodo"

On the auction-block of Manifest Destiny - James Baldwin “Song (for Skip)”

storage locker of unpaid bills and auctioned objects - Asiya Wadud "number four"

Audit:
Always auditing where two and two are five - Edwin Arlington Robinson "The False Gods"

Balance-Sheet:
As he closed his balance-sheet - W.P.P. "Epistle to the Editor" (The Knickerbocker v.23:5, May 1844)

Bank.

Banker:
How time, the cruel banker, forecloses us - D.A. Powell "corydon & alexis, redux"

Bargain.

Barter.

Bazaar:
In a court of witch bazars [sic] - Vachel Lindsay "A Doll's 'Arabian Nights'"

In that defunct bazaar - Edmund Clarence Stedman "The Ballad of Lager Bier"

Roaming bazaars and sun-weathered ruins - Pramila Venkateswaran "Body Language"

Bill:
storage locker of unpaid bills and auctioned objects - Asiya Wadud "number four"

Borrow.

Bottom Line:
A heart attack on the bottom line - Russell Brakefield "Field Recordings"

Determined to drag one down to their bottom line - G. O. Clark "Some Zombies One Should Avoid"

As the bass player knocked out the bottom line - David St. John "Los Angeles, 1954"

Broker:
And the sword was a broker of doom - James Elroy Flecker "War Song of the Saracens"

Budget:
Budgets of dream-dust - Edwin Markham "The Wharf of Dreams"

Your decibels and vehement budget - Alice Notley "The New Brain"

Business.

Businessman:
Towering bellows of babbling businessmen - Nancy Mercado "I Have Seen"

Capitalism:
Distinguish capitalism from cannibalism - Jessica Kim "Montage"

The mechanisms of late capitalism keeping us fed - Meep Matsushima "The Believers"

Cargo.

Commerce/Commercial.

Commodify:
A commodifying media and its monopolizing imagination - upfromsumdirt [aka Ron Davis] "The Hero with the African Face"

Contract.

Corporate:
The corporate symbol of my heart - John Grey "Distant People Gravitate to Distant Worlds"

Entering the negative space of a corporate behemoth - David Henderson "Blues Franchise"

Which keeps hobos poor and corporations rich - Wallace Irwin "The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor"

Cost.

Credit/Discredit.

Divest:
Divested the attention of the wind - Paul Cameron Brown "Investiture"

Dividend:
Long dead before Hollywood dividends could ever come - G. O. Clark "Mary Has a Prophetic Vision"

Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows - Siegfried Sassoon "Dreamers"

Dividends of damage - John Updike "One Tough Keratosis"

Down Payment:
Down payments on possibility - torrin a. greathouse "The Body of a Girl Lies on the Asphalt Like the Body of a Girl"

not my down payment or my dowery - Sam Sax "My Hole. My Whole"

A down payment on restraint - Josephine Yu "Plea of the Penitent"

Economy.

Embargo:
The chill embargo of the snow - John Greenleaf Whittier "Snow-Bound"

Potential Titles: Employment [category].

Enterprise.

Equity:
By equities of self-defence - Arthur Hugh Clough "Dipsychus"

The great equity of darkness - Emily Pittinos "A Cloud of Drench Bearing Down"

Exec/Executive:
The ethereal execs in the celestial penthouse - Mike Allen and Ian Watson "Seventh Coming"

The lone executive who has wandered this far into summer - Rita Dove "Vacation"

Expense/Expensive.

Export:
Violence exported as luxury - Carmen Gimenez "Post-Identity"

Using the Past's own export vessels - Rachel Rodman "The Past Is a Foreign Country"

Factory.

Fare.

Fee:
Our souls in fee for Circe's glamour - Herve Noel le Breton "The Burden of Lost Souls" (translated by W.J. Robertson)

Frugal.

Fund:
A fund to train young imps - James Russell Lowell "Fitz Adam's Story"

Guarantee/Guarantor:
Which is guaranteed not to germinate - Duane Ackerson "Bird Seed"

Not enough to guarantee safe voyage - Yona Harvey "Dark and Lovely After Take-Off (A Future)"

Shine as a guarantor for my hopes - Ahmet Igamberdi "My Star" transl. by Munawwar Abdulla

Guaranteed to harness the departed souls - Alyza Taguilaso "Add to Cart"

Haggle:
Haggling with contradiction - Nick Laird "Miscegenation"

Huckster:
The base hucksters of sophistry - Tommaso Campanella "XXXVII. On the Lord's Prayer. No.1" transl. by John Addington Symonds

Gold-seeking hucksters in a noble land - Richard Le Gallienne "Christmas in War-Time"

Import:
An accidental import from Spain - Troy Jollimore "On the Origins of Things"

Wretched importers of the sublime - Fady Joudah "Every Hour Has an Animal"

To import forgetfulness in me - William Shakespeare "Sonnet CXXII"

Indemnify:
Of any possible disaster indemnified routine - Elizabeth Bradfield "Signing on Again"

Industry.

Insure/Insurance.

Interest:
Bars accumulating like compound interest - Gabrielle Civil "Three of Cups"

Invest.

Invoice:
Will contact you with a separate invoice - Katie Condon "The Insurance Representative Tells Me How Much the Baby's Delivery Will Cost"

Lease.

Ledger.

Lend/Lent.

Lessee:
Pours a gloomy torrent on the pale lessees - Charles Baudelaire "Spleen" transl. by Richard Howard

Loan.

Mall.

Market/Marketplace.

Mart.

Meed.

Mercenary:
Outposts filled with Saturn's mercenaries - Dorsey Craft "The Pirate Anne Bonny and I Play Video Games"

Whose hopes are shaped by mercenaries - Marianne Moore "The Paper Nautilus"

Merchandise:
Strange merchants of a stranger merchandise - Elinor Jenkins "Wind-pedlars"

The great machinery of merchandising - Stuart Kestenbaum "Prayer in the Strip Mall, Bangor, Maine"

Winter with its gloomy merchandise - Pablo Neruda "The Human Condition" transl. by Alastair Reid

Our merchandise with tansy bound - William Bell Scott "The Witch's Ballad"

Merchant:
In vain the merchant bars his door - Palmer Cox "The Brownies' Candy-Pull"

Strange merchants of a stranger merchandise - Elinor Jenkins "Wind-pedlars"

Storefront merchants hawking our wares - Jennifer G. Lai "In My Mind's Coral, Mother Still Calls Us from Inside"

Mortgage:
A mortgage statement wrapped around an artichoke - Brooke Abbey "How to Adult"

The mortgage closed, outruns the lease - W. Wilfred Campbell "The Last Prayer"

Taking out a next mortgage on my soul - Kwame Dawes "Alado Seanadra"

Mortgaged the brightest corners - Amaud Jamaul Johnson "The Wall"

Parlay:
how to parlay a no good into something better - Ed Roberson "American Quartet"

Pay/Paid.

Payment.

Peddle.

Premium:
Pay your premium of vulgarity - Johannes V. Jensen "At Memphis Station" transl. by S. Foster Damon

Prepaid:
Cloaked in a prepaid identity - Gregory Pardlo "Epistemology of the Phone Booth"

Price.

Produce/Product.

Profit.

Property.

Prosper.

Purchase.

Receipt:
A life's receipts in black and white - Elizabeth Bartlett "The Test"

Those unreadable receipts at the bottom of a purse - Janet Kauffman "Zooplankton and More"

Receipts blurred beyond recognition - Stuart Kestenbaum "Starting the Subaru at Five Below"

No space for receipt of a fly - Anonymous "Love's Enterprise"

Remit:
And remit them not in peace - John Donne "Love's Growth"

Remunerate:
Remuneration inadequate to our worth - William Hodgson Ellis "The Lyric League"

In the habit of tardy remunerations - Adrian Matejka "& Later,"

Rent.

Repay:
A tiger well repay the trouble and expense - Hilaire Belloc "The Bad Children's Book of Beasts: The Tiger"

To be repaid by darker hate - "The Misanthrope"

Have repaid my love with guile - "The Misanthrope"

Repays their cost of tears - Isaac Rosenberg "My Hours"

Revenue:
Eternal revenue of memory and feeling - Henri Cole "Dune"

Sale:
Ferris wheel with tickets for sale - Stephanie Heit "Solar Eclipse"

Traveling the planet under racks of final sales - Idra Novey "Value City"

Easy sales of lasting pleasure - Francis Quarles "The World's Fallacies"

The for-sale sign impales the front pasture - Margo Taft Stever "For Sale"

Secondhand:
Naught but a second-hand dealer in Light - Oliver Herford "A Little Book of Bores"

Who appreciates secondhand revelations of wolves - Elizabeth Woody "Meetings"

Sell/Sold.

Shop:
Time stops in a tea shop - Mary Jo Bang "The Raven Feeds Reynard"

But a shop of toys and trifles - Ben Jonson "To the World. A Farewell for a Gentlewoman, Virtuous and Noble"

In my barbershop of thoughts - Ilya Kaminsky "Before the War, We Made a Child"

Solicit:
Goaded by soliciting light - Lola Ridge "After the Recital (To Roland Hayes)"

Tinder so long unsolicited by flame - June Jordan "Poem for Nana"

Spend/Spent.

Statement.

Stock Exchange:
That roam the stock exchanges of the earth - Nancy Mercado "I Have Seen"

Stock Market:
Disintegrating worldwide stock markets - Nancy Mercado "2020 A Year to Forget"

Sue:
Sue before your crystal throne - Joyce Kilmer "For a Birthday"

Surcharge:
Rain-surcharged and sun-forsaken - George Meredith "A Preaching from a Spanish Ballad"

Swap:
Swap you last-minute with a dream - Katy Bond "Sestina for a Friend Misplaced and Recovered"

Swapped prayer for sharp screams - Ajanae Dawkins "How to Witness a Miracle Without Converting"

Where we swapped faces in haste - Yousif M. Qasmiyeh "The bomb shelter"

Syndicate:
Doomsday's a syndicated affair - Stephen Oliver "Zionism"

Tax.

Tenant.

Thrift.

Till:
From the town and the field and the till and the cart - A.E. Housman "A Shropshire Lad XXIII"

Tithe:
Render up in song your tithes - Countee Cullen "Dialogue"

Scarce a tithe of all that host that won back home again - "Holger Danske and Stout Didrik" transl. by E.M. Smith-Dampier

Ten by ten tithes have been paid in a dazzling of leaves - Kelly Stewart "The Bandit King"

Lay the gold tithings barren - Dylan Thomas "I see the boys of summer"

Toll.

Trade.

Transaction:
On our small, transactional earth - Megan Fernandes "On the One Hand"

Unpaid:
The unpaid labor of angels - Zaina Alsous "On having begun"

An unpaid wrecking crew - Geoffrey Brock "Forever Street"

And planted in plots paid and unpaid - Edward Hirsch "Liberty Brass"

Wallet.

Ware:
Hiding his poisonous ware - Tommaso Campanella "XXXIV. Hypocrites" transl. by John Addington Symonds

Though all my wares be trash - "Fine Knacks for Ladies"

Storefront merchants hawking our wares - Jennifer G. Lai "In My Mind's Coral, Mother Still Calls Us from Inside"

Make haste to bring your wares to light - Friedrich Schiller "The Hypochondriacal Pluto"

Worth.


Navigation Links:
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Potential Titles: Musical Works & Styles [Category]

Anthem.

Antiphon:
In the antiphony of afterglow and rising full moon - Robert Frost "Waiting-- Afield at Dusk"

Diverse as Hell's mad antiphone - Clark Ashton Smith "The Star Treader"

Aria.

Ballad.

Birdsong.

Blues.

Canticle:
Can still evoke the canticles of rage - Bruce Boston "The Canticles of Rage"

The echo and whine of a canticle - Laura Cranehill "We Let You Live"

Uplifts their voice in canticle to moon and sun - Mary Soon Lee "Aubade from the After Days"

My intimate canticles of praise - Theodore Maynard "Gratitude"

Carol:
Where the gray linnets carol - James Beattie "The Minstrel; or, the Progress of Genius, book I"

Ascend in ceaseless carol - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Life LII"

The wren upon the tree-stump carolled - John Masefield "The Return"

Chant.

Chantey:
Our island sang four chanteys - Fran Wilde "The Ghost Tide Chantey: Ebb"

Concert.

Concerto:
A concerto's saddest oboe - Erin Belieu "As for the Heart"

Dirge.

Disco:
In the forgotten astronomies of disco - Adrian Matejka "Map to the Stars"

Duet:
Singing duets with the roses - Katherine Edgren "Unheard Melody"

A shadowy duet of parsimony and elegance - Sandra Kasturi "Carnaval Perpetuel"

Etude:
From the solitary etudes of the soul - Alberto Rios "On Gathering Artists"

Fanfare.

Fugue.

Hip-Hop:
Street-smart hip-hop of starling song - Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris "starling"

Hornpipe:
With a hornpipe in its heels - Herbert Randall "Off"

Hosanna:
When a streak of grey engraves hosannas of moonlight - Christopher Buckley "Desire"

Reluctant hosannas - Patricia Smith "Building Nicole's Mama"

The willow's chartreuse hosannas - Richard Solomon "After Reading the Love Songs of Vidyapati"

Hymn.

Jazz.

Jig.

Jingle.

Knell.

Lament.

Litany.

Lullaby.

Lyric.

Madrigal:
Startling the wood bird's madrigal - Amber aka Martha Everts Holden "The Brook"

Spill mirth in tangled madrigals - Don Marquis "October"

Mambo:
My aunts danced the mambo - Jaime Manrique "Mambo" transl. by Edith Grossman

Medley:
A dreary medley of weary days - Cora C. Bass "Thoughts of You"

A crash of the strings and a medley of rage and mirth - Rose Hawthorne Lathrop "The Violin"

In a medley of tongues - Ella Wheeler Wilcox "War: The Men-Made Gods"

Melody.

Muzak:
An untuned harmonium that Muzaks our nights and days - Charles Wright "Music for Midsummer's Eve"

Nocturne:
A nocturne of toxic manufacture - Timothy Donnelly "Globus Hystericus"

Compose a nocturne of cinders - Jamaal May "A Brief History of Hostility"

Obbligato/Obligato:
Have heard the junkman's obbligato - Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Autobiography"

A short obligato of curses - Frank E. Smedley "Maude Allinghame: A Legend of Hertforshire"

Ode:
Made grand odes of tempest - Louis Golding "The Singer of High State"

Where the country has an ode's jagged edges - J.D. McClatchy "A Winter Without Snow"

Spray paint odes for boarded up storefronts - Barbara Jane Reyes "Downtown Oakland Poem"

Opera.

Overture:
Dreamed through half my overture - James Russell Lowell "Fitz Adam's Story"

Made to it an invertebrate overture - Aditi Machado "then"

Prelude:
The prelude of approaching storms - William Falconer "The Shipwreck: Canto I"

The beginning, some prelude you seek - Alfred Kreymborg "Improvisation"

Psalm.

Rag-Time:
Who rattles off a rag-time con - Wallace Irwin "An Inside Con to Refined Guys"

Make our rag-time banjo hum - George Reginald Margetson "Stanzas from The Fledgling Bard and The Poetry Society"

Whistling ragtime against the sunsets - Carl Sandburg "The Windy City"

A tattered flag's ragtime softshoe these lines will never do - L. Lamar Wilson "Lauren Oya Olamina Explains Earthseed to Ernest Hemingway"

Recital:
Practicing our recitals of silence - Claire Millikin "Antique Doll"

Refrain.

Requiem.

Rhapsody.

Rockabilly:
And realized rockabilly would never go away - Dean Young "Romanticism 101" [Poetry July/August 2014]

Rondel:
And they could whistle a roundel true - Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman "Two Little Birds in Blue"

Roundelay:
Afford a subject for your roundelays - Philip Lybbe Powys Lybbe "The Lay of the Sheriff"

Serenade:
Serenades us with explosive flares - Sue Budin "Totality"

As they serenade the ghosts of our adversaries - Woody Dismukes "A Conversation Between the Embalmed Heads of Lampião and Maria Bonita on Public Display at the Baiano State Forensic Institute, Circa Mid-20th Century"

And serenade you at dawn and dusk - Aziz Isa Elkun "The Spring Bird" transl. by author

Solo:
Solo of magma, baritone of fantasia - Diane Mehta "Landscape with Double Bow"

My heart does a solo - Willie Perdomo "Hustler's Song"

Who can play a solo symphony - Drew Pisarra "Sonnet 33 1/3"

Sonata:
Sonatas from the throats of master birds - Lola Ridge "Under-Song"

The scarlet rhapsodies and beryl-cold sonatas - Iris Tree "[O faces that look so coldly at me]"

Turning bones into sonatas - Ocean Vuong "Queen Under the Hill"

Song.

Soundtrack:
How it needs a good soundtrack - Hala Alyan "Object Permanence"

Symphony.

Tango:
No tango in its Rorschach - Jaswinder Bolina "Portrait of the Self"

Tango in the hot, ochered light - Hailey Leithauser "O, She Says"

Te Deum:
Sing a blasphemous Te Deum - Iris Tree "[You pass as in a drugged delirium]"

Threnody:
Who march to a weird threnody - Ardelia Maria Barton "Life's Music"

Bridges without a trace of threnody - Chris Dombrowski "Fluvial"

Replied in threnodies through bones - Ann K. Schwader "Finale, Act Two"

Who wove their threnody with foot & flute - Ann K. Schwader "The Winds of Sesqua Valley"

Toccata:
Breaks into chaos toccatas & fugues - Richard Solomon "Writing Itself"

Tocsin:
Strokes of tocsin and assassin's knife - Emile Verhaeren "Les Villages Illusoires: The Rope-Maker" transl. by Alma Strettell

Torch Song:
Singing the torch song of the amnesiac - Herman Beavers "On Seventh Avenue at Stop-Time"

The glass key of a torch song - John Wieners "Forthcoming"

Tune.

Verse.

Waltz.

Work-Song:
The work-song of the early bees - Fanny Kemble "To the Spring"

Yodel:
With an abject knight yodeling his head off - Edward Hirsch "Amour Honestus"


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

Potential Titles: Machine/Device/Vehicle Parts [category]

Potential Titles: Vehicles [category].


AI:
Like AI hanging over us doesn't hang - Mike Tyler "Palazzo Tartaruga"

Anchor.

Android:
In the lyrics of songs written by androids - Fiona Lu "Turing Test"

The fantasy of cyborgs and androids - Elizabeth Kestrel Rogers "Spare Parts"

Apparatus:
Apparatus for detecting fog - E.J. Pratt "Overheard in a Cove"

The self's delicate apparatus crumpled - Vijay Seshadri "Goya's Mired Men Fighting with Cudgels"

The self's delicate apparatus crumpled in the wide pan of the brain - Vijay Seshadri "Goya's Mired Men Fighting with Cudgels"

Appliance:
A museum of appliances on every porch - Analicia Sotelo "Eating the Moon in Cotulla, TX"

Artifice:
Then that time's neat artifice fell in - Scott Cairns "Draw Near"

Poisonous weeds of artifice - Bliss Carman "Phi Beta Kappa Poem"

All the wondrous waste of artifice - Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Modern Skeleton"

Inside whose artifice is the lesson, buried alive - Patricia Goedicke "The Reading Club"

Passeth Pygmalion's artifice - "The Pearl" transl. by Sophie Jewett

Automaton:
A promenade of empty shells, automatons - Mike Allen "Strange Cargo"

Axle.

Backseat:
Lying in the backseat behind all my questions - Naomi Shihab Nye "Making a Fist"

Backstand:
In the backstand of our existence - m.s. RedCherries "the end cannot be me"

Ballast:
Shipped silver for common ballast - William H. Davies "The Child and the Mariner"

With ballast of round thunder - Richard Hughes "The Rolling Saint"

And our ballast is old wine - Thomas Love Peacock "The Men of Gotham"

Barbed Wire.

Bilge:
Deep in the bilges of frigates - David Tomas Martinez "The Mechanics of Men"

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

Bracket:
The starry bracket of their lips - Robert Nichols "A Faun's Holiday"

Caught between brackets and barricades - Jeffrey Pethybridge "Note on Method"

Brake.

Brake Light:
A line of brake lights blazing - Charles Rafferty "Daylight Moon"

Bulkhead:
Builds a bulkhead 'twixt Despair and the Edge of Nothing - Rudyard Kipling "The Supports"

Cantilever:
Cantilevers in chalk spray - Janet Kauffman "An Elaboration of Stalk"

Ice plates stack and cantilever - Janet Kauffman "Glossed Over"

Balanced, cantilevered, interlocked - Stephen Yenser "Vertumnal [excerpt]"

Carburetor:
A broken carburetor of sobs - David Tomas Martinez "The Only Mexican"

Chain.

Chain Link:
Chain link and concertina wire - Janet Kauffman "Stress Position"

As he watches from behind the wire diamonds of chain-link - Alexandra Lytton Regalado "La Cachiporrista"

Circuit.

Clamp:
Clamping down on each homesick wish - Lisa M. Bradley "The Skin Walker's Wife"

Clockwork.

Cockpit:
The blacked-out cockpit of your mind - Wayne Miller "Mind-Body Problem"

Cog:
Escape from cog-wheel mandates - Camonghne Felix "Dearly Departed, Again I Dreamt About a Ship"

We take a tumble and the cog-wheels stop - Wallace Irwin "An Inside Con to Refined Guys"

All the cogs of our life have broken teeth - Andrew Kozma "11th Hour Sonnet"

The cog in the eye - Charif Shanahan "Indeterminacy"

Turning in the cogs of the clockworks - Dean Young "Lucifer"

Compute/Computer.

Concertina Wire:
Chain link and concertina wire - Janet Kauffman "Stress Position"

Contraption:
The rotating contraption of a second baptism - Giorgiomaria Cornelio "La consegna delle braci [The Distribution of Embers]" transl. by Moira Egan

Conveyor Belt:
As if correct spelling is what could stop the conveyor belt - Dean Young "Selected Recent and New Errors" [Poetry July/August 2008]

Crank:
A hundred pulleys and cranks between - G.K. Chesterton "The Good Rich Man"

Cranked to eleven by the sublimation of despair - Edgar Kunz "New Year"

Culvert:
Culvert, and petrel, and mangonel - Brinhild "The Rime of Sir Lionne" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 5th series, no.32-v.I, 9 Aug. 1884]

The culverts where night squats - Betsy Sharp "Alarm"

Cyborg/Cybernetics.

Cyclotron:
Cyclotron eyes focusing on the deep - Charles Wright "The Great Blue Heron and the Tree of Night"

Dashboard:
As the dashboard races to a waiting disaster - Mary Jo Bang "Before the Absolute Perfection Dying Achieves"

Against the dashboard of stars - William Brewer "In the Room of the Overdosed, an Ember"

The keys are on the dashboard - Elizabeth Willis "Ephemeral Stream"

Device.

Diagram.

Diode:
Blue diode digits flash in my eyes - Lorraine Schein "Merlin"

Doornail:
As dead as doornails used to be - John Grey "The Computer vs. My Personal Evolution"

Dynamo:
A dynamo of swirled memory, of fire-bursts - Ian Goh "Firework"

The daze of nature's chlorophyll dynamos - Joanne Merriam "The Bather"

Dynamo of strength uncurbed - Christopher Morley "America, 1917"

Electronic:
A prayer electronically conveyed - Eric Gamalinda "Zero Gravity"

In podcast and electronic ink - Fady Joudah "[...]"

Engine.

Engineer.

Filter.

Fulcrum:
The lever finds its fulcrum - Arthur Hugh Clough "Dipsychus"

Dance in the fulcrum of history - Kwame Dawes "from 'A Coda to History: 28. It Is Not As If'"

A fulcrum of recognition - Edwin Torres "The Circle at One End"

Fuse Box:
Tear into the fuse box of the chest and soar away - Dean Young "Shamanism 101"

Fuselage:
Below the fuselage of my heart - Jan Beatty "Sitting Nude"

Gadget:
Old furnitures, obsolete machineries and funny gadgets - Mukut Borpujari "Stoic"

Gangplank:
In the gangplank desert - Cyrus Cassells "Courage Song for Scott Warren"

Gas Pedal:
When you feel rigor mortis in the gas pedal - Mike Allen "The Journey to Kailash"

Gauge/Gage.

Gear.

Girder:
Forgotten nurseries of girders and axels - Kyle Dargan "The Robots are Coming"

Grate.

Handle.

Hard Drive:
Try to outbid the rustling of the hard drive - Duane Ackerson "Infinite Zero"

Hasp:
At the hasped door of intimidation - Rebecca G. Biber "Pied Piper"

The Keeper of the Sky has hasped his Doors - Wallace Irwin "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Jr."

Headlight.

Helm.

Hinge.

Hull.

Hydraulic:
There's hydraulics to a daisy - Vachel Lindsay "Another Word on the Scientific Aspiration"

iPod:
Before the mad clicking on an iPod commenced to spin - Dimitri Reyes "Speakers"

Joist:
Wood ripped from studs and joists - Alison Hawthorne Deming "Stairway to Heaven"

Keel.

Keyboard:
Entering the computer through the keyboard - Duane Ackerson "Infinite Zero"

Knob/Doorknob.

Lever.

Lid.

Lightbox:
Flip off this lightbox and its scroll of dread - Nickole Brown "A Prayer to Talk to Animals"

Machine.

Machinery.

Mainspring:
Hands forced forward by the mainspring's spiral torsion - J.P. Grasser "time bending / tongue / entwine / the betwixt"

There's a mainspring to the bee - Vachel Lindsay "Another Word on the Scientific Aspiration"

To find whatever mainspring made things go - E.L. Mayo "Letter to My Grandfather's Picture"

Mast.

Mechanical/Mechanism.

Meter.

Millstone.

Motherboard:
Gave his motherboard its own mirror - Tamara Jerée "Warship Captain Application [Section 29.2 Saved as Draft in SAIS]"

amoebas in your motherboards - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "Spaceshp For Sale"

Motor:
Mix cigars and cloves and motor oil - Brooke Abbey "How to Adult"

With four motors on a single flight - Nicolás Guillén "Exile" transl. by Roberto Marquez and David Arthur McMurray

Motors that breathe oxygen and oil - Conrad Hilberry "Quatrain"

Nail.

Oar.

Paddle:
Paddling past pebbly beaches - William Hodgson Ellis "Maskinogewagaming"

That paddles in a halcyon sea - Christina Rossetti "A Birthday"

Pause Button:
Early in the era of the pause button - Dan Chiasson "Tackle Football"

Pedal:
When you feel rigor mortis in the gas pedal - Mike Allen "The Journey to Kailash"

Pendulum.

Periscope:
Set my periscope on breath of dreaming - CAConrad "Neptune.4"

Stretched a long periscope toward the multiplying horizons - Alafia Nicole Sessions "Fable with Cyst, Celestial Being & Sacrifice"

Periscoping centuries pursue - Yang Lian "Venice Elegy 2 Rot Poem" transl. by Brian Holton

Pilot Light:
A pilot light inside your sleep - Wayne Miller "Mind-Body Problem"

By the flamethrower's pilot light - Connor Yeck "The Thing (1982) as Silent Film"

Piston:
temper a piston with cane syrup - DaMaris B. Hill "Come. Pray. Know"

descendant of pistons & drive trains - Jose Olivarez "now i'm bologna"

Train piston for hock & hoof - Brandon Som "Resistors"

Pivot:
The pivot-point of bliss - James H. Cousins "The Blind Father"

On a crystal pivot burned and swung - Louise Imogen Guiney "The Wooing Pine"

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

Plank.

Plate Glass:
Catch yourself in a plate glass window - francine j. harris "Reflections in a Pool of Hair"

Platform:
Another moment arriving on the next platform - Edward Hirsch "Fall"

The platform winding down - Keith Leonard "Museum"

Plywood:
Surrendering to a piece of plywood - Tyree Daye "Friday Night on the Hill"

A plywood squirrel perched on cement - Alison Hawthorne Deming "Stairway to Heaven"

A barge of plywood and empty milk cartons - Timothy Donnelly "Globus Hystericus"

Four letters in painted plywooden proclamation - John M. Ford "Troy: the Movie"

Pneumatic:
No icy jackhammer pneumatics - Carolina Ebeid "Relapsing/Remitting"

Program.

Prop.

Prow.

Pulley:
A hundred pulleys and cranks between - G.K. Chesterton "The Good Rich Man"

Pump:
Pumping diluted blood - Marilyn Dumont "Leather and Naughahyde"

Pumped a saline shot of sadness - Cyree Jarelle Johnson "magenta"

Pump you to their minds - Fady Joudah "[...]"

Engaged with anxious care in pumping Lethe out - Friedrich Schiller "The Journalists and Minos"

Pylon:
Standalone heron borrowing a pylon - Brian Blanchfield "Edge of Water, Portage Bay, Washington"

Pylons and monoliths went on by ages - Gordon Bottomley "Babel: The Gate of the God"

Radio.

Rear-View Mirror:
Each mistake receding in the rear-view mirror - Jazno Francoeur "Home"

Looking back from the rearview and parked alone - Joseph Millar "Job"

Our glory-days in the rear-view mirror - Andre F. Peltier "Miyagi's Wisdom and the Lunch-Table Debates"

Retrofit:
Retrofitted to permit travel in reverse - Rachel Rodman "The Past Is a Foreign Country"

Rivet.

Robot:
A duckling imprinted on a robot duck - Merri Andrew "Robot Duckling Learns the Land"

Turns another into a robot or a parasite or a maniac - Mark Jarman "If I Were Paul"

The potential dangers of sex robots - Elizabeth Knapp "My Brain Is Mad for Baudrillard"

Rudder.

Safety Pin:
Bluff a flock of dragons with a safety pin - Wallace Irwin "The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor"

Sail.

Scope.

Screw:
An iron claw and a new-made screw - Mary Jo Bang "A Calculation Based on Figures in a Scene"

Till rust will come upon the screw - Dark Eileen "Dirge on the Death of Art O'Leary, Shot at Carraganime, Co. Cork, May 4, 1773" transl. by Eleanor Hull

Screw of death in cupped hands - Diane Mehta "Landscape with Double Bow"

Screws turn a quarter of a rotation - Carsten Rene Nielsen "Night"

Canvases of crushed lightbulbs and screws in paste - Dean Young "Peach Farm" [Poetry June 2012]

Slat:
A system of seeing through slats - Mary Jo Bang "Sure, It's a Little Game. You, Me, Our Minds"

The strip of light between the slats - Holly Iglesias "I Can Afford Neither the Rain"

Angled slats of aquamarine - Campbell McGrath "Joseph Brodsky in Venice (1981)"

Socket.

Solder:
Your own broken and soldered together heart - Mouna Ammar "Permission"

Soldered in the mind's furnace - Shara McCallum "Penelope"

Spoke (noun).

Sprocket:
Tapping and tuning the springs and sprockets - Carl Dennis "Bimini Queen"

Above sprocket-punctured skylines - Yona Harvey "Dark and Lovely After Take-Off (A Future)"

Steerage:
Insidious as rats in steerage - Lisa M. Bradley "Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas Lost at Sea, 1527"

Stud.

Synthetic/Synthesis.

Tackle:
Tying down the wind with rope or chain or tackle - Bruce Boston "Wind People"

Tailpipe:
Hitch-hike on the tailpipe of a car - Duane Ackerson "Little Ghosts"

A bouquet of orchids lifts from its tailpipe - Kaveh Akbar "Orchids Are Sprouting from the Floorboards"

Tank:
The Sensory Deprivation Tanks for Life Resistant Arrivals(tm) - Katie Condon "The Insurance Representative Tells Me How Much the Baby's Delivery Will Cost"

While the passengers sleep in crygenic tanks - Robert Randolph Medcalf, Jr. "Ice Magic"

Throttle.

Timber.

Tire [wheel].

Top-Sail:
And the top-sail dripping wine - Herbert Randall "Off"

Turbine:
Money piled up under the turbined lamplight - Stephen Oliver "Zionism"

Valve:
Shut his rusty valves the tighter - John Greenleaf Whittier "Voyage of the Jettie"

Vane/Weathervane.

Weld.

Wheel.

Widget:
Loving sticks a widget into the machinery of doubt - Mónica Gomery "The End Is the Beginning"

Winch:
On a winch in need of oil - John Masefield "Spunyarn"

Brace the arms that help the winches round - John Masefield "Spunyarn"

Wire.

Wythes:
Bound him with wythes of the willow and fir - George Warwick "Schneider Von Groot's Christmas Dream"


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

Potential Titles: Money [category]

Alms.

Buck:
Selling stolen comics for eight bucks and change - Sophie Fink "The Dogs Don't Forgive Us"

Cash.

Cent.

Coin.

Currency.

Dime:
A dimestore magic trick in legendary light - Regie Cabico "In a Legendary Light"

The dime store flower fields - francine j. harris "i used to write"

Stolen dime-store moments - Philip Levine "Magic"

A dime for a wired rose - Lola Ridge "Phyllis"

Dollar.

Dollar Bill:
Dollar bills for his index and ring fingers - Jake Skeets "Drunktown"

Angel of ten dollar bills found in the dryer - Dean Young "Peach Farm" [Poetry June 2012]

Doubloon:
A sparkling merry freight of doubloons - John Masefield "The Tarry Buccaneer"

Puts the doubloons over my eyes - Frank Stanford "The Mind Reader"

Ducat:
Of more esteem than ducats - Emily Dickinson "Book 1: Time and Eternity XXXVI: Lost"

Farthing:
Bitter contested farthings - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Life XI: Compensation"

Without e'en a farthing's expense - "Wonders of a Toy-Shop"

Gold.

Half-a-Crown:
Five crimes at half-a-crown - W.S. Gilbert "Gentle Alice Brown"

Mint.

Money.

Nickel.

Obol:
Paid his obolus on the Stygian shore - Charles Baudelaire "Don Juan in Hades" transl. not credited

Words imposing on my tongue like obols - Seamus Heaney "Singing School: 5. Fosterage"

A second obol secret beneath my tongue - Ann K. Schwader "Of Ithaca & Ice"

Slips me Charon's obol - Richard Solomon "Dream Caused by the Fight of the Bumblebee"

Pence.

Penny.

Shilling:
Although two shillings in the pound can't pay - James Parkerson "An Address to a Wealthy Libertine / or, the Melancholy Effects of Seduction"

Silver.

Sterling:
Pass for sterling truth in open day - "The Ghost of Chatham"

Shall prove its sterling worth - Arthur Caswell Parker "My Race Shall Live Anew"

Twopence:
Give twopence for the chance - John Clare "The Woodman"


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

Potential Titles: Mammals [Category]

Alley Cat
Three alley cats remember - Aimee Nezhukumatathil "Forsythe Avenue Haibun"

Reading time in the eyes of alley cats - Emanuel Xavier "Americano"

Antelope:
With the secret antelope of compassion - Joy Harjo "Healing Animal"

Magic burned into the roots of antelope words - Joy Harjo "Hieroglyphic"

Guarded by silver-footed antelope - John Presland "To a Robin in December"

Images of eagles and of antelope - Elinor Wylie "Let No Charitable Hope"

Ape:
Apes of kinship and grief - Cody-Rose Clevidence "This Household of Earthly Nature; An Essay"

Baboon:
Dream of baboons and periwinkles - Wallace Stevens "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"

Baboon rattling the bedroom door - Cynthia Zarin "Orbit"

Badger.

Bat.

Beagle:
A demon beagle dark as night - Benjamin West Ball "A Hermitage"

The beagles run like wind - Joseph Campbell writing as Seosamh MacCathmhaoil "Reynardine"

When beagles press close behind - William Henry Drummond "Madeleine Vercheres"

Bear (animal).

Bear-Cub:
Contrails tracing messages to bear-cubs and insects - Bogi Takács "A Self-Contained Riot of Lights"

Beaver:
Two black cats and a beaver who eats carrots all day - Gabrielle Calvocoressi "An Inn for the Coven"

Beavers make a dam out of slime - Kunjana Parashar "In the Zoo" [Strange Horizons 17 February 2025]

Not a beaver showed his head - Edmund Clarence Stedman "Peter Stuyvesant's New Year's Call: 1 Jan. A.C. 1661"

The beaver cut his timber with patient teeth - John Greenleaf Whittier (uncredited) "Cobbler Keezar's Vision" [The Atlantic Monthly v.07 no.40, Feb. 1861]

Bison.

Black Bear:
Where wolves and black bears prowl - Mary Howitt "The Northern Seas"

Bloodhound.

Blue Whale:
Blue whales undulate their slow song - Mónica Alexandra Jiménez "Theft"

Boar:
The boar bears your final card - May Chong "Catering"

Which shelters boar and wolves - Juliana Spahr "December 2, 2002"

A wave with tusks of a boar - Fanny Stearns Davis "Storm Dance"

His the lance to slay the boar - Henry van Dyke "The Vain King"

Bobcat:
Follow bobcat tracks to the lake - Sally Wen Mao "Willow, Stop Weeping"

Brown Bear:
Tracked the brown bear and the deer - Arthur Weir "Jules' Letter"

Buffalo:
A white buffalo escaped from memory - Joy Harjo "Grace"

Among buffalos on fire - Pablo Neruda "What We Accept Without Wanting To" transl. by Alastair Reid

Bull.

Bulldog:
Stony face with bulldog jaws - Diane Wakoski "The Photos"

Calf:
And worship calves of brass and clay - Thomas Clarke "Sir Copp canto I"

Sweet as the sound of a calf - Enheduana "Temple Hymns: 14. E-Gida, the Temple of Ninazu in Enegir" transl. by Sophus Helle

The calves sang to my horn - Dylan Thomas "Fern Hill"

Camel.

Caribou:
The caribou shadow the shining plain - Robert W. Service "The Atavist"

The wilds where the caribou call - Robert W. Service "The Spell of the Yukon"

Cat.

Cattle.

Charger:
Death on his charger in battle is bounding - Robert M. Hart "Sweet Maid of Erin" [Beadle's Dime Union Song Book No.2 1861]

Cheetah:
About the cheetahs and the wind - Paul Carroll "Untitled [I want to write a poem the birds will understand]"

Chipmunk:
Window-perched cats and foraging chipmunks - Crystal Sidell "The Truth About Doppelgangers"

Colt:
Pursued the colts among the sand-hills - William Lisle Bowles "Banwell Hill: Part Second"

Two colts too strong for a tether - Countee Cullen "Spring Reminiscence"

Courser:
The coursers of the dark stamp down - Walter de la Mare "Nightfall"

Cow.

Coyote.

Cur:
A lagging line of babbling curs - William Somerville "The Chase"

Deer.

Dire Wolf:
Might commingle with a dire wolf's bones - Kendall Evans "This, a Kind of Prayer"

Doe.

Dog.

Dolphin.

Donkey.

Elephant.

Elk:
The bull-elk in the moonlight of my threshold - Joseph Fasano "Elegy for a Year"

The great elk in the dark door - Joseph Fasano "Elegy for a Year"

A herd of elk flows over the land - Alison Swan "True Story"

Ermine:
With an ermine robe around her - Emily Pauline Johnson "Lady Icicle"

Ermined floors and tangled seas of silk sheets - Philip Levine "The Whole Soul"

Fawn.

Feline:
Cats sneered at our pathetic need for feline love - Sarah Shirley "The Joy"

Ferret:
Ferret of flame & levity - Lindsey Boldt "A Bartable Enya Afternoon"

Ferrets by now a plague - Veronica Zondek "cold fire 2" transl. by Katherine Silver

Flying Squirrel:
Musk deer and flying squirrels quarrel by the stairs - Pao Chao "Rhyme-Prose on the Desolate City" transl. by Burton Watson

Foal:
Nags whose foals romped among stars - Mike Allen "Chagall's Lamp"

And lure the foals away - Florence Hoatson "The Pixies on the Moor"

Spectres and fears, the nightmare and her foal - A.E. Housman "Last Poems XXXVI: Revolution"

A foal in an exile's country - Frank Stanford "The Forgotten Madmen of Menilmontant"

Fox.

Giraffe:
A giraffe beats a lion's ass every day - Jericho Brown "Aerial View"

For what pale giraffes have I left Byzantium - Joyce Mansour "The Sun in Capricorn" transl. by Carol Cosman

Goat.

Gray Whale:
The ghost snare of a gray whale's call - Donika Kelly "When the Fact of Your Gaze Means Nothing, Then You Are Truly Alongside"

Greyhound:
Nor swifter greyhound follow - William Cowper "Epitaph on a Hare"

A small greyhound run down both hart and hind - "The Long Ballad of Sir Marsk Stig (Extract)" transl. by E.M. Smith-Dampier

The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran - anonymous? "The More Modern Ballad of Chevy-Chase"

As greyhound from the leash set free - Frank E. Smedley "Maude Allinghame: A Legend of Hertforshire"

Grizzly Bear:
The clear, deep marks of a grizzly's claw - Keith Taylor "To Face the Ordinary"

Groundhog:
Let the groundhog dream his dream - Joe Aguilar "Let Water Be Water"

Hare.

Hart:
The sick hart eats a snake - Barten Holyday "Distiches"

A small greyhound run down both hart and hind - "The Long Ballad of Sir Marsk Stig (Extract)" transl. by E.M. Smith-Dampier

No hound's not wakens the wildwood hart - Algernon Charles Swinburne "A Ballad of Dreamland"

Hind:
A small greyhound run down both hart and hind - "The Long Ballad of Sir Marsk Stig (Extract)" transl. by E.M. Smith-Dampier

Hippopotamus:
Shoot the hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum - Hilaire Belloc "The Bad Children's Book of Beasts: The Hippopotamus"

The shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn - Bob Kaufman "I Have Folded My Sorrows"

Hog:
Silos and farmsteads, fruit stands and hogs - Kurt Brown "Road Trip"

And find myself chased by a hog - Rumi "Who Makes These Changes?" transl. by Coleman Barks

Horse.

Hound.

Human.

Humpback Whale:
the humpback whale breaching the slate screen - David Maduli "alameda point"

Hyena.

Ibex:
The ibex leaps from your mouth to mine - Alicia Cole "On an Iranian Goblet, 5,000 Years Old"

Jackal.

Jackrabbit:
Marks the dust bath of a jackrabbit - Lucy Griffith "Attention"

Moved the jackrabbit from the road - Louise Mathias "Larrea"

The mind like a jackrabbit bounding - Diane Seuss "Six Unrhymed Sonnets"

Jaguar.

Jerboa:
Jerboa just roused from his long winter nap - F.B.C. "The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic"

Kine:
Oxen and kine they drive abroad - "The Maiden at the Thing" transl. by E.M. Smith-Dampier

Kitten.

Lamb.

Lemur:
The unmasked smile of the lemurs - Ingeborg Bachmann "The Great Freight" transl. by Bill Crisman

Leopard.

Leveret:
Mice and leverets caught by flood - Richard Hughes "The Singing Furies"

Lion.

Longhorn:
A longhorn winding its bells through the Field of Reeds - Ishmael Reed "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

Lynx:
As we might mark a lynx's eye - John Keats "Endymion, Book I [A thing of beauty is a joy for ever]"

Mammal:
Other mammals full of feathers - Abe Louise Young "Who"

Mammoth.

Mare:
The Ghost of a Gargoyle riding his night colored mare - Michael Marsh "Gargoyle Poems: Spiders Dance"

Marmot:
The sentinel marmot's shrill whistle of fear - F.B.C. "The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic"

Marten:
On a robe of marten skins - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Sixteen Shadows 10"

Mastiff:
Protects the mastiff's sleep - Giosue Carducci "Carnival: Voice from the Hovel" transl. by Frank Sewall

Mastodon:
Lost among the mastodons - Margaret Atwood "A Night in the Royal Ontario Museum"

Crashing its micro-mastodon bulk through a carpet forest - G. O. Clark "Sound Check"

Ere the mastodon was born - Alfred Noyes "Darwin III: The Testimony of the Rocks"

Mole.

Monkey.

Moose:
A moose crossing the thin August river - Chris Dombrowski "Motherless Children (Traditional)"

Call down moose from the mountain - Carolyn Forche "Calling Down the Moose"

Mouse/Mice.

Mule:
A blind mule toiling at a task lost to time - Jim Heston "All Things Being Relative"

Bringing us mules from the future - Prosper C. Ìféányí "In the Future, My Mother Teaches Us How to Speak the Alpha-Numeric Language"

Labor walks beside the mules - Lola Ridge "Frank Little at Calvary"

Musk Deer:
Musk deer and flying squirrels quarrel by the stairs - Pao Chao "Rhyme-Prose on the Desolate City" transl. by Burton Watson

Muskrat:
When the muskrats fight in the swamps - Roger Reeves "Black Laws"

The muskrat plied the mason's trade - John Greenleaf Whittier "Snow-Bound"

Mustang:
A wild mustang asleep in the knapweed - Keetje Kuipers "10,000 Acres Burned"

Narwhal:
And the narwhals wouldn't talk to her anymore - Catherynne M. Valente "Aquaman and the Duality of Self/Other, America, 1985"

Otter.

Ox.

Palomino:
Urges the palomino up a burning slope - Bruce Boston "Surreal Fortune"

Panther.

Peccary:
The flaming peccary of a comet - Timothy Donnelly "Globus Hystericus"

Pig:
A real pig with a wig in flames - Juan Felipe Herrera "Saturday Night at the Buddhist Cinema"

Keeps a box of baby pigs - Laura Kasischke "The Cause of All My Suffering"

The pigs hold up the dawn - Pablo Neruda "Bestiary" transl. by Elsa Neuberger

Pig whispers and games of chance - Karen A. Romanko "Bosch in Hollywood"

You can't expect a pig to care - Kristen Tracy "Urge"

Polar Bear:
A month of spotting polar bears - Elizabeth Bradfield "Pursuit"

Polar bears patrolled the perimeter - Joanne Merriam "No Words"

These dogs once hunted polar bears - Matthew Thorburn "How We Found Our Way"

Porcupine:
With a handle of porcupine quills - Katherine Hale "Cun-ne-wa-bum"

Rise like porcupines - J. Patrick Lewis "How to Tell Latitude from Longitude"

Heartbreak's porcupine - Kamilah Aisha Moon "#17"

Porpoise:
A school of porpoise flashed in view - John Greenleaf Whittier "Snow-Bound"

Possum/Opossum:
A thoroughfare for raccoons and opossums - Campbell McGrath "The Prose Poem"

Masked Carnivale raccoons & fat possum shadows - David St. John "Venetian Farewells"

Puma:
Footprints of the wounded puma - Pablo Neruda "Superstitions" transl. by Alastair Reid

Puppy:
Thousands of puppies loose - Ruben Dario "To Roosevelt" transl. unknown per poets.org

When the kitten is lost or the puppy is bad - Hannah G. Fernald "Picture-Book Time" [A Jolly Jingle Book (ed. by Laura Chandler). 1913]

Rabbit.

Raccoon.

Ram.

Rat.

Rhino:
Fledglings the size of rhinos - John Ciardi "Everywhere that Universe"

Dupes an attacking rhino - Chris Dombrowski "Comes to Worse"

Rodent:
A Rodent to the Realms of Death address'd - Oliver Herford "The Rubáiyát of a Persian Kitten"

Sabre-Tooth Cat:
Red feud and ravage of saber tooth and claw - William Francis Barnard "The Hymn of Labor"

Laced in saber-toothed cats - Diane Raptosh "American Zebra: Praise Song for the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument"

Sable.

Saint Bernard:
Rowed his captain's Saint Bernard ashore - Martin Espada "Inheritance of Waterfalls and Sharks"

Sea Lion:
The distant bark of sea lions gives nothing away - Mark Jarman "Dispatches from Devereux Slough"

this estuary guarded by gurgling sea lions - David Maduli "alameda point"

Seal:
The seal's wide spindrift gaze - Hart Crane "Voyages II"

The sleepy seals aground - Mary Howitt "The Northern Seas"

A seal hook of bear claws - dg nanouk okpik "For-The-Spirits-Who-Have-Rounded-The-Bend IIVAQSAAT"

The path of seals is smooth - "Summer Has Come" transl. by Kuno Meyer

Sheep.

Skunk:
Like a skunk that roots about the heart - Lola Ridge "Manhattan Lights"

Snow Leopard:
Snow leopards, wolves, and honey bees - Tina Chang "Hybrida: A Zuihitsu"

Spaniel:
The gleeful spaniel at my side - Lennox Amott "The Summer Shower"

After the sparrow and the spaniel - Ira Sadoff "Self-Portrait"

Squirrel.

Stag.

Steed.

Steer:
When stars stare at sleeping steer - Ishmael Reed "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

Swine
Falling down the chimney of swine and coriander - Semaj Brown "Almost Majnun"

To feed the million-throated swine - Sam Walter Foss "The Wail of the Hack Writer" [The Fly Leaf, v.1 no.2, Jan. 1896]

The sleep of Circe's swine - Isaac Rosenberg "Girl to Soldier on Leave"

Terrier:
Caught in the terrier mouth of rain - Stephen Vincent Benet "Resurrection"

Like a terrier watching a rat - Frank E. Smedley "Maude Allinghame: A Legend of Hertforshire"

Tiger.

Vampire Bat:
The flickering shadows of an ancient colony of vampire bats - Samantha Pious "Interior Castle" [Strange Horizons 3 March 2025]

Vixen:
followed her off into vixen country - Lucille Clifton "one year later"

A vixen's courage in vixen terms - Adrienne Rich "Fox"

Walrus:
Flux and flows like herds of walrus - dg nanouk okpik "For-The-Spirits-Who-Have-Rounded-The-Bend IIVAQSAAT"

In constant fear of losing ground to walrus - dg nanouk okpik "Twilight Pain"

Watchdog:
The chained watchdog Will no longer springs - Catharine Davidson "Dreamland--a Sonnet" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series, 18 May 1878]

Weasel.

Whale.

Wildcat.

Wild Dog:
Fed wild dogs overripe apples and herring - Ruth Awad "The Years of Water and Light" [Poetry Oct. 2019]

To keep off the wild dogs snarling in the night - Keith Taylor "Our Castle and the Wild Dogs"

Hears the wild dogs at the gate - Oscar Wilde "Theocritus"

Wolf.

Yak:
The pride of envious yaks - Kalidasa "The Birth of the War-God: Canto First: Uma's Nativity" transl. by Ralph T.H. Griffith

Zebra:
The street with its zebra crossing - Mary Jo Bang "Night After Night"

Maybe there will be more zebras - Mark Nowak "...Again"

Zebras zipped across the field - Kristen Tracy "Rain at the Zoo"


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

Potential Titles: Math [category]

Abacus.

Add.

Algebra.

Algorithm.

Arithmetic.

Average:
Their fill of average joys and sorrows - Louis Golding "Ghosts Gathering"

This continuum of fairly average losses - Kate Knapp Johnson "Oh"

An average mazing of mistakes - A.E. Stallings "Daedal"

Calculate.

Calculus.

Compute/Computer.

Count.

Deduct:
Reduced, diminished, and deducted from the larger quantities - Sandy Florian "Abacus"

Deduction is howling at an oncoming storm - Khaled Mattawa "Before"

Divide/Divisible/Division.

Double.

Equal.

Equation.

Exponent:
The exponent of breath - Emily Dickinson "Book 3: Love III: Love"

The tablets of exponential seeing - Alice Notley "Individual Time"

Figure.

Fractal.

Fraction.

Geometric/Geometry.

Geometry Adjacent [category].

Graph:
Writ over a graph of consciousness - Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Americus, Book I [excerpt]"

Black strokes on a graph of broken glass - Marilyn Hacker "Morning News"

This graph showing allowable outcomes - Brenda Shaughnessy "2-Sided Map Shows Line Where Falling Bodies Land"

A graph of absent shadow - Art Zilleruelo "Someone's Property"

Half.

Increment.

Infinite.

Inverse.

Logarithmic:
Logarithmic function of desire and fulfillment - Sandra Kasturi "Carnaval Perpetuel"

Math/Mathematics.

Mean.

Median:
The median and mode of your days - Chris Nealon "All About You"

Minus:
A god in the minus numbers - Julia Alvarez "Small Portions"

The tormented arithmetic of one minus one - Mary Jo Bang "Utopian Longing Becomes More Absurd"

That add up to more minus than plus - Rosebud Ben-Oni "So They Say-- They Finally Nailed-- the Proton's Size-- & Hope-- Dies--"

Multiply/Multiplication.

Negative

Number/Outnumber.

Numbers [category].

Odd.

Percent:
Honor the percentage of failure - Mary Jo Bang "S Is for Strategies for Making Sense of Spectacles"

The silence adding its six percent - Conrad Hilberry "Self-Portrait as Bank Teller"

At least fifty percent terrible - Maggie Smith "Good Bones"

Plus.

Prime.

Proportion.

Quadratic Equation:
Not just flight from quadratic equations - Dean Young "Peach Farm" [Poetry June 2012]

Quantity:
All adjacent quantities bloom - Joshua Bennett "X"

Reduced, diminished, and deducted from the larger quantities - Sandy Florian "Abacus"

Such improbable quantities of memory - C. K. Williams "Doves"

Quarter.

Quota:
Her absence is filling a quota - Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon "Measured"

Random.

Ratio:
In keen and quivering ratio - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Life XI: Compensation"

Vast, in its fading ratio - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Time and Eternity XII"

The ratio of the body to the void - Louise Gluck "A Village Life"

Water and milk in such strange ratios - Preeti Vangani "One Cup of Chai"

Statistic:
And quake for statistics and angles - Dorsey Craft "The women my husband ought to love"

The statistics that pain still lacks - Pablo Neruda "The Watersong Ends" transl. by Alastair Reid

Subtract.

Sum.

Tabulate:
My legs are tense from tabulating the miles - Andrea Abi-Karam "DEAR GABRIELLE"

Tally.

Theorem:
The vapor fringe where three theorems meet - Mary Jo Bang "The Harbor"

Total.

Trigonometry:
Storms of white trigonometries - Simone Muench "Wolf Centos"

An old trigonometry still true - Adrienne Rich "Midnight Salvage"

Unit:
That one brief unit of loose time - Arthur Hugh Clough "Dipsychus"

A separate unit of experience - Monica de la Torre "Pause the Document"

Value.

Vary/Variable/Variation/Variety.

Wave Function:
Unlikely steps on the gallows of wave function - Mike Allen "Pulse"


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

Potential Titles: Matter - Specific Substances [category]

The choice between putting a word here or in this other post, Potential Titles: Matter - States of[category], was occasionally arbitrary, so maybe check there, too. As an example, 'ointment' and 'medicine' are here but both are large and relatively generic categories that, in a different mood, I might have put in the other post as descriptive of state.



Adobe:
Through adobe walls and secret gardens - Philip Levine "The Whole Soul"

Acetate:
The acetate tears of a flickering film - Mary Jo Bang "Part of a Larger Picture"

Alkali/Alkaline:
When the acid meets the alkali - "In Transitu" [The Continental Monthly v.II no.1, July 1862]

Keen as an acid for an alkali - James Russell Lowell "Fitz Adam's Story"

Disaster's alkaline kiss - D.A. Powell "Useless Landscape"

Alum:
In a bath of oak ash lye and alum - Melissa Range "Kermes Red"

Amyl Nitrate:
Of gnats, amyl nitrate, and goddamn rain - Randall Mann "The Fall of 1992, Gainesville, Florida"

Antidote.

Antioxidant:
Line their pantry shelves with the antioxidant beads - Crystal Sidell "The Truth About Doppelgangers"

Antiseptic:
Cocooned in their antiseptic habitats - David C. Kopaska-Merkel "An Open Letter to Our Astronauts"

Antitoxin:
An antitoxin to the world's infections - Edgar Lee Masters "So We Grew Together"

Aspirin:
Aspirin in this sunset of roses - Frank O'Hara "Chez Jane"

Attar:
Stir the attar of unused air - Lola Ridge "Dedication"

Uttermost attar of the living rose - Francis Brett Young "Dead Poets"

Beeswax:
Nailed in lockers sealed with beeswax - Ed Lynskey "Mrs. Lincoln's Terror of Moths"

Betadine:
Wipe away the blood and the betadine - Mary Hickman "If the Heart Does Not Restart"

Bioluminescence/Luminescence.

Bleach.

Botulism:
a southern philter with a touch of botulism - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "Abstrack Africana"

Brimstone.

Brine.

Bromide:
A bromide or a borderland candle - Cyrus Cassells "Courage Song for Scott Warren"

Bulletproof Glass:
Can't take a photo through the bulletproof glass - Alexandra Lytton Regalado "La Cachiporrista"

Carbon Dioxide:
Offering me their oxygen in exchange for my carbon dioxide - Jason Schneiderman "House with a Hot Tub and Pool"

Sun, phosphorus, CO2, prayer - L. Lamar Wilson "Lauren Oya Olamina Explains Earthseed to Ernest Hemingway"

Castor Oil:
douse this blackness in viscous castor oil - Neha Maqsood "Things I Do to Remember Home"

Catalyst.

Cellophane:
Spark and sear of holy cellophane - Allison Hutchcraft "Though from Here I Can't Smell the Smoke"

A rose made from cellophane - Gregory Orr "Domestic Life"

Celluloid:
Rise away with the celluloid spirits - Nancy Ellis Taylor "Voodoo Corner Bus Stop"

Cement.

Ceramic:
A tote bag full of ceramic souvenirs - Helene Achanzar "The only poem I can write"

Ceramic tributes to the moon - Ira Goga "The Kitchen, Indexed"

Found my body in ceramic pieces - jessica Care moore "She Was"

Could break their ceramic silence - Caroline Harper New "Patients Regain Song Before Speech"

Chalk.

Charcoal.

Chemical/Chemistry.

Chloroform:
The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform - William Ernest Henley "In Hospital IV. Before"

Clay.

Clorox:
Sacraments of Clorox in the church of starch - Ted Kooser "Song of the Ironing Board"

Coal.

Coal-Damp [any flammable gas in a coal mine]:
What wine of coal-damp He will pour - Cale Young Rice "The Immanent God"

Cocaine:
Serves cocaine in cornucopia - Mina Loy "Lunar Baedeker"

Cod Liver Oil:
Eat cod liver oil and oatmeal - Lou Barrett "Oliver Hill Hotel: 1932"

A liquor I mix'd with my cod-liver oil - Henry S. Leigh "Songs of the Sick Room No. 1: Cod Liver Oil"

Cologne:
His compound of cologne & corrosion - William Archila "Spirits"

Concrete.

Cordial.

Cordite:
The mist of the cordite's gloom - George Blackstone Field "The Mustering of the Legion"

Cork:
Floating corks in the Dead Sea - Ana Castillo "Tell Me to Live for Something"

Uncork a bottle of that curious wine - Philip Lybbe Powys Lybbe "The Lay of the Sheriff"

Curare:
Which proves a curare for the heart - A. Van Jordan "Old Boy"

Deuterium:
Our ship is fueled by a deuterium iceball - Robert Randolph Medcalf, Jr. "Ice Magic"

Looked every bit as real as the deuterium - Robert Randolph Medcalf, Jr. "Ice Magic"

Diesel:
A fast-driving diesel flatbed of felled trees - Nickole Brown "Black bird, red wing"

On the subway huffing diesel and cigarettes - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha "bad road"

Dioxide:
Steam of dioxides of carbon and sulfur - Timothy Donnelly "Globus Hystericus"

Dross.

Drug.

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

Dung:
Polluted with the dung of demons damn'd - James Ewing Cooley "The Spawn of Ixion"

Dynamite.

Dye.

Elixir.

Emetic:
Bloomed like a neon emetic - Aimee Le "Faith"

Enamel.

Ether.

Fat.

Fiberglass.

Fiberoptic:
the illicit behind a fiberoptic veil - Jzl Jmz "Exhibition"

Fluorescence.

Fluorocarbons:
Song of fluorocarbons and roosters - Urayoan Noel "cinquains written during a tropical storm"

Fly Ash:
a city that too builds its water from fly ash - Jake Skeets "Sonoran Desert Poem"

Foil.

Formaldehyde:
To smother the smell of formaldehyde - Hilarie Jones "The Teacher"

Frankincense:
Blessed by the frankincense of fragrant fir - Dana Gioia "Tinsel, Frankincense, and Fir"

The necessary pigments and frankincense - Bruce Smith "Beautiful Throat"

Fuel.

Gas.

Gasoline.

Gelignite:
From gas and protest to gelignite and sten - Seamus Heaney "Whatever You Say Say Nothing"

As influenced by gelignite and bombs - H.H.U., Northhamptonshire Regt. "To My Bath" [The Anzac Book: Written and Illustrated in Gallipoli by the Men of Anzac, 1916]

Glass.

Glucose:
Gild his words with glucose - May Chong "Catering"

Glue.

Grease.

Gum:
Nor cared a wad of gum how I would feel - Wallace Irwin "An Inside Con to Refined Guys"

Hydrofluorocarbons:
Only the hydrofluorocarbons know for sure - S. R. Compton "The Leonids, 11/18, 2002"

Incense.

Kerosene.

Kevlar:
Doses of patience and some Kevlar smiles - Geoffrey Brock "Trip Hop"

Dressed in leather and Kevlar - John M. Ford "Troy: the Movie"

A kevlar of tenderness enveloping me - Cyree Jarelle Johnson "jersey fems in the philly zoo"

Lacquer:
Sealed by terminology's lacquer - Diane Ackerman "Letter to Dr. B--"

Teetering on red-lacquered stems - John Gould Fletcher "Green Symphony"

Peach and plum in lacquered dyes - Edmund Gosse "A Dream of November"

Laudanum:
Laudanum by the bitter spoonful - Martin Espada "The Five Horses of Doctor Ramon Emeterio Betances"

Bringing a laudanum to my ceaseless pain - Sophia Magaretta Hensley "Soothing"

Lotion:
Prophetic sandals and ambrosial lotion - Leyla Guirand "The Abstract Maker"

LSD:
At night I travelled everywhere on LSD - Mary Karr "For My Children"

Luminol:
Luminol was her favorite color - John Gallaher "And the Moon on Its Stem Will Steal You Away"

Lye:
Be free of lye, lime, and liars - Jill Khoury "Sleep Hygiene"

In a bath of oak ash lye and alum - Melissa Range "Kermes Red"

Makeup:
In all the makeup she can muster - Patricia Goedicke "The Reading Club"

With all her makeup shades of gray and red - Jonathan Price "My Infatuation with Chaos"

Medicine.

Monoxide:
Snow poisoned the color of monoxide - francine j. harris "you, old meany"

Morphine:
A gust of morphine hid you - Thom Gunn "Lament"

Mortar.

Mothball:
Amongst the smells of mothballs and cigars - A.E. Stallings "The Doll House"

Myrrh.

Narcotic:
Sweet poisons are narcotics for our tears - Natalie Clifford Barney "Easter Day"

And from its Bowl narcotic Joys beguile - Wallace Irwin "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Jr."

The hypnotist's narcotic of clarity - A. Van Jordan "Old Boy"

Neurotoxin:
The monarch butterfly of neurotoxins - Ennis Rook Bashe "How to Hallucinate Your Zombie Lover"

A mutant rose's neurotoxin - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Tuccenen C"

My dragon may be your neurotoxin - Dean Young "Handy Guide" [Poetry Nov. 2011]

Nicotine:
From the root of a nicotined tooth - William Archila "Spirits"

Noble Gas:
the stairs are white with noble gases - Lee Ballentine "Cryogenica"

Nucleotides:
Charmed conspiracy of nucleotides - Jaswinder Bolina "Phantom Camera"

Oil.

Ointment:
With your ointments mix your tears - "Centos and Suggestions" transl. and arranged by Rev. John Brownlie in Hymns from the Greek Offices

Nursed by earthly ointments - Pablo Neruda "Vegetation" transl. by Jack Schmitt

With precious ointment of affection - Walter S. Percy "The Risen Christ Means Victory"

Where the herbage is like sweet ointment - "XXII" transl. from Nahuatl by Daniel G. Brinton

Omega 3:
Leading us into a new dawn of Omega 3's & prosperity - Regie Cabico "A Carpapalooza: An American Anthem"

Ooze:
Some sorcerer of ooze and slime - Herbert Randall "Sundown on the Marshes"

Opiate/Opiod/Opium.

Ozone.

Paper.

Paraffin:
Pleasure and Paraffin, lend us a smile - Henry S. Leigh "A Cockney's Evening Song"

Pavement.

Penicillin:
As if it were penicillin or the speed of light - Mark Jarman "If I Were Paul"

Perfume.

Petrochemical:
A petrochemical addict in want of an antagonist - fahima ife "shamanism"

Philter:
Baleful philters, withering spells - Eugene Lee-Hamilton "Isissimus"

Icy philters brim with scarlet foam - George Sterling "A Wine of Wizardry"

a southern philter with a touch of botulism - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "Abstrack Africana"

Pill:
Split three pills with my ficus - Ruth Madievsky "Ficus"

Spelling words with pills spilled - Aaron Smith "Still Life with Antidepressants"

Pitch.

Plaster.

Plastic.

Plexiglass:
Stares caught in plexiglass - Cyree Jarelle Johnson "jersey fems in the philly zoo"

Phantom fists against the plexiglass of the living world - Nen G. Ramirez "Love poem with a dying cat"

Poison.

Porcelain.

Potion:
A potion to protect your lover's skin from fire - Emily Jiang "Life Lessons"

A potion for whatever you don't want - Khadijah Queen "A Tiny Now to Feed On"

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears - William Shakespeare "Sonnet CXIX"

A magic potion to seal their eyes shut - Taije Silverman "Armageddon"

Poultice:
Kept a poultice of stars strapped to her hip - Roshani Chokshi "Miracle Babies"

Purell:
I'll unpack my dark heart and Purell my hands - Geoffrey Brock "Trip Hop"

Quinine:
Sauterne and quinine, saccharine and gall - Stephen Vincent Benet "Two More Muses"

Radioactive:
All moss and radioactive daffodils - Sophie Fink "The Dogs Don't Forgive Us"

In that raging, radioactive hue - Aimee Le "Praise Poem for Mtn Dew"

Point to our radioactive elements - Joanne Merriam "Surface Properties"

Radioactive to the end of time - Vijay Seshadri "Memoir"

Radio active [sic] garbage buried at the core - Emma Trelles "Corazón in Fall"

Resin.

Rosin:
Teardrops of rosin harden and shine - Minnie Bruce Pratt "The Subway Entrance"

Rouge:
In rouge and ribbons dressed - Too-qua-stee [DeWitt Clinton Duncan] "The Dead Nation"

Rubber:
Never climb a rubber ladder - Calef Brown "Bossy Casey"

Rust.

Safety Glass:
Cracking him into squares of safety glass - Duane and Cathy Ackerson "Mirror Man"

Salt.

Salve:
Charms to salve my griefs - Major Jackson "In the Eighties We Did the Wop"

Hurt and salve combining - Rumi "The Reed Flute's Song" transl. by Coleman Barks

Sap.

Sedative:
Never turn down a sedative - David Trinidad "Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera"

Serum:
A cracked snow globe whose magic pool drips serum - Cynthia Zarin "Orbit"

Shampoo:
Dress you in the foam of apricot shampoo - Yalie Saweda Kamara "Trim"

Silver Nitrate:
We resurrect them in silver nitrate - Sonya Taaffe "The Chymical Marriage"

Slime:
Lands of bitter slime where my voice blooms - Nicolás Guillén "Rivers" transl. by Roberto Marquez and David Arthur McMurray

Across uneven pavements sunk in slime - Amy Lowell "J--K Huysmans"

Beavers make a dam out of slime - Kunjana Parashar "In the Zoo" [Strange Horizons 17 February 2025]

Some sorcerer of ooze and slime - Herbert Randall "Sundown on the Marshes"

Snuff.

Soap.

Solvent:
cut like a solvent through any of my moods - Robert Frazier "A Crash Course in Lemon Physics"

This universal solvent swallows every hill - Angela Narciso Torres "Self-Portrait as Water"

So solvent a peace - John Updike "Endpoint"

Spirit Gum:
Patched him together with spirit gum and spare parts - Denise Dumars "The Golem"

Starch:
Sacraments of Clorox in the church of starch - Ted Kooser "Song of the Ironing Board"

Strychnine:
Strychnine and scouring powder - Judy Jordan "Prologue"

Sulfur Dioxide:
Lead paint and sulfur dioxide - Matthew Olzmann "Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now"

Tallow:
Tallow ripple cleaving the bark - Jessica P. Wick "Sap and Superstition"

Tar.

Tarmac:
Past bulldozers and trucks pouring tarmac - Peter Balakian "Little Richard"

Tracks of brown and gold across the tarmac - Cynthia Zarin "Rainy Day Fugue"

Tear Gas:
Nostalgia and tear gas have the same acrid smack - A.E. Stallings "After a Greek Proverb"

Terrigen:
crystal shards of terrigen mist - Jena Osman "Mercury Rising (A Visualization)"

Timber.

Tincture:
Some grains of night tincture the noontide air - Henry David Thoreau "The Fall of the Leaf"

The many-tinctured veins of precious marble - Felicia Hemans "The Abencerrage Canto III"

Untinctured with regrets - William Anderson "Landscape Lyrics No.III--Noonday"

Tobacco.

Tonic:
I offer these as tonic - Camisha L. Jones "Haunted"

Hair tonics by color like a spectrum - Diane Seuss "Six Unrhymed Sonnets"

Had their gin and tonic talks - Stephen Yenser "Vertumnal [excerpt]"

Toxic/Toxin.

Turpentine:
Requires turpentine stillness - Caroline Harper New "Ekphrasis"

No turpentine to cleanse or burn - Caroline Harper New "Ekphrasis"

Valium:
Some Valium cloudy mornings - Alise Alousi "What Every Driver Must Know"

Varnish:
The varnished, punctured skein of sky - Tony Hoagland "Frog Song"

Brushes brown varnish over the past - Ted Kooser "A Sepia Photograph"

Imbued with fruit and varnish - Rimbaud "The Minx" (translated by A.M. Juster)

By the light of unvarnish'd truth - Walter Richard Cassels "Hebe"

Vinyl:
I organize on vinyl and per diems - Russell Brakefield "Field Recordings"

who these vinyl weeds so irritate - Charles Coleman Finlay "Accidental Series"

The black vinyl divine who is winding this universe - Tiffany Higgins "Dance, Dance, While the Hive Collapses" [Poetry Jan. 2016]

Dozens of hot vinyl hearts - Kiki Petrosino "Lament"

Vitriol [archaic for sulphuric acid]:
With marble-dust and vitriol - "Bogus Champagne" [The Continental Monthly March 1862]

That vitriolic atmosphere just outside the ever-eroding walls - Timons Esaias "Venusian Cuisine"

Bathed in vitriol twilights - Iris Tree "Streets"

Wax.

Whitewash:
Highways burnt then whitewashed - Alise Alousi "What Every Driver Must Know"

The adagio echoes in that whitewashed cave - Alexandra Lytton Regalado "The Garden of Earthly Delights"

Wooden.


See also (many things that ought to be here, too, are likely buried elsewhere):
Go to Potential Titles: Art/Craft: Tools and Materials [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Cloth/Fabric/Fiber - Things Made From [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Elements - Chemical [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Metals [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Plants [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Rocks [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Rocks - Pretty Ones [category].


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

Potential Titles: Matter - States and Characteristics of [category]

The choice between this post and these others, Potential Titles: Matter - Specific Substances [category] or Go to Potential Titles: Sensory Adjacent [category], can be somewhat arbitrary, so maybe check those, too.


Acid.

Acrid.

Aerosol:
Inside of a pillar of aerosol blue - Angela Liu "An Interrogation About a Monster During Sleep Paralysis"

Alloy.

Amalgam:
Amalgams of pilfered string and whittled sticks - Allison Joseph "My Father's Kites"

Artificial:
Artificial flowers bloom in the dead bodies of universes - Jong-Ki Lim "The Fall of Snakes"

Ash.

Catalyst.

Caustic:
Learned to swim in the caustic water - Elizabeth Alexander "Haircut"

A galleon on the caustic waters - William Brewer "Resolution"

Some heartsick caustic titan - Amaud Jamaul Johnson "Raising Hell"

Must endure the caustics that effect a cure - Eliza Lucy Leonard "The Miller and His Golden Dream"


Cinder.

Clump.

Coarse.

Composite:
In our separateness and composites - Joseph O. Legaspi "Vows (for a gay wedding)"

Compost:
Mugwort, red clover, firethorn for compost & company - L. Lamar Wilson "Lauren Oya Olamina Explains Earthseed to Ernest Hemingway"

Compound.

Crystal.

Dirt.

Dollop:
Savor this dollop of alchemy - Mike Allen "Freebasing the Moon"

Dust.

Elastic:
Elastic humbleness of flowers and weeds - Maxwell Bodenheim "Landscape"

This elastic air convey - Ralph Waldo Emerson "May-Day"

An elastic sense of being and becoming - Allison Joseph "My Father's Kites"

In the elasticity of nightfall - Jenny Xie "The Game"

Fiber/Fibrous.

Film/Filmy.

Fluid.

Foam.

Foil.

Froth.

Fume.

Garbage.

Gas/Gasoline.

Granulated:
Echoes off a canister of granulated sugar - Andre F. Peltier "Let the Rigatoni Be My Reeds"

Grease.

Grist:
Children made vapor, families ground to grist - Cynthia Dewi Oka "American Abyss"

Infusion.

Liquid.

Material.

Matter.

Miasma:
Miasmas steaming up from sunless fens - G.H.H. "Night and Morning" (from The Knickerbocker, v. 23:3, March 1844)

The miasmatic mist of the soul of the lonely - Sade Iverson "The Milliner" [The Little Review v.1 no.5, July 1914]

Afloat in their ancient miasma - Mary Karr "Metaphysique du Mal"

start with any miasma dispersed - Asiya Wadud "attention as a form of ethics [excerpt]"

Mineral.

Mixture.

Mud.

Ore.

Particle.

Paste:
From the paste and paper of myself - William Brewer "Ode to Suboxone"

With a paste of cloves and wild honey - Thomas James "Mummy of a Lady Named JemutesonekhXXI Dynasty"

Canvases of crushed lightbulbs and screws in paste - Dean Young "Peach Farm" [Poetry June 2012]

Plasma:
Tastes the day's first plasma of leaf - Jan Beatty "I'll Write the Girl"

Leaves behind us swirling in our plasma trail - David C. Kopaska-Merkel "Long Voyage"

Tell our tales of plasma waves - Ann K. Schwader "Void Music"

Pollute.

Porous:
There is always something porous in the decorous - Josh Bell "One Shies at the Prospect of Raising Yet Another Defense of Cannibalism"

The Porous Plaster wins because it sticks - Wallace Irwin "The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor"

Avenues porous with ill-built adornments - Adrian Matejka "16 Bars Poetica"

The porous weight that follows echo - Edwin Torres "The Intermission Clown"

Powder.

Pristine.

Pulp:
just grayish pulp - Elizabeth Bartlett "cold wakening"

Slow pulp of arithmetic - Kiki Petrosino "Louisa County Patrol Claims, 1770-1863"

Pulped and vectored like a virus - Bruce Smith "Ferment"

Residue.

Sediment.

Slick:
Became black slick hid in shale - Tiffany Higgins "Samba in the Sky" [Poetry Nov. 2013]

Sludge:
Vomits up the sludge of abandonment - Fargo Tbaki "Palestine Is a Futurism: The Dream"

Slurry:
Arsenic slurry caged behind a dam - Melissa Range "Flat as a Flitter"

Smoke.

Solid.

Soot.

Steam.

Vapor.

Viscous:
douse this blackness in viscous castor oil - Neha Maqsood "Things I Do to Remember Home"

into viscous fossil wine - Avi Silver "Passing Diamonds"

Wholesome:
Sad substitutes for wholesome food - Eliza Lucy Leonard "The Miller and His Golden Dream"

Day has broken Night's unwholesome Dish - Wallace Irwin "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Jr."


See also (many things that ought to be here, too, are likely buried elsewhere):
Go to Potential Titles: Art/Craft: Tools and Materials [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Elements - Chemical [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Metals [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Rocks [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Rocks - Pretty Ones [category].


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

Potential Titles: Metals [Category]

Some metallic elements may only be here: Potential Titles: Metals [category]. I've tried to crosspost, but I forget sometimes.


Alloy.

Aluminum:
The aluminum morning takes on more tension - Mary Jo Bang "The Cruel Wheel Turns Twice"

How quickly oil moves to aluminum - Mary Jo Bang "S Is for Strategies for Making Sense of Spectacles"

Keeps sanctity in aluminum cans - B. K. Fischer "Perceptive"

Brass.

Bronze.

Cast Iron:
Poured like cast iron into our spines - Merdan Ehet'Eli "Common Night" transl. by Joshua L. Freeman

Onions sizzling in a cast iron skillet - Sue Ann Gleason "Ask Me"

A cast-iron smile of joy - Robert W. Service "Grin"

A foundation of black cast iron - Zheng Min "Heavy Lyrics #1: Heavy Lyricism" translator not credited. Source: https://projects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/archive2/DACHS_Leiden/poetry/MD/Zheng_Min_trans.pdf

Chrome.

Chromium:
These women carry the tribe on their chromium backs - Vincent Toro "¿Que Que La Femme?"

Cobalt.

Copper.

Dross.

Gild.

Gilt.

Gold.

Gunmetal:
The dust motes grew gunmetal - Kristina Erny "Abduction"

Ingot:
Violet energy ingots - Hoa Nguyen "Haunted Sonnet"

Iridium:
A few iridium specks of idea - May Swenson "Colors Without Objects"

Iron.

Lead (all)/Led.

Lithium:
I have enclosed my voice in lithium - Sarah Grey "Biophilia"

Magnesium:
Dragons breathing white-hot magnesium across humid skies - Ian Goh "Firework"

Mercury.

Metal.

Metallic.

Metallurgy:
Metallurgy could fight the giants - Nicky Russell "Machinist Hands"

Molten.

Nickel.

Nugget:
Panned the contents for every nugget of twinkling hope - Mike Allen "The Strip Search"

Nuggets of gold are her acres - Emily Pauline Johnson "Brandon"

Ore.

Pewter:
Between the planets' pewter light - Chris Dombrowski "Boreal"

Pewter on a porcelain field - N. Scott Momaday "The Snow Mare"

The pale pewter path of the trees' parting - Joyce Sidman "Riding a Bike at Night"

The fire-lit pewter glowing - Edmund Clarence Stedman "The Ballad of Lager Bier"

Platinum:
Shoot the hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum - Hilaire Belloc "The Bad Children's Book of Beasts: The Hippopotamus"

Platinum but hollow inside - Parneshia Jones "What Would Gwendolyn Brooks Do"

The platinum thread beyond them - Keetje Kuipers "Across a Great Wilderness without You"

Just there on reality's platinum fringe - Michael Meyerhofer "I Christen Thee, My Higgs Boson"

Plutonium:
Sweating drops of liquid plutonium - Tim Pratt "Carcinodjinn"

Quicksilver.

Radium:
But I have radium dreams - Sheila Black "Radium Dream"

With eyes of radium - Max Bodenheim "The Operation"

A radium of the word - Mina Loy "Gertrude Stein"

Scrap Metal:
A violet blooming through scrap metal - Fiona Lu "Turing Test"

Sheet Metal:
Runways jeweled with wrenches and sheet metal - Yona Harvey "Dark and Lovely After Take-Off (A Future)"

Silver.

Slag:
Carved by the slag of too much coffee - Russell Brakefield "Raccoon Sighting Before Intimacy"

Slag of the seething furnaces - Alfred Noyes "Jean Guettard III: The Shadow of Pascal"

Steel.

Sterling:
Shall prove its sterling worth - Arthur Caswell Parker "My Race Shall Live Anew"

Tin.

Titanium:
Titanium scales rhyming across curves - Christine Stewart-Nuñez "Credo"

Tungsten:
Tungsten for the fireflies' freeze tag - Cynthia Zarin "Summer"

Uranium:
The promise of honey, the symbol for uranium - Pablo Neruda "Gautama Christ" transl. by William O'Daly

Wire.

Zinc:
The wind shrieking in the zinc roof - Noemia da Sousa "Poem of Distant Childhood" transl. by Allan Francovich and Kathleen Weaver

The shimmering of zinc and apples - Pablo Neruda "Cordilleras" transl. by Maria Jacketti


Navigation Links:
Go to Potential Titles: Art/Craft: Tools and Materials [category].
Go to author indices.
Go to word indices.
Go to category indices.

Potential Titles: Money - Inheritance/Gifts [category]

Alms.

Bequeath/Bequest.

Bestow.

Charity.

Disown.

Donate/Donor:
Won’t donate the corpse of my dreaming - Rasha Abdulhadi "Pocketful of Warding Stones"

Seeing the world through donated eyes - Duane Ackerson "The Blind Man"

The donor of peaceful days - Archibald Lampman "The Land of Pallas"

One donation and the right peach - Philip Schultz "IGA"

Dower/Endower.

Endow.

Fundraiser:
Each murder, a thinly veiled fundraiser - Farah Habad "And out of the ashes"

Gift.

Heir/Heiress.

Heirloom:
Our heirlooms of shot nerves - Canisia Lubrin "In the Middle of the Burning"

Heirloom to all the sorrowing nations of the earth - "Oration on Charles Sumner, Addressed to Colored People"

Alone it hangs over a mouldering heir-loom - Samuel Rogers "Ginevra"

These rough burrs my heirlooms - Henry David Thoreau "The Fall of the Leaf"

Heritage.

Inherit.

Legacy.

Patron:
The patron saint of envy - Leonard Cohen "Field Commander Cohen"

Whose patron saints are longing and despair - Rigoberto Gonzalez "Casa"

Reward.


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

Potential Titles: Money - Monetary Excess [category]

Avarice.

Binge:
One long champagne binge - Catherynne M. Valente "Mouse Koan"

Decadence:
With a decadent sweet art - Seamus Heaney "Aisling"

The decadent ruin where expatriate gods live - Tim Pratt "Ammut in Her Later Years"

Dreaming of the night's decadence - C. Dale Young "The Wolf"

Dilettante:
And watch with dilettante eyes - Richard Le Gallienne "Saint Charles

Effete:
Of an architecture grown effete - Emile Verhaeren "Les Villages Illusoires: The Rope-Maker" transl. by Alma Strettell

Exorbitant:
Proposals vaporized and exorbitant - Leila Chatti "The Rules"

The exorbitant syntax of stars - Jay Wright "Kumu"

Expense/Expensive.

Extravagance.

Fortune.

Frivolous:
some frivolous instinct shifting into weather - Xan Forest Phillips "no one wants to be rough anymore"

Gild.

Greed.

Lavish.

Luxury.

Millionaire:
Until the dreams of millionaires are clothing for the poor - Thomas M. Disch "The Clouds"

That no millionaire can buy - Tom Hall "She Is Mine"

Miser.

Monopoly.

Opulent.

Overpay:
Which o'erpay the power of Destiny - "The King of Darkness: On the Fallen Angels" [Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction v.12 no.337, Oct. 25, 1828]

Posh:
Inhale the posh scent of ragweed - Jaswinder Bolina "Apologia Matilde"

Prosper.

Rich.

Splurge:
Except in the splurge of roses - Mary Oliver "Work"

Stingy:
Held horses for a stingy penny - Conrad Aiken "Parasite"

Sumptuous:
Making sumptuous death - CAConrad “Leave Something Quiet in Shell of My Ear”

Half a loaf from sumptuous crumbs - Countee Cullen "Oh, for a Little While Be Kind"

Surplus.

Treasure/Treasury.

Wealth.


Navigation Links:
Go to author indices.
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Go to category indices.

Potential Titles: Money - Dubiously Legal [category]

Bandit.

Bet.

Bribe.

Burglar:
Brigands and bootleggers and burglars - Lisa M. Bradley "Una Cancion de Keys"

Hotly bound on blissful burglary - Sidney Lanier "The Bee" [Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Oct. 1877 v.XX no.118]

a burglar caught red-handed - Valzhyna Mort "crossword"

A truth burgled, tarnished, but returned - Brandon O'Brien "Quiet and Fragile Try on the Same Romper"

Cheat.

Contraband:
In a moment contraband - Emily Dickinson "Part Five: The Single Hound"

His contraband and only comfort - Chad Frame "A Union Victory"

with contraband and trafficked cargo - Malcolm Friend "Caliban Theory"

Corrupt.

Counterfeit.

Extortion:
Who by fraud or extortion would rise - "The Emperor's Rout"

Extortion and the imperfect tense - Ted Mathys "Fool's Gold"

Evades the cold extortion of your eye - Lola Ridge "Sonnet (To E.S.)"

Felon:
The pardon that a felon spoke - Theodore Maynard "Christmas on Crusade"

Hoping to sidestep felony - Art Zilleruelo "Someone's Property"

Forgery:
Forgery of deeper meaning - Rasha Abdulhadi "The Obstacle Bargainer's Lorica"

A forgery that will one day burn - Rajiv Mohabir "Ode to Richmond Hill"

Fraud.

Gamble:
To gamble on their scales and the wealth of their breath - Alicia Cole "The Far Western Regions of the Archipelago Are Where the Dragons Live"

The gamble of the recipe is salt and sweat - Oliver de la Paz "Chain Migration II: On Negations and Substitutions"

My husband gambled on my penumbra - Denise Duhamel "Delta Flight 656"

That gambled with the souls of men - Margaret Leigh "Two Epitaphs: I. On a Diplomat"

Graft.

Pilfer.

Pillage:
Murder, and pillage, and cannon's roar - Ellen Tracy Alden "A Centennial Tea-Pot"

Lest moths pillage my velvet capes - Ed Lynskey "Mrs. Lincoln's Terror of Moths"

Here is pillage worth a war - Edwin Markham "In Poppy Fields"

Piracy/Pirate.

Plunder.

Poach:
When you trust a house of poachers - Mahogany L. Browne "I Remember Death by its Proximity to What I Love"

The piercing glance of the eagle to the poacher - "The Good Goddess of Poverty [A Prose Ballad, translated from the French]" [The Continental Monthly v.4 no.3, Sept. 1863]

Where poachers set their wires - John Masefield "The Daffodil Fields"

Purloin:
With scraps of purloined timber - Captain Owen Rutter "The Song of Tiadatha"

Ransack:
The mice ransack our rations - Julia Bouwsma "Dear ghosts, in winter my camp on the hill becomes"

Ransack earth for riches rare - Ralph Waldo Emerson "To Rhea"

Strewings of ransacked moonlight - Robert Hass "First Things at the Last Minute"

God as he ransacked the world - Charles Rafferty "An Adulterous Spring"

Ransom.

Rob.

Smuggle:
Some song smuggled under my tongue - Aimee Le "Where I Learn to Shrink"

Steal/Stole.

Stolen.

Swindle:
Slammed, severed, and swindled - Parneshia Jones "What Would Gwendolyn Brooks Do"

A swindled naturalist - Pablo Neruda "Morning with Air" transl. by William O'Daly

Theft.

Thief.

Venal:
Our venal empire dwindling to dust - Noah Warren "Shuttle"

Wager.


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

Potential Titles: Money - Lack Thereof [category]

Bankrupt.

Beg.

Cheap.

Debt.

Deficit:
In deficit of countless springs - Lucius Beebe "Autumn Lament"

To supply the grim deficit found in our days - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto I"

Eke:
Eked from iron and wreaked from blue - Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris "heron"

Evict.

Foreclose:
Yet when Mephisto would foreclose - Oliver Herford "Mephisto"

math that equates to foreclosures - Jose Olivarez "you the business folk"

How time, the cruel banker, forecloses us - D.A. Powell "corydon & alexis, redux"

Someone else's dream foreclosed - Vanessa Angelica Villarreal "Oak Falls"

Forfeit:
The forfeit of his mutual vow - Djuna Barnes "First Communion"

Forfeit that fair chance - Arthur Hugh Clough "The Music of the World and of the Soul"

Forfeited at some wild hazard - Edmund Clarence Stedman "Refuge in Nature"

Hardscrabble:
In our hardscrabble dreams - Cyrus Cassells "Caesars and Dreamers"

Impecunious:
Night's impecunious craftsman - Timothy Donnelly "To His Own Device"

Impoverish:
The extent of her impoverished heart - Kamilah Aisha Moon "Fannie Lou Hamer"

Could starve in this impoverished light - Charles Rafferty "After Hearing There Are Only 7,000 Stars Visible to the Naked Eye"

Improvidence:
Acknowledging an improvident surprise - Edwin Arlington Robinson "Karma"

Indigent:
An indigence of the light - Wallace Stevens "Lebensweisheitspielerei"

Insolvent/Insolvency:
The insolvency of emerging versions - Anne Boyer "The Revolt of the Peasant Girls"

Liability:
With secret benefits and obvious liabilities - Jim Daniels "Good Reception"

Always a version of the liability - Carol Muske-Dukes "Grief Dream"

Lien:
And placed a lien on your bones - Mike Allen "Lis Pendens"

Owe.

Parsimony:
A shadowy duet of parsimony and elegance - Sandra Kasturi "Carnaval Perpetuel"

Pauper:
Pauper's cot and hall of kings - Ceiriog "Daybreak" transl. by Edmund O. Jones

Pauper of the earth - Paul Laurence Dunbar "Christmas in the Heart"

Makes a mystic of the pauper - Terrance Hayes "Liner Notes for an Imaginary Planet"

Pawn.

Payday Loan:
Lend it to you like a payday loan - Amie Whittemore "The Alien Epistles, Letters 1-3"

Pittance:
Sharp pittances of years - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Life XI: Compensation"

With reverie's wasteful pittance - James Russell Lowell "To C. F. Bradford on the Gift of a Meerschaum Pipe"

Poor.

Poverty.

Promissory:
Our garments soaked in promissory rain - Kiki Petrosino "Happiness"

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

A sharecropper of loneliness - Kamilah Aisha Moon "Madear Tests Positive"

Spendthrift.

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

Squander.

Stint:
Punishment came without stint or delay - "Disobeying Mother" [Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad (ed. by Daphne Dale), 1894]

Weaving without stint or measure - Richard Haywarde "The Beating of the Heart" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIV no.2, Feb. 1849]

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

Worthless.


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

Potential Titles: Months, Days of the Week, and Holidays [category]

January.


February.


March (month).


April.


May (month).


June.


July.


August.


September.


October.


November.


December.


Month.


Sabbath.


Monday.


Tuesday.


As I close my eyes for silence on a Wednesday - Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake "Someday I'll Love--"

To experience Wednesday twilight - John Wieners "au rive"


Thursday.


( Friday )

Saturday.


Sunday.


Carnivale:
Masked Carnivale raccoons & fat possum shadows - David St. John "Venetian Farewells"

Christmas:
Curtailed by the ever-growing Christmas trees - Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan "Gosh, It's Too Beautiful to Exist Briefly in a Parallel Planet"

Easter:
An Easter egg cut-out of grass and trees - Sarah Getty "The Wash"

Equinox:
Which blow through equinox - Cass Donish "You, Emblazoned"

The year poised on the equinox - Marilyn Hacker "Nearly a Valediction"

Eve [time of day or night before].

4th of July:
The stars sizzling like 4th of July sparklers - G. O. Clark "Sound Check"

Halloween:
The neighbors were still dancing in their Halloween best - Edgar Kunz "Fixer"

Holiday.

Lent:
Burning in Lent's black-bordered dress - Emily Pauline Johnson "Easter"

Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents - Dorothy Parker "Ballade at Thirty-Five"

Scattered into flight the Vows of Lent - Helen Rowland "The Rubáiyát of a Bachelor"

In one swift Lenten smear of ash - Ann K. Schwader "Slouching Towards Entropy"

New Year.

Solstice.

Thanksgiving:
Warm Thanksgiving fires are burning - Miriam Clark Potter "Thanksgiving Kitchen Song"

Valentine/Valentine's Day:
The oak trees are scattering valentines over the snow - Ted Kooser " In a Light Late-Winter Wind"



Calendar.


Date.


Navigation Links:
Go to author indices.
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Go to category indices.