Potential Titles: Rust

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Rusty bells and hollow songs - Cristoso Apache "Gahe Dzil/Mountain Spirits"

Of mildew and rust - Simon Armitage "Privet"

Ticking down into rust - Simon Armitage "Prometheus"

Give me a crown that will never rust - Albion Fellows Bacon "At Last"

A rusted absence extending back in time - Mary Jo Bang "The Last Two Seconds"

The snake wrapped around a rusted tree - Mary Jo Bang "W Is for Whatever"

An old trumpet harsh with rust and gold - Stephen Vincent Benet "The Last Vision of Helen"

Till the body rusts away from the light - Samuel A. Betiku "Psalm with Displaced Body Rattled in its State of Rest"

Beauty with a rusted mouth - Louise Bogan "A Tale"

Buried in the night, preparing destinies of rust - Gordon Bottomley "To Iron-Founders and Others"

Rusty fishhook still lucky - Julia Bouwsma "Midden"

All the yards torn by their green rust beings - Russell Brakefield "Effigy"

Ending with that blade of rusted teeth - Nickole Brown "Black bird, red wing"

A rusty vane with rickety ways - Sterling A. Brown "Effie"

Months of steel rust blisters - Mahogany L. Browne "My face is an iteration, but the song in my belly is ancestral"

Held a golden cup and tasted rust - Witter Bynner "The New World III"

A rusty yawn in a rumored year - Chen Chen "Self-Portrait as So Much Potential"

Blooming like rust under oil and tender iron - Wendy Chen "They Sail Across the Mirrored Sea"

lapping them into rust - Lucille Clifton "one year later"

Which moth and rust corrupt - Arthur Hugh Clough "Easter Day. Naples, 1849"

Forgetfulness does rust the key - James H. Cousins "Legend of the Blemished King"

Names dim with Time's dull rust - Eleanor Rogers Cox "Dreaming of Cities Dead"

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

An arrangement in rust and gray-green - Timothy Donnelly "The New Intelligence"

Last week's rusty eclipse - Cheryl Dumesnil "Lake Dharma"

Land unscrubbed to rust - Rebecca Dunham "Atavism at Twilight"

Tireless as rust and bold as roots - Louise Erdrich "Fooling God"

Be tireless as rust - Louise Erdrich "Fooling God"

Demon rust loosening the bolts - Martin Espada "A Million Ants Swarming Through His Body"

Until the water rusted its way in - Vievee Francis "Given to Rust"

The wheel never rusts, never stopped - Vievee Francis "Sugar and Brine: Ella's Understanding"

And unsuspected moth and rust ate deep - Lydia Gibson "Lost Treasure"

Whether by rust or decayed memory - Sarah Gittens "Pineapple Bedposts"

Disillusioned roofs with teeth of rust - Louis Golding "Sunset Over Suburb"

A museum of rusted scythes - Donald Hall "Alterations"

Tarnish of moth and rust - Frances E.W. Harper "Mother's Treasures"

Sharpen wood's warp to a rust - francine j. harris "senses"

The years have turned the rusted key - Patrick Joseph Hartigan writing as John O'Brien "Around the Boree Log"

Hushed and clicking to rust - Terrance Hayes "Three Measures of Time"

The iron key in the rusted lock - Marilyn Hacker "For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back"

Scarred with sordid rust of years - John Northern Hilliard "Iconoclasm" [The Fly Leaf no. 3 v.1 Feb. 1896]

A rusty shadow neither hunting nor playing - Jane Hirshfield "Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight"

Moth and rust so soon - Margaret Houston "Aftermath"

In dark and rusty flame - Aldous Huxley "Song of Poplars"

Springing in dark and rusty flame - Aldous Huxley "Song of Poplars"

The pale rust of this moon - Elizabeth Jacobson "Blood Moon"

Stains of rust on mounds of plaster - Robinson Jeffers "Summer Holiday"

And rust began to bleed through - Amaud Jamaul Johnson "LA Police Chief Daryl Gates Dead at 83"

Smothered in the rust of its old gates - Ashley M. Jones "I Find the Earring that Broke Loose from My Ear the Night a White Woman Told Me the World Would Save Her"

Lattices of rusted lace - A.M. Juster "No Man's Island"

Left my blessings to rust in the rain - Vandana Khanna "Parvati Fails the First Test of Being Holy"

Deeper than rust - John Kinsella "'A Coda to History: 29'"

The rust of brittle color - Hailey Leithauser "Dolor"

Bowed by rust - Philip Levine "It Was Autumn"

Glorify the land of rust - Vachel Lindsay "Shantung, or the Empire of China Is Crumbling Down"

Past the reach of moth and rust - Sidney Royse Lysaght "Shelter and Fellowship"

All clanks and clicks and rusty squeaks - Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris "heron"

A bloom of rust at your vision's edge - Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris "red fox"

Our skin is rust and metal - Sally Wen Mao "Anna May Wong Stars as Cyborg #86"

Strutted along a rusted past - David Tomas Martinez "from Forgetting Willie James Jones"

Ripened the rusty metal - David Tomas Martinez "The Mechanics of Men"

Oil the unused armour's rust - Andrew Marvell "Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland"

Tugs a rusted chain - John McCrae "The Captain"

Before the cane knife's rust - Brandy Nālani McDougall "Pō"

When her treasures are rust - Louis J. McQuilland "The King's Bride"

The rusted towers haunting one hill - M.S. Merwin "Letters"

Rusting around stopped notes - M.S. Merwin "Returning Season"

Her plowshare eaten up with rust - Joaquin Miller "India and the Boers"

Salt-blue eyes and rust lips - Claire Millikin "Dolls of Tifton, Georgia"

Red needles marking air with rust - Claire Millikin "Dress Like a Girl"

Iron rust countries with caves of diamonds - Pablo Neruda "Still Another Day: XX" transl. by William O'Daly

A savage crown with rusty, bloodstained spikes - Pablo Neruda "To Envy" transl. by Alastair Reid

Its rusted ribs were stolen from the junkyard - Caroline Harper New "Ekphrasis"

Gnomes in rusty red and gold - Alfred Noyes "Linnaeus"

Every fragile thing shall rust - Dorothy Parker "Rainy Night"

With a husk of mould and rust - W. Theodore Parkes "The Ghosts of Hampton Court"

Embraces me with her rusted hope - Cynthia Pelayo "Casa Juicio Final"

Nevermore to rust unblemished - Andre F. Peltier "A Long Walk"

Breeze blowing across its rusted strings - Patrick Phillips "Piano"

Blood-colored rust rubbed into my hands - Jon Pineda "The Muse, or Stars Out on Interstate 81 South"

The rust of the cold day breaking - Khadijah Queen "Declination"

The key was turned in that rusty door - A.J. Requier "The Phantasmagoria: A Legend of Eld" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIV no.2, Feb. 1849]

All that rots or rusts - Adrienne Rich "She"

What rust peels away - Jack Ridl "It Was Last Night, I Think"

The rain will rust it red - James Whitcombe Riley "Charms I: For Corns and Things"

Elegance married to rust - Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers "Abandoned Block Factory, Arkansas"

Echoes a falsehood in her lone, rusty voice - Nicky Russell "Machinist Hands"

Polished free of the rust of hypocrisy - Sanai "The Walled Garden of Truth" [selections] transl. by D. Pendleton

A rusted trumpet plays itself - Erika L. Sanchez "Capital"

Rust and gold on the roofs of the sea - Carl Sandburg "Fins"

Rimmed with rust and regret - Sue William Silverman "If the Girl Wears an Artificial Eye"

That I chew on until my teeth rust - Courtney Skaggs "The Little Death After the Apocalypse"

Whereon the shadows lay like rust - Clark Ashton Smith "Saturn"

A horse-shoe rusts above the door - Leonora Speyer "New England Cottage"

Pause upon the threshold's rust - Leonora Speyer "Protest in Passing"

Deep gnawed by rust and stain - "The Spur of Monmouth" [The Continental Monthly v.I - April, 1862 - no.IV]

Rusty cup-stains on the tables - Edmund Clarence Stedman "The Ballad of Lager Bier"

When the spirit's chains are rust - George Sterling "In a Thousand Years"

When matter's chain shall rust - George Sterling "The Moth of Time"

On custom's rust and Beauty's dust - George Sterling "The Yellow Rose"

His sword is rusting in its sheath - Elizabeth Drew Stoddard "Christmas Comes Again"

Rusted nails fell from the knots - Tennyson "Mariana"

In its rusty evolution toward shadow - Amber Flora Thomas "Shed"

Then spear and lance were left to rust - M.E. Thropp "The City of Mexico. Written While the War Was Pending" [Graham's Magazine v.XXII no.12, Dec. 1848]

Whose index has yet to rust - Edwin Torres "Territory"

Caging the sun in rusted prison bars - Iris Tree "[I know what happiness is]"

A rusty tractor sits fallow in the field - Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez "The Eye of the Flute"

My heart was eaten by corroding rust - Emile Verhaeren "The Sunlit Hours V" transl. by Charles Royier Murphy

Gold rust down my back - Ocean Vuong "Immigrant Haibun"

Running toward a rusted horizon - Ocean Vuong "In Newport I Watch My Father Lay His Cheek to a Beached Dolphin's..."

Gathering the memory of rust & iron - Ocean Vuong "Ode to Masturbation"

A brief rainbow through a mist of rust - Ocean Vuong "Of Thee I Sing"

Let it rust under the stairs - Rosemarie Waldrop "Inserting the Mirror"

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

Four or five mountains gone rust in twilight - Charles Wright "Chinoiserie VI"

A curse locks a rusty wooden door - Yang Lian "Venice Elegy 2 Rot Poem" transl. by Brian Holton

Mottled with creeping rust stains - Shuyi Yin "Growing Chair"

Rust's brown hatred - Adam Zagajewski "Highway"


Bloodrust fire, fleshtorn ground - Elizabeth Bartlett "The House of Sleep"


A rust-colored rosary worn from prayer - Danni Quintos "Breast Pain"


Rust-flakes erupting from the lungs - John James "After Guatemala"


A rust-red share in an empty furrow - Algernon Swinburne "Sorrow"


Only one sun-rust afternoon - Airea D. Matthews "Sexton Texts a Backslider After Breaking Lent"


The rust-trunk of memory - Hailey Leithauser "Memoirs"


Strength of unrusted will - Robert Nichols "Ardours and Endurances: The Dead III. Plaint of Friendship by Death Broken"


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