Potential Titles: Key

[somethingdarker]

Our story locked with a lost key - Daisy Aldan "Your Letter"

Some key unlocks the labyrinth - Thomas Bailey Aldrich "Pauline Pavlovna"

a replica of the first lock and key - Alise Alousi "Burnished in Future Time"

When silence turns the key - Maya Angelou "Now Long Ago"

Under lock and key in the netherworld - Mary Jo Bang "Awake, I Listened"

The keys keep making the piano be - Mary Jo Bang "How will it feel months from now"

Lock the box with the key inside - Mary Jo Bang "The Storm We Call Progress"

The keys of all the doors of sleep - Hilaire Belloc "The Night"

No key of mine unlocks one lock of one gate - William Rose Benét "Mad Blake"

A key no thief can steal, no time can rust - Stella Benson "Christmas, 1917"

Now, since you gave me the key - Stella Benson "Song [If I have dared to surrender]"

The fluster of lost door keys - Elizabeth Bishop "One Art"

Sustains the keys of Hell and Death - Robert Blair "The Grave"

A key on a kite string - Lisa M. Bradley "Una Cancion de Keys"

Until the key kisses the lock - Mahogany L. Browne "Goodnight, Moon"

Mighty organ of a thousand keys - Marie Hedderwick Browne "Down by the Sea"

Lock'd with a key which Fate keeps - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto I"

Carried no key - Julie Byrne "Sleepwalker"

Earth's golden keys of happiness - W. Wilfred Campbell "Victoria"

To the highest key of ancient Rome - John Cleveland "To the Memory of Ben Jonson"

The future with its golden key - Susan Coolidge "Two Ways to Love. I"

The keys of death and hell - Benjamin Copeland "Salus per Christum"

As if we owned the lock, the key, the hinges - Gabriel Cortez "Upon Hearing Your Building is up for Sale"

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

In vain the locksmith changes keys - Palmer Cox "The Brownies' Candy-Pull"

Within myself is lodged the key - Countee Cullen "Harsh World That Lashest Me"

Hieroglyphs in a different key - Monica de la Torre "Pause the Document"

Bringing his soul's keys - E.C. Dickinson "A Child's Voice"

Could not breathe without a key - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Time and Eternity XXXV"

Instinct picking up the key - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Time and Eternity XLI: The Forgotten Grave"

The key dropped by memory - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Time and Eternity XLI: The Forgotten Grave"

A long muted chain of twisting keys - Chris Dombrowski "Fluvial"

Turn the key and bolt the door - Ralph Waldo Emerson "The Past"

Turns like a key, opening air - Annie Finch "A Mabon Crown"

A slender bunch of russet-gold keys - Rose Fyleman "Alms in Autumn"

Hold the keys of prisoned tender memories - L.J.G. "Echoes" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 5th series, no.16-v.I, 19 April 1884]

Thought keys would fly out of my pocket - Elisa Gabbert "The Bridge"

Never enough keys for all the doorways of memory - Preston Grassmann "The Doors of a Drowned City"

Never enough keys for all the hidden rooms - Preston Grassmann "The Doors of a Drowned City"

The key of your will - Nikki Grimes "In Search of a Superpower"

Some unseen warder kept the key - Louise Imogen Guiney "The Wooing Pine"

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

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

Whose mailed hand keeps the keys - William Ernest Henley "Rhymes and Rhythms"

Keeps the keys of death - Jeannette Fraser Henshall "Humility"

The keys betraying this night - Robert Herrick "Corinna's Going a-Maying"

Keyed to walking shadows - Rosalie Dunlap Hickler "Night on a Mountain"

Do not trouble the holders of the iron keys - Ellen Hinsey "Epistle"

In every key from soft to shrill - Ralph Hodgson "The Song of Honour"

Death and Sin rose to render key and sword - A.E. Housman "Last Poems XXXI: Hell's Gate"

A ring of keys that can open any door - Mary Karr "Diogenes the Bartender Closes Up"

And old forgotten key deep in an unused drawer - Kate "An Old 'Chubb'" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 5th series, no.109-v.III, 30 Jan. 1886]

Great key to golden palaces - John Keats "Endymion, Book I [A thing of beauty is a joy for ever]"

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

Keyed to waxing or waning crescent - Christopher Kondrich "Placeholder"

Our biochemical keys fit fossil locks - David C. Kopaska-Merkel "Raised by Wolves"

Once I owned the key to an umbrageous trail - Stanley Kunitz "The Testing-Tree"

Open unseen gates with key of gold - Emma Lazarus "City Visions"

And the keys were turned on fate - C.S. Lewis writing as Clive Hamilton "Dymer. Canto I"

For which there are no keys - J. Patrick Lewis "the journalist"

Lifts a key of crimson stone - Vachel Lindsay "Shantung, or the Empire of China Is Crumbling Down"

Throws forty keys at Arthur's feet - Vachel Lindsay "Shantung, or the Empire of China Is Crumbling Down"

Inside a Drawer to which I hold the Key - Mary Wallace Bundy Little "The Rubaiyat of a Huffy Husband"

The key which hides a world empty of hours - Amy Lowell "The Matrix"

I, long keyed to silence - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay "Presence"

The fountain of a lower key - J. Michael Martinez "Treaty of Guadalupe"

Unlock space with a paper key - J. Michael Martinez "Where Love Is Ground to Wheat"

Turned the key on my existence - Rafael Arevalo Martinez "My Life Is a Memory" transl. by William George Williams

Your hands mixed the keys of life - Edgar Lee Masters "So We Grew Together"

A small key at the groaning gate - Theodore Maynard "Treason"

This awful key to my infinity - Claude McKay "I Know My Soul"

The key to your front door - Rachel McKibbens "Untitled"

The key that locks your heavy heart - Charlotte Mew "The Pedlar"

The key that locks your tired eyes - Charlotte Mew "The Pedlar"

Myself shall hold the key - Edna St. Vincent Millay untitled sonnet from Sonnets and The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver

Bring me honey and a key - Devin Miller "Whale Mothers, Witch Mothers"

The key of the happy golden land - William Morris "The Blue Closet"

Keys spread out in secret rocks - Pablo Neruda "From Above (1942)" transl. by Jack Schmitt

My key to the quiet sublime - Pablo Neruda "One Hundred Love Sonnets: LXVI" transl. by Rafael Campo

Of thy senses kept the keys - Cardinal John Henry Newman "The Dream of Gerontius"

The dark key to Creation - Alfred Noyes "Darwin V: The Vera Causa"

Memorized in every key - D. Nurkse "Dominant Harmony"

Who has the keys, we ask, where is the gate? - Kunjana Parashar "In the Zoo" [Strange Horizons 17 February 2025]

Swallow a key for every year - Xan Forest Phillips "Angola Penitentiary"

The key to a philosopher's stone - Noel Quiñones "Orange"

And of some I keep the key - John Reade "In My Heart"

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]

The silence of keys and silvery hands - Lola Ridge "Fuel"

A reminiscent tone on minor keys - Lola Ridge "Under-Song"

The key to that ancient party - Arthur Rimbaud "A Season in Hell" transl. by Bertrand Mathieu

We two must wait for the angel's key - Rennell Rodd "Hic Jacet"

Mazes whose key is ecstacy - Amy Redpath Roddick "The Mind of the Mystic"

Keyed to dolor and delight - Clinton Scollard "Night by the Sea"

The first key flip in an apartment - Chet'la Sebree "An End"

Lock and step and key in hole - Brenda Shaughnessy "Last Sleep, Best Sleep"

Lock with keys of Heaven - Dora Sigerson Shorter "An Imperfect Revolution"

Gives us the keys to the kingdom of death - Edith Sodergran "Pain" transl. by Jaakko A. Ahokas

The iron key that locks your heart - Edmund Clarence Stedman "The Protest of Faith: to Rev. --"

A double key which opens to the heart - Sir P. Sydney "A Kiss" [Mirror of Literature v.13 issue 358, Feb. 1829.]

Pierce thy heart to find the key - Francis Thompson "The Mistress of Vision"

Stubborn as a stolen lock refusing the key - Yvanna Vien Tica "Rites of Becoming a White Lady"

Hands me the moon in the grooved tip of a key - Brian Tierney "Catering"

Yield the keys of Beauty's gates - Iris Tree "[Blow upon blow they bruise the daylight wan]"

Dust darkens the keys of the piano - Chase Twichell "Inland"

Mildness held the keys of the colossal silence - Emile Verhaeren "Les Villages Illusoires: The Rope-Maker" transl. by Alma Strettell

The key that locks me from a world of pain - "La Vie Poetique" [The Continental Monthly v.II no.VI, Dec. 1862]

The desperation of unstruck piano keys - Ocean Vuong "Ode to Masturbation"

Piano keys in the back of my head - Allison Benis White "Description of Symptoms"

The key that opens to green arches - Helen Hay Whitney "Tranquility"

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

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

Music in her sweetest key - George Wither "Vanished Blessings"

With a magic key unlocked the store of ages - Miss J. Woodman "Stanzas Suggested by Gliddon's Lectures on the Antiquities of Egypt" [The Knickerbocker Jan. 1844]


Keyhole.


Freedom's sweet keynote and commission-word - Thomas Hood "The Two Swans"

Sounded the keynote against you - Carlos Montezuma "I Have Stood Up for You"


The keystone of his airy bridge - George MacDonald "A Hidden Life"

Publicity is the keystone in the Arch of Triumph - Rudolph Valentino "Reflections at Random (To A.T.)"


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


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


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