Potential Titles: Back (all)

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And snatched each soul back to flood - Rasha Abdulhadi "Pocketful of Warding Stones"

Spilt shatter'd gold about his back - Lascelles Abercrombie "Marriage Song"

Spilt shattered gold about his back - Lascelles Abercrombie "Small Fountains"

That withers quickly back into dark water - Duane Ackerson "A Ghost Story"

Taking back the moon for the lunatics - Duane Ackerson "Taking Back the Moon"

Salute us back with empty kitchen pans - Duane Ackerson "Trawling for Trolls"

A flock of blackbirds that only comes back later - Duane Ackerson "What If"

Sewing them back together to dry in the sun - Kaveh Akbar "What Seems Like Joy"

The eyes in our back keep vigil - Daisy Aldan "A Dance Without Touch"

Dashed back into a midnight ocean - Daisy Aldan "The Little Mermaid"

Courage on humble backs - Kwame Alexander "Animal Ark"

On the back of the night wind - Kwame Alexander "Majestic: Celebrating Maya Angelou"

Held just one thing back - Agha Shahid Ali "Even the Rain"

Come back from the echoless shore - Elizabeth Akers Allen "Rock Me to Sleep"

Spill acid back to the Big Bang - Mike Allen "Deluge"

And refused to back away from the boundaries - Mike Allen "Mondrian's War"

Memories gnawed at the back of his grieving brain - Mike Allen "Picasso's Rapture"

To stuff the Minotaur back in his Harlequin cloak - Mike Allen "Picasso's Rapture"

Flesh explained back to us as furniture - Zaina Alsous "To a Young Poet"

Pulled back by my lunatic heart - Julia Alvarez "All-American Girl"

In the back rooms of the heart - Julia Alvarez "Fights"

Look back to the city of change - Aldo Amparan "Aubade at the City of Change"

That lights the sorrowing sinner back - William Anderson "Landscape Lyrics No.IV--The Sunbeam"

Come back unbidden - Rae Armantrout "Unbidden"

And the way back won't bear scrutiny - Rae Armantrout "Upper World"

Stairs leading back to a dynasty - Cynthia Arrieu-King "Ming the Clam"

Look back and see the uneaten banquet - Atticus "Love Her Wild"

Down the road and back again - Derrick Austin. "The Birthday Interviews"

And bring you back to the common earth - George M. Baker "An Old Man's Prayer"

Learn how to swallow back oceans - Key Ballah "Skin & Sun"

Time burning back to liquid - Mary Jo Bang "The Blank of Reason Produces Blank: After Goya"

The skeleton dreaming its body back - Mary Jo Bang "Captivity"

A mouse hands back a wolf-totem - Mary Jo Bang "The Cracked Jar Called Can it Be Taught"

Irises edging a back wall - Mary Jo Bang "An Individual Equinox Suitable for Framing"

A false wall that holds nothing back - Mary Jo Bang "The Last Two Seconds"

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

Through the cosmos and the axe in the back - Mary Jo Bang "Magic Makes Everything Right"

Looking back at an avalanche of glass - Mary Jo Bang "The Mirror"

On the lake at the back of my mind - Mary Jo Bang "The Novel in Three Chapters"

While a bent hook holds back the last - Mary Jo Bang "Three Trees"

Back from the margin of the dim abyss - Maurice Baring "Julian Grenfell"

Back to the garden did they run - William E. Barton "The Story of a Pumpkin Pie"

Spin bodies to the wall and back - Samiya Bashir "At Harlem Hospital across the street from the Schomburg the only thing to eat is a Big Mac"

That breaks your back and bends you to the earth - Charles Baudelaire "Be Drunk" transl. by Louis Simpson

Upon his back an enormous Chimaera - Charles Baudelaire "Every Man His Chimaera" transl. not credited

Drawing all sunlight back to the hot deeps - Stephen Vincent Benet "The First Vision of Helen"

Spilling its star-dust back to dust again - Stephen Vincent Benet "Nos Immortales"

Settling well his harp upon his back - Stephen Vincent Benet "Two at the Crossroads"

Looking back only once - Rebecca G. Biber "Away, Russia"

Unhappy hills, bowed down with broken backs - Arna Bontemps "Golgotha Is a Mountain"

Let us go back and search the tangled dream - Arna Bontemps "The Return"

The years go back with an iron clank - Arna Bontemps "Southern Mansion"

Come back to seek the girl she was in these familiar stones - Arna Bontemps "To a Young Girl Leaving the Hill Country"

Backing away in a trapped circle - Bruce Boston "Alien Quarry"

Give her back her time-thorned flesh - Bruce Boston "The Lesions of Genetic Sin"

And tempts me back out on the road - Russell Brakefield "Field Recordings"

Ghost hounds back for the scraps - Russell Brakefield "This Is America and We Are Boys"

Some things you don't come back from - Geoffrey Brock "Goodbye"

Call back that lost island - Geoffrey Brock "Odysseus Old"

Give me back my barren hills - Anne Bronte "Home"

Give me back my dirty claws and blood-warm horns - Nickole Brown "A Prayer to Talk to Animals"

Came back to dream on the river - Elizabeth Barrett Browning "A Musical Instrument"

Floats back dishevelled strength in agony - Elizabeth Barrett Browning "To George Sand: A Recognition"

Only that to confirm the eternal at your back - Christopher Buckley "Prayer To Escape The East"

Let earth give back the footprints - Michelangelo Buonarroti "XXXVIII. Love's Vain Expense" transl. by John Addington Symonds

My collection of excuses practiced, preached right back - Taylor Byas "Conversion: On Cincinnati's Converted Churches, God, and Lucifer"

Paints the color back onto my cheeks - Taylor Byas "I begin the day thinking"

Stars from a back porch - Julie Byrne "Natural Blue"

And scatter them back to their hellish den - R.M.C. "Lay of the Madman" [The Knickerbocker v.10, no.6, December 1837]

Watching the waves eat back the blueblack dunes - Andrew Calis "The Sea / Is Sacred Still"

A cat's rough tongue scraping land back to waves - Andrew Calis "The Sea / Is Sacred Still"

clockwise back to a better self - Nicole Callihan "Marriage"

Skies that tempt the swallow back - C.S. Calverley "Waiting"

Still back from the past is bringing - Phoebe Cary "Otway"

Invited misery back in - Jos Charles "A Sonnet [I sat in windows]"

The rains have rolled back - Ching-In Chen "Simulacra"

Pay it back with diamonds and rubies - Ch'in Chia [untitled] (translated by Arthur Waley)

Bear a load of snow upon their backs - John Clare "Sheep in Winter"

A psalm of bullets in my back - Tiana Clark "Broken Ghazal for Walter Scott"

Looking back feels like looking forward - Adam Clay "Only Child"

From infinite distances borne back - Arthur Hugh Clough "Fragments of the Mystery of the Fall. Scene IX"

Without seeing ourselves looking back - Andrea Cohen "Weep Holes"

The memories came back empty - Leonard Cohen "Never Got to Love You"

Darkness will give you back - Henri Cole "To Sleep"

Stole my body back from death - Aaron Coleman "Another Strange Land: Downpour off Cape Hatteras (March, 1864)"

A mirror turning back to sand - Aaron Coleman "The Broken Man's Permission"

Back through the brindled understory - Donovon Kūhiō Colleps "He Mea Mālo'elo'e #3"

Through a door at the back of the world - Billy Collins "Endangered"

The sand holds me back - Hilda Conkling "Adventure"

Won't hold me back from the firestorm - Marlane Quade Cook "Breaking"

Toppling crests fling back the radiance - Martha Walker Cook "Clouds: Cumuli. Respectfully Dedicated to Professor Guyot" [The Continental Monthly v.5 no.3, March 1864]

Lead me back into the sunny years - Mrs. Martha W. Cook "Ethel: Fitz Fashion's Wife" [The Continental Monthly v.III - April, 1863 - no.IV]

Come back half comforted - Susan Coolidge "Commissioned"

Which to give back by the end of the month - Gabriel Cortez "Upon Hearing Your Building is up for Sale"

I do not ask that he turn back - Joseph S. Cotter Jr "The Deserter" [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]

Giving back a scattered chapter - Hart Crane "At Melville's Tomb"

And dish water gives back no images - Waring Cuney "No Images" [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]

How shall I call you back? - H.D. "Circe"

Hyacinth which the wind combs back - H.D. "Evadne"

Held back something from that hell of sweet - Daniell "Pleasure" [The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction v.13, no.365, 11 April 1829]

Tight enough to choke back tears - Jim Daniels "Church Reform"

Back from the wilderness of worry - Geffrey Davis "The Epistemology of Cheerios"

Bubbling back up from the other world - Armen Davoudian "Coming Out of the Shower"

Your voice reaching back to the mountains - Kwame Dawes "African Postman"

The plateau piles everything you love back into dust - Oliver de la Paz "You Must Lift Your Son's Languid Body"

Who wants to go back to zero again? - Monica de la Torre "View from a Dodo Chair"

Come back with me to the ruins - Diana Marie Delgado "Never Mind I'm Dead"

As they push themselves back to their origin - Tory Dent "The Moon and the Yew Tree"

Pushed back into vagueness until it succumbs - Tory Dent "The Moon and the Yew Tree"

Go back to an electric life - Jay Deshpande "Actually Very Simple"

Money not too much strain on the back - Blanche Taylor Dickinson "The Walls of Jericho"

Open the door holding back dawn - Chris Dombrowski "First Hour"

Death was a wind searching the back of his hand - Chris Dombrowski "Naive Melody"

Laughing back the startled shadows - Ignatius L. Donnelly "The Forest Fountain" [Graham's Magazine v.XL no.4, April 1852]

Back to business with another cup of coffee - Timothy Donnelly "Hymn to Life"

A long corridor clanging to the back of a house - Rita Dove "Alfonzo Prepares to Go Over the Top"

Roll back the Spirit's portals - Edward Dowden "Nocturne"

Drawn back to their lairs of light - John Drinkwater "Of Greatham"

And neither Thirst nor Wit has lured it back - J.L. Duff "The Rubaiyat of Ohow Dryyam"

Part of us always stays back - Cheryl Dumesnil "The Heart Has Four Chambers"

That pull back and wait for a moment - Camille T. Dungy "Characteristics of Life"

Pure speed held back for the finish - Stephen Dunn "Always Something More Beautiful"

Call me back to their succor - A.E. "Love"

Among the darkling trees set back - Helen Parry Eden "A Suburban Night's Entertainment"

Tap the backs of passing beetles - Dara Yen Elerath "The White Paws"

An old crab with barnacles on his back - T.S. Eliot "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"

Bring back the tulip's pride - Ralph Waldo Emerson "May-Day"

The other pushing back the flood - Fatihah Quadri Eniola "Down-Streaming"

Peel this sky back - Heid E. Erdich "Again, Today"

The clouds fall back to yield him way - D.F. "The Fall of the Year" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series, no.719, 6 Oct. 1877]

Looking back on Fate's decree - Constance Fairbanks "Those Far-Off Fields"

A friend can bring you back to your sweeter senses - Tarfia Faizullah "Wait Until It Grows Roots"

Back into rash light, dust, and air - Karolina Fedyk "Sawa"

Trace back the paths that I've chosen - Ashanti Files "Ripples"

As autumn dies to bring winter back - Annie Finch "Samhain"

Have come back to recover the dust - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Hvmken 6"

Snags back her blue memory - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Lost Coast"

Take a string to a bittern's back - Katie Ford "The Throats of Guantanamo"

Thyme picked outside our back door - Rebecca Foust "Abeyance"

Our backs armored by suffering - Vievee Francis "By the end"

Could not turn them back against the inferno - Robert Frazier "Wereman"

Before the daisy and the sorrel buy their brightness back - John Freeman "The Wakers"

Gave them back their shade - Robert Frost "The Exposed Nest"

In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back - Robert Frost "Waiting-- Afield at Dusk"

Debris falling back to earth - John Gallaher "And the Moon on Its Stem Will Steal You Away"

Deer flies followed us back - Frank Gallimore "Parasitoid"

Look back or lose your way - Eric Gamalinda "Factory of Souls"

Hands it back like prizes from Crackerjack - Sarah Getty "That Woman"

The patchwork of time staring back - Nikita Gill "Dark Days"

Wing-backed and vengeance born - Nikita Gill "The Erinyes: Vengeance-skinned Fury"

Who gently places fallen baby birds back - Nikita Gill "Your Soft Heart"

Riding the backs of the Trojan Women - Patricia Goedicke "The Reading Club"

The terror reaches its red claws into back ward and living room - Patricia Goedicke "The Reading Club"

And the rocks gave back the song - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "The Convert" (transl. by Edgar Alfred Bowring)

Went back to a ruined parent's ruined home - "The Gold-Finder" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCCXXXIX, v.LXXI, May 1852]

Brought back by sailors and diplomats - Theodora Goss "The Nightingale and the Rose"

Golden sunshine driving back the night - Herbert H. Gowen "What the Wise Men Saw"

One set of bootprints back where two had come - Lore Graham "Absence"

You bring back a shadow upon it now - Gretta "The Return to Scenes of Childhood" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.3, Sept. 1848]

I would call back every hope and fear - Gretta "The Return to Scenes of Childhood" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.3, Sept. 1848]

Turn stubborn instead of turning back - Nikki Grimes "Lessons"

I play your furies back to me at night - Thom Gunn "High Fidelity"

I must get back inside the cage of breath - Thom Gunn "Legal Reform"

And never should his eyes turn back - G.H.H. "Night and Morning" (from The Knickerbocker, v. 23:3, March 1844)

Would bring back riches and jewels for me - J.C.H. "Long Ago" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series, no.736, 2 Feb. 1878]

Purple stones throw back the shadows - Katherine Hale "Stony Lake"

That one you circle back to - Joy Harjo "Redbird Love"

The truth with its eyes staring back at me - Joy Harjo "Running"

Back into the tempest of dreams - Joy Harjo "We Encounter Nat King Cole as We Invent the Future"

Pollen blown off the backs of butterflies - francine j. harris "i live in detroit"

This knot is a map back to me - K.D. Harryman "Whipping"

Smiling destiny turns back the page - H.C. Harwood "Return"

I keep going back for pain samples - Deborah Hauser "Never Admit Your Mistakes"

Walking on the back of the wind - Terrance Hayes "Coffin for Head of State"

Laughter flickering back from shine to shade - William Ernest Henley "Rhymes and Rhythms"

Give back in beauty the dread and the anguish - William Ernest Henley "The Song of the Sword"

For Strength I'd back my claws alone - Oliver Herford "How the Lion Became King"

this disguise turns its back on me - Jim Heston "In the Time of Lycanthropy"

And pours itself back into water - Mary Hickman "Eva Hesse"

Through the wires on the backs of ions - Bob Hicok "Calling him back from layoff"

A dragonfly keeps coming back to the same dead twig - Conrad Hilberry "Angles"

Handing back the mottled afternoon - Conrad Hilberry "Blood Work"

Backing off for another stretch of melody - Conrad Hilberry "Divertimento 563"

If going back was what we wanted - Conrad Hilberry "Finding the Way"

Apples set on coals to back - Leslie Pickney Hill "Christmas at Melrose"

The snake had gone back to the hills - Brenda Hillman "Poem for a National Seashore"

The dream went back past the signs - Brenda Hillman "Poem for a National Seashore"

Look back, forward, or in - Brenda Hillman "Triple Moments of Light and Industry"

Fading back into shadows - Edward Hirsch "The Burning of the Midnight Lamp"

The envious gods take back what they can - Jane Hirshfield "Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World"

Keeps coming back in the dream - Jane Hirshfield "Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt"

The woods took them back - Jane Hirshfield "Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight"

Every color backed away into the past - Jackson Holbert "Unsent Letter to Jakob"

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

Back to your lands of light - Norah M. Holland "O Littlest Hands and Dearest"

The mirror gave me back a form - Mrs. E.N. Horsford "The Deformed Artist" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.4, Oct. 1848]

Fetched the daunting echo back - A.E. Housman "Last Poems XXXI: Hell's Gate"

I turned my shadow back - Hsieh Ling-Yun "Replying to a Poem from My Cousin Hui-lien" transl. by Burton Watson

Upon the back of cherubim - Richard Hughes "Tramp (The Bath Road, June)"

Made Orpheus turn back - Gary Jackson "Kansas"

A heart held back for the knife - John James "April, Andromeda"

Had returned from dry land back to water - Mark Jarman "Dispatches from Devereux Slough"

All memory of other motion swept back in your wake - Mark Jarman "Dispatches from Devereux Slough"

Shadows overthrown trooped back - Juan Ramon Jimenez "One Night" transl. by Thomas Walsh

The truant hour came back at dawn - Emily Pauline Johnson "The King's Consort"

Fall back upon an earth of ashes - James Weldon Johnson "The Greatest of These Is War"

That pins me back to the circumstances - Kate Knapp Johnson "For Now"

Call back to my silent memories - Lionel Johnson "Renegade"

The stars swing back the curtain - Joshua Henry Jones, Jr. "In Summer Twilight"

And disappear through the back door - Judy Jordan "Prologue"

Had no wings for the journey back - Fady Joudah "Venus Cycle"

Watch you snap back until you yawn - Yalie Saweda Kamara "Trim"

We won't be back to this particular quarrel - Kirun Kapur "Rajat Jayanti"

Hills of fire gave back the light - Fanny Kemble "Epistle from the Rhine: to Y---, with a bowl of Bohemian glass"

The reluctant who turn their backs on wooded fires - Vandana Khanna "Creation Myth part 3"

Who pushes you back toward the fire - Vandana Khanna "Unhappy Ending"

And fly very brilliant back - Galway Kinnell "On the Oregon Coast"

Back to that silent evening - Galway Kinnell "That Silent Evening"

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

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

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

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

And reeled the years back empty - Ted Kooser "Casting Reels"

And hold back the arms of the clock - Ted Kooser "For You, Friend,"

The dam that holds back the universe - Ted Kooser "Telescope"

Knitted back together by unseen hands - Keetje Kuipers "Emesis"

Death behind his back - "The Lament of Queen Maev" (Translation by T.W. Rolleston)

To the shores of silent-dark and back - Deborah Landau "Flesh"

Streaming back where the mist distils into forgetfulness - D.H. Lawrence "Dreams Old and Nascent"

Back on a strange parabola - D.H. Lawrence "Man and Bat"

Tomorrow will pour them all back - D.H. Lawrence "Rondeau of a Conscientious Objector"

Huddles in grey heaps coiling and holding back - D.H. Lawrence "Ruination"

If I could bring back yesterday - Ida Lee "Bill, the Groom"

Look back upon the vanished years - Charles G. Leland "Thank God for All" [The Continental Monthly v.II no.VI, Dec. 1862]

Back through the distant tracks of thought - Eliza Lucy Leonard "The Miller and His Golden Dream"

Peeled back as petals - Dana Levin "In the Surgical Theatre"

And iron striking back - Philip Levine "Flowering Midnight"

Gave back the last hard breath - Philip Levine "Joe Gould's Pen"

His fence that could hold back no one - Philip Levine "A Walk with Tom Jefferson"

A habit backed in desire - Rachel Levitsky "Audience"

Came back from the broken land - Li Po "In Yuch Viewing the Past" transl. by Burton Watson

My heart looks back in sadness - Li Po "Picking the Lotus" transl. not credited [The Jade Flute, c.1960, Project Gutenberg]

From my throat I crush back my cries - Li Yi-hang "Looking into Mist" transl. not credited [The Jade Flute, c.1960, Project Gutenberg]

Against the back fences of my soul - M.L. Liebler "Another Ah Sunflower!"

Come back made new and barking - Annie Lighthart "Let This Day"

Red eyes burning back in the mirror - Gary Copeland Lilley "Alpha Zulu"

We met ourselves as we came back - Vachel Lindsay "Meeting Ourselves"

As the Indus turns him back - Vachel Lindsay "Shantung, or the Empire of China Is Crumbling Down"

Lifelines sewed back up with the wrong stitches - Angela Liu "Dark Patterns"

Calls back the robin's song - James Russell Lowell "To the Dandelion"

Mountains multiply, streams double back - Lu Yu "A Trip to a Mountain West Village" transl. by Burton Watson

With the sky's knees in my back - Tariq Luthun "Sermon (For Those Who Survive)"

Drifted back within the bounds of space - Rose Macaulay "Trinity Sunday"

Fall back in dust upon my soul - George MacDonald "Within and Without"

Could charm cool waters back - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay "The Unchanged"

Never a look or a turning back - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay "Wanderlust"

To bring his mother laurels back - Augusta A.L. Magra "The Roll-Call of Home" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series, no.731, 29 Dec. 1877]

If I take my time machine back to sixteen - Sally Wen Mao "Anna May Wong Blows Out Sixteen Candles"

The echo calling fossil back to name - J. Michael Martinez "White"

Sent its storm of dark rays from the back of yonder - Harry Martinson "Aniara 30" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

Had met to turn their backs upon death's ocean - Harry Martinson "Aniara 100" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

That lift the deep upon their backs - Andrew Marvell "Bermudas"

Gazing back upon the skies - Andrew Marvell "A Drop of Dew"

Did not succeed in luring me back - Cate Marvin "Lying My Head Off"

Canyons that gave back my laughter - D'Arcy McNickle "The Mountains"

Climb and then fall back to me - Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger "Midmorning" transl. by Carlie Hoffman

Bring back a braver dawn - George Meredith "Lines to a Friend Visiting America"

Wings like iced hope on her back - Joanne Merriam "Werepenguin"

Naked and never looking back - W.S. Merwin "Note"

Carrying the night back - W.S. Merwin "Testimony"

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

Come back to the house of limits - Claire Millikin "City of Disappeared Girls"

A house is sky folded back - Claire Millikin "Cupboard"

Trace back spring's tattered weather - Claire Millikin "Medicine for Broken Dolls"

And not a minute ever comes back - "Minutes" [Happy Days for Boys and Girls, 1877]

Hear that whisper call you back - Rajiv Mohabir "Give Me a Boat That Can Carry Two"

A wasp nest on the back porch - Anis Mojgani "4 stars"

Stepping back from the light - Jenny Molberg "Our Lady of the Rio Grande"

Give back to sorrow's touch a token - Morna "Ianthe"

Our backs pressed into chalky dust - T. Emmett Mueller "Purified on the Only Visible Moon"

[Light opening against my back - Simone Muench "Wolf Centos"]

Forcing the sword back into the stone - Jaye Nasir "November"

Brought back ancient beginnings - Pablo Neruda "Autumn Testament" transl. by Alastair Reid

Go back to your amber throne - Pablo Neruda "Loves: Terusa (II)" transl. by Alastair Reid

Back to the honeysuckled balcony - Pablo Neruda "Loves: Terusa (II)" transl. by Alastair Reid

The bandit with envy on his back - Pablo Neruda "Ode to Federico Garcia Lorca" translated by Donald D. Walsh

Go back south with your umbrella - Pablo Neruda "Ode to Sadness" transl. by Margaret Sayers Peden

Go back north with your serpent's teeth - Pablo Neruda "Ode to Sadness" transl. by Margaret Sayers Peden

And go back to the time before blame - Caroline Harper New "Garden of Eve"

Pushed death back into the cupboard - Grace Nichols "Battle"

Back to the house of muttering hens - Naomi Shihab Nye "Boy and Egg"

Shrinking back from the walls of the brain - Naomi Shihab Nye "Trying to Name What Doesn't Change"

rage does sharpen my back teeth - Brandon O'Brien "The Creature from the Black Lagoon Is Your Father"

The plunge back into the shadows - Mary Oliver "Looking for Snakes"

Swirling back from darkness - Mary Oliver "The Notebook"

Followed our long shadows back - Mary Oliver "November"

Traveling the back roads between boy and man - January Gill O'Neil "Hoodie"

Might circle back as memory - Gregory Orr "Eden and After: Departure"

leading Eurydice back to the underworld - Jena Osman "Mercury Rising (A Visualization)"

Went dancing back to the age of gold - Seumas O'Sullivan "A Piper"

From my own back in scarlet shreds - Wilfred Owen "A Terre"

See you winking back like the stars - Lauren Parker "Miranda"

The flat dials of sunflowers leading back to speech - Kiki Petrosini "De Jure Sanguinis" [excerpt]

Back when hurt was a feeling, still - Carl Phillips "Troubadours"

Rises at midnight and looks back - Po-Chu-i "On the Way to Hangchow: Anchored on the River at Night" (translated by Arthur Waley)

The panther far back in his woods - Robert Pollok "The African Maid"

That buffets back slow time - Alan Porter "Introduction to a Narrative Poem"

That flash defiance back at light - Alexander Posey "To the Crow"

Come back to the primroses again - John Presland "To J.F.W."

Give rather back the old hallucinations - Margaret J. Preston "The Hermit's Vigil" [Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, v.11, no.24, Mar. 1873] (appears to be a typo in the poet's name: Margaret J. Prestox at the end of the poem. I'm assuming it should be Preston)

The dolphins bared their backs of gold - Bryan Waller Proctor (Barry Cornwall) "A Song of the Sea"

Who believes in going back - Ben Purkert "The Past Suffers Too"

To mark the occasion of coming back - Yousif M. Qasmiyeh "Non-arrival"

My sister's eyes looking back at him - Danni Quintos "Possible Reasons My Dad Won't Return to the Philippines"

Nature wooeth back no wanderer to her arms - A. R. "Life's Young Dream" [The Knickerbocker Feb. 1844]

The sun comes back to wake you - Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall "Rustic Courting XVII: Casend Hill"

Bring not back the past, to brim our cup of sorrow - Edward S. Rand "Fallen" [The Continental Monthly March 1862]

A mind reaching back into the dark - Camille Rankine "Inheritance"

Where the land that was once gone is ours now back - m.s. RedCherries "this is what kafka really meant when he wished to be a red indian"

With the noon's weight upon my back - Adrienne Rich "A Mark of Resistance"

The sack-draped backs of the cattle in their kingdom - Adrienne Rich "Peace"

Till the mountains give back the far sounds - Henry Scott Riddell "The Grecian War Song"

With its back to the moon - Lola Ridge "Betty"

Backed by a nickel star - Lola Ridge "The Ghetto"

plans for turning back any move forward - Ed Roberson "(...As for the Swallows, All They Were Doing)"

curves thrown back down your throat - Ed Roberson "(...As for the Swallows, All They Were Doing)"

Lilting back to the land of air - Elizabeth Madox Roberts "The Hill People"

The birds are back in the reeds again - Lloyd Roberts "On the Marshes"

Handing me back like an invitation - Valencia Robin "Cliche This"

The warning blown back on every wind - Rennell Rodd "Disillusion"

Bring back dreams of the days long dead - Rennell Rodd "Where the Rhone Goes Down to the Sea"

A right way to send someone back to the lap of God - Brittany Rogers "Dressing the Body"

Hurling their smoked shells back into the sea - Hester J. Rook "The Sparrows in Her Hair"

Drinks in and casts back the sun - Rosoriu "Old Idea of Choan" (translated by Ezra Pound and possibly others, attribution unclear)

Salt at the back of my throat - Anjoli Roy "Last"

Broken snail shells bearing emptiness on their back - Nelly Sachs [Untitled] transl. by Michael Roloff

Reaching back into the dark century - David St. John "Alexandr Blok"

Brought nothing back but foam - Sanai "The Walled Garden of Truth" [selections] transl. by D. Pendleton

Go by and come back - Carl Sandburg "Clouds"

No one goes back to before - Reg Saner "What Wilderness Tells You"

All the time we buy back - Janice Lobo Sapigao "HomeGoods"

Moves forward by glancing back - Ralph James Savarese "The Bearing Edge"

back to some childhood we never got to live - Sam Sax "My Hole. My Whole"

Peel back the mask of truth - Ann K. Schwader "At the Last of Carcosa"

Fate gazes back imperishable blue - Ann K. Schwader "Maya Blue (At Chichen Itza)"

With God's breath at their backs - Tim Seibles "Ode to My Hands"

Welling back from the raw, red dawn of life - Robert W. Service "The Atavist"

If I should perish my ghost will come back - Robert W. Service "Good-Bye, Little Cabin"

Back to the woods repentant - Robert W. Service "The Song of the Wage-Slave"

On whose back the kingdom is carried - Vijay Seshadri "The Long Meadow"

Comes not back again - Taras Shevchenko "The Night of Taras" transl. by Alexander Jardine Hunter

quick light flowing down the back of my throat - Evie Shockley "black love"

Fear in my back pocket - Joyce Sidman "Journal of 73 Seconds"

Whiskey texting back dimension - Cedar Sigo "Like Stride"

To trick the genie back into the lamp - Tom Sleigh "Three Wishes"

Turned my back on the abstract - Bruce Smith "Untitled [I turned my back on the color fields]"

Swings back the door of years - Clark Ashton Smith "The Star Treader"

Like a small stone against her back - Hope Anita Smith "Sleepover"

What did we call the life we would wish back? - Maggie Smith "Threshold" [Poetry Feb. 2020]

Wove the long braid down my back - Maggie Smith "Twentieth Century"

Too thin to hold tomorrow back - Patricia Smith "Voodoo II: Money"

Holding back what clamored to rise - Tracy K. Smith "We Feel Now A Largeness Coming On"

The years poured back from one cracked jar into a perfect basin - Cynthia So "The Unicorn's Question"

Back from trudging among the stars - Richard Solomon "Burning Out"

Came back clanging about my ears - George Soule "Solitude"

Back to English gardens after Euclid's linear - Anne Spencer "Life-Long, Poor Browning..." [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]

Stray back into the moonlight and other kitchens - A.E. Stallings "The Dogdom of the Dead"

Hurling back the tumult of their shock - Edmund Clarence Stedman "Flood-Tide"

And drive back into fairyland - James Stephens "Grafton Street"

The outland peace of the trail that never turns back - Arthur Stringer "Letters from Home"

The scent of the milkweed brings it back - Arthur Stringer "Milkweed"

Back with a strangle of tears - Arthur Stringer "Milkweed"

Riding home on the back of an ox - Sun Yun-feng "The Trail Up Wu Gorge" transl. by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung

To bribe the weary pilgrim back - Rev. William B. Tappan "Stanzas" (from The Knickerbocker, v. 23:3, March 1844)

A breeze pushed back and sideways against rocks - Keith Taylor "Canoeing Against the Wind"

Threw their heads back and whispered to the stars - Keith Taylor "Condoms, Abandoned on the Park Bench"

Flew their long routes back to Caribbean beaches - Keith Taylor "The Road from Galahad"

Where forests have pushed back through fences - Keith Taylor "Three Springs"

Drew it back in with pen and pigment - Shveta Thakrar "A Love in Twelve Feathers"

Scream till the waves scream back - Marian Thanhouser "At Night"

Mist like chaos surging back - Edward Thomas "Wind and Mist"

These women carry the tribe on their chromium backs - Vincent Toro "¿Que Que La Femme?"

And give sweetness back - Natasha Trethewey "Gathering"

Look back fondly at the city gates - Ts'ao Chih "Presented to Piao, the Prince of Pai-ma" transl. by Burton Watson

beat back whatever hordes come haunting - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "John Henry Says I Am Not My Hammer (a.k.a., To Boldly Go Drylongso)"

Looking back and taking out of context - Aldrin Regina Valdez "January"

Not know what house we shall come back to - Mark Van Doren "High Meadows"

Burrowed back with never a sound - Mark Van Doren "Immortal"

A land that cannot cast one sparkle back - Mark Van Doren "In Time of Drouth"

Set back the clock a thousand years - Henry van Dyke "Lights Out"

Back to her alone - Suzanne Vega "Fool's Complaint"

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

Pin this antlered heartbeat back to earth - Ocean Vuong "Ode to Masturbation"

And wake the echoes back again - H.K.W. "Song of the Carilloneur" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series, no.682, 20 Jan. 1877]

Call back the yearning which would follow - Mrs. E.R.B. Waldo "The Dead Child to its Mother" [Small Means and Great Ends - PG. 1851. Edited by Mrs. M.H. Adams]

Give me back my bended bow - William Walker, Jr. "[Oh, give me back my bended bow]"

Beat back the wild beasts of grief - Judy Patterson Wenzel "Then, They Came"

And then stand looking back and sighing at our choice - Edith Wharton "Some Woman to Some Man"

Took it back into my heart - John Hall Wheelock "The Buried Dream"

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

Nor all sent back by the echoes - Walt Whitman "Starting from Paumanox"

And bring back the swarming bees - John Greenleaf Whittier (uncredited) "Cobbler Keezar's Vision" [The Atlantic Monthly v.07 no.40, Feb. 1861]

And heard whispers back - C. K. Williams "Self-Love"

By virtue of brown eyes turning back the seasons - William Carlos Williams "A Celebration"

Ebbing back into the sun - William Carlos Williams "Romance Moderne"

I still dream of coming back to you - Keith S. Wilson "Heliocentric"

To bring you back a ring from Saturn - Keith S. Wilson "Heliocentric"

My eyes are the backs of moons - Keith S. Wilson "Impression of a Rib"

Give back the precious dust - Miss H.J. Woodman "The Maiden's Burial"

Though nothing can bring back the hour - William Wordsworth "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

They break your back on hell - Baron Wormser "The Poetry of Life: Ten Stories [I rise before the sun does]"

Back in the sullen nowhere of everything - Charles Wright "Drift Away"

Bystanders back from the river of light - Charles Wright "I've Been Sitting Here Thinking Back Over My Life..."

A wide membrane holding eternity back - Charles Wright "Life Lines"

Tell the waves stay back - Dr. Seema Yasmin "My Sister Teaches Me How to Ululate"

Give three things back - W.B. Yeats "Three Things"

Scream thrown back to arctic stars - Connor Yeck "The Thing (1982) as Silent Film"

Left your memories back in the skull - Yee Heng Yeh "Lost and Found"

Music pushes back against pain - Yi Lei "A Single Woman's Bedroom" transl. by Tracy K. Smith and Changtai Bi

Dreams walk us back to the shore - Jake Adam York "Letter Written in Black Water and Pearl"

The muscle gives back the bone - Jake Adam York "Letter Written in Black Water and Pearl"

sewn back into its cocoon - Monica Youn "Blueacre"

Reading far past the last paragraph into the back blank page - Dean Young "Colophon"

All wrong to turn our backs on the ocean - Dean Young "Everyday Escapees" [Poetry April 2013]

Get used to nothing answering back - Dean Young "Folklore"

At the edge of a drop that doesn't answer back - Dean Young "Son of Fog" [Poetry April 2005]

Can't go back and return - Javier Zamora "To Abuelita Neli"

Go back before the first hydrogen - Hal Y. Zhang "Majorana, Back Again"

Then stumble one step back - Zheng Min "Student" transl. by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung


Back and forth to a song of no mercy - Mary Jo Bang "A Calculation Based on Figures in a Scene"

Kaleidoscope of back and forth - Adam J. Gellings "Somewhere Else"

The ticking clocks in Vermont sway back and forth - Major Jackson "On Disappearing"

Our worlds echoing back and forth - Naomi Shihab Nye "Patience Conversations"

Send letters back and forth by paper airplane - Evan Williams "Yours, Stalagmite"

Escorting our sentences back and forth - Dean Young "Interference & Delivery" [Poetry, January 1988]


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

Backbite of bicker and rant - Mary Jo Bang "Packing the Heart"

Backbone.

How to flee from such a flamboyant backdraft - Mahogany L. Browne "litany"

Backdrop.

Yet the very same may backfire - Dean Young "I Said Yes but I Meant No" [Poetry Oct. 2003]

On a background of bells - Amelia Josephine Burr "Perugia"

Hallucinations that unite ancestral backgrounds - Carlos Manuel Rivera "Thanatos and Technophilia"

Arrived in flux and the background radiation - James F. Yockey "What If"

Backlit by a scattered clutch of charcoal - Russell Brakefield "Raccoon Sighting Before Intimacy"

Matte black backlit with raw opal - Campbell McGrath "Joseph Brodsky in Venice (1981)"

In an irridescent orange back-lit with coffee - James F. Yockey "What If"

In the backlot of my father's skull - Wo Chan "Such As"

In waves of backpacks and barrel fires - Jace Deangelo "Wide-Shining Craters"

Backpacks of holy language - Alicia Suskin Ostriker "Alphabetical Flash"

Your body in chalky backscatter - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Tuccenen N"

Loose coins in my memory's backseat - John Olivares Espinoza "These Hands, These Roots"

In the backseat of their eternity - Lawrence Ferlinghetti "A Far Rockaway of the Heart, 2"

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

Throw in the backseat of my pride - Terisa Siagatonu "Deserving"

Tracing the backslopes of deer in the yard - Janet Kauffman "If You Wake Under Covers"

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

Betrayals in the distant backstory - Jeannine Hall Gailey "Supervillain Studies: For the Love of Ivy"

Backstreet truth teller - Joy Harjo "Break My Heart"

The dog that backtracks in autumn - Pablo Neruda "The Earth" transl. by Richard Schaaf

Unclean under a back-turned sun - Saeed Jones "Terrible Boy"

Backward.

Backyard.

Riding comets bareback through cosmic alleys - upfromsumdirt [aka Ron Davis] "The Hero with the African Face"

The motown long plays for the comeback of Osiris - Ishmael Reed "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

The drawbacks against the equivalent gains - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto I"

In a hands-behind-back colloquy of feints and nods - Michael Collier "Crows in a Fresh Mown Field Before Rain"

Beneath the hardback hour - Lucie Brock-Broido "Spain"

Payback for insulting an ancestor - brian g. gilmore "mardi gras in east lansing"

To tie-back or prune branches is useless - Mary Jo LoBello Jerome "Tomato Intuition"


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