Potential Titles: Wait

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Await.


What are bones if not seeds waiting - Lydia Abedeen "Birangona Song in a Walmart Parking Lot"

What is war if not a waiting harvest - Lydia Abedeen "Birangona Song in a Walmart Parking Lot"

Waiting for my lost crown - Leena Aboutaleb "Hijacked Interiors"

Wait for ten, or ten score, years - Aion "Prudence" [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, no.CCCXL, v.LV, Feb. 1844]

They wait for centuries on their knees - Allison Albino "Cast Iron"

Waiting for the lonely piano notes - Daisy Aldan "The Bay"

On his path the Furies waited - Thomas Bailey Aldrich "The Last Caesar"

While angels wait with stars for tapers tall - Cecil Frances Alexander "The Burial of Moses"

Furrowed field grown cement waiting for seed - Lewis Alexander "Tanka II" [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]

Wait sadly for the order to serve the feast - Mike Allen "Machine Guns Loaded with Pomegranate Seeds"

Waiting in line for ourselves - Zaina Alsous "Subjunctive"

We can wait at high speed - Rae Armantrout "Custom"

A river waiting to wake - Fatimah Asghar "A Starless Sky Is A Joy Too"

With faith of waiting ages born - Albion Fellows Bacon "The Prophet"

A very strange me is waiting - James Baldwin "Munich, Winter 1973 (for Y.S.)"

Waiting in her saffron porches - Benjamin West Ball "Hymn to Phosphor"

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

Waiting fate takes the form of Ariadne - Mary Jo Bang "Mask Photo"

And live the waiting life - Mary Jo Bang "Masquerade: After Beckmann"

Who waits for never to happen - Mary Jo Bang "Untitled"

Waiting for winter to leave me alone - Mary Jo Bang "When I Was an Inanimate Object"

Have bidden those waiting spirits speed - Margaret Fairless Barber "All Souls' Day in a German Town"

Waiting for the thunder's birth - Maurice Baring "Sonnets: 1913-1914 IV"

His reason waits on the law's black hates - William Francis Barnard "The Hangman"

Waiting for the cries of cousins - Lou Barrett "Red Lunch Basket"

The strife that ever waits upon the race for gold - Charles H. Barstow "On the Coast" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 5th series, no.34-v.I, 23 Aug. 1884]

Illuminate the galaxy that waits - Elizabeth Bartlett "Vision"

Waits invisible as trust - Elizabeth Bartlett "Vision"

They waited for the seeds to start - William E. Barton "The Story of a Pumpkin Pie"

Deserts waiting to expel your bones - Ennis Rook Bashe "We Have Slain the Savage Martians, but Their Princess Escaped"

Where love anxious waits - Cora C. Bass "Sea and Cliff"

Uttered wishes wait on prophecy - Charlotte F. Bates "Forecast" [Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, March 1875, v.XV no.87]

Old anger waiting to become newer - Jason Bayani "Someday, Again"

Above me the day-blind stars waiting - Wendell Berry "The Peace of Wild Things"

Calmly wait the hour of his decay - Robert Bloomfield "May-Day With the Muses: The Invitation"

Waiting for the conquest of words - Maxwell Bodenheim "Cry, Naked and Personal"

The words waiting for music - Louise Bogan "Words for Departure"

Waiting room made out of marzipan - Ana Bozicevic "Paris Pride Parade"

And mocks me waiting on the strand - Francis Ernest Bradley "Parted" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 5th series, no.25-v.1, 21 June 1884]

New light waiting just out of reach - Russell Brakefield "Myth"

And wait all winter to eat - Jericho Brown "Cain"

Waiting the zephyr's first faint kiss - Marie Hedderwick Browne "Water Lilies"

It's the same future waiting there regardless - Christopher Buckley "Prayer To Escape The East"

Sit under the tree waiting for hunger - Tina Chang "Lion"

At your feet the world is waiting - Ralph Chaplin "Up from Your Knees"

The hum of the runway as the plane waits - Samantha H. Chung "Time Traveler's Haibun: 2024"

Waiting for a leaf to turn - John Ciardi "Everywhere that Universe"

Waiting for breath - Gabrielle Civil "19th Birthday in Paris"

For summer's mellowing touch must wait - Florence Earle Coates "Probation"

a flood of sweet confections waiting inside - Karla Cordero "Everything Needs Fixing"

When we will have ceased even the waiting - Giorgiomaria Cornelio "La consegna delle braci [The Distribution of Embers]" transl. by Moira Egan

So weary of waiting the dawn - Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr. "Supplication"

Waiting for the mystic breath - James H. Cousins "A Song of Decadence"

Still waiting also to be met - Robert Creeley "Here Again"

Dare not wait to parley with the Voice outside the gate - Albert Francis Cross "Let There Be Light" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 5th series, no.118-v.III, 3 April 1886]

They lie and wait for time to grind them to dust - Jennifer Crow "Mathematics"

Waited in the light of our thousand-flower sun - Jennifer Crow "Thousand Flower Sun"

Waiting spring's warm and wooing breath - Mrs E.L. Cushing "April" [Graham's Magazine v.XL no.4, April 1852]

Again she woke with waiting in her eyes - Mary Carolyn Davies "A Casualty List"

Every green reason to wait - Geffrey Davis "Not to Be Confused with 'Poem'"

Suspended by the boundlessness of waiting - Geffrey Davis "What I Mean When I Say Elijah-Man"

Settle on the porch of waiting and listening - Geffrey Davis "What I Mean When I Say Farmhouse"

Waited too long to howl against the night - Kwame Dawes "Talk"

Who far at distance on the beach should wait - Luís de Camões "The Lusiad; or, The Discovery of India: Book I. Argument" transl. by William Julius Mickle

And wait patient treacherous time away - Walter de la Mare "The Quiet Enemy"

The sky is waiting for an airship - Monica de la Torre "Poem in Spanish"

And beckoned waiting terror - Geoffrey Dearmer "Gommecourt"

My river waits reply - Emily Dickinson "Book 1: Love XI: The Outlet"

Doth not wait for June - Emily Dickinson "Book 1: Nature XIV: Purple Clover"

Waiting for lightning to take over - Mark Dimaisip "Where Frequencies Talk Over" [Strange Horizons 10 Feb. 2025]

An eaglet can afford to wait - Mary Mapes Dodge "Taking Time to Grow"

Nor for a second summons idly wait - Eleanor C. Donnelly "The Vision of the Monk Gabriel" [The Continental Monthly v.3 no.3, March 1863]

A soldier is smoke waiting for wind - Rita Dove "Alfonzo Prepares to Go Over the Top"

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

Echo waits with art and care - Ralph Waldo Emerson "May-Day"

They wait their turn to testify - Martin Espada "Mad Love"

Even forget why you're waiting - Anne Evans "A New Variant"

A new habitat waited to grow with us - A.M. Fals "Space in Our Relationship"

And wait, impatiently, for nothing - Andrew Feld "Crying Uncle"

Still waiting for the whetted scythe - Andrew Feld "Dedication"

Waited by the trembling waters - Andrew Feld "To Adam"

Waited for my life to return from the sea - Beatriz F. Fernandez "The Time Tourist | El Turista del Tiempo"

Sure as footsteps in my waiting self - Annie Finch "Samhain"

And wait to watch the water clear - Robert Frost "The Pasture"

Swift the waiting reeds unclose - Rose Fyleman "This Island"

Waiting to disintegrate - Jeannine Hall Gailey "Introduction to Time Travel Theory"

The one gift that will not disappear but waits - Patricia Goedicke "The Reading Club"

Waiting for the kiss of May - Louis Golding "Jack of April"

I am a hunger waiting to be fed - Theodora Goss "Girl, Wolf, Woods"

Apples waiting to be turned into cider - Theodora Goss "Mr. Fox"

And summer that waited so long - "Grandmamma Spider" [A Tale of Two Monkeys, Project Gutenberg]

The light that's waited all day - Leah Naomi Green "Seeds and Fugue"

Waiting hours, before the brazen frenzy starts - Julian Grenfell "Into Battle"

Swim out to wait until the right waves gather - Thom Gunn "From the Wave"

Waiting without knowing they are - Sandra Gustin "Cause of Death"

Like the buds that wait patient beneath the dead leaves - Arthur Sherburne Hardy "In an Album"

To wait with only memory awhile - Arthur Sherburne Hardy "Songs of Two"

Waiting for the dappling of sky - Myronn Hardy "Aurora Americana"

Gravity would turn off its meter and wait - francine j. harris "another finger for the wound"

Osiris' arms open and wait seventy days and nights - Maryann Hazen-Stearns "Embalmer"

Waiting to sail out into unruly ocean - Stephanie Heit "Waiting Bay"

Wait fulfilment of our hearts' decree - Sophia Magaretta Hensley "Rondeau.--When Summer Comes"

Grown dull through many waiting days - Sophia Magaretta Hensley "Triumph"

The emptiness sits down and waits - Conrad Hilberry "Explosions at 4:00 A.M."

The dock and depot waiting - Conrad Hilberry "Quatrain"

A wait not even known yet - Brenda Hillman "Wood's Edge"

When rain leaps to the waiting of roots - Jane Hirshfield "A Blessing for Wedding"

Seed-black of the waiting heart - Jane Hirshfield "A Sweetening All Around Me as It Falls"

With music waiting on her steps - Thomas Hood "Fair Ines"

Waiting for a riverboat loaded with music - T.R. Hummer "Who Remembers Davenport"

And have the grace to wait - Jean Ingelow "Honors. -- Part II."

Where all my Pasts within the Future wait - Wallace Irwin "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Jr."

And our paired silhouettes are waiting for us - Mark Jarman "Dispatches from Devereux Slough"

Wait like a predator's hands - Allison Eir Jenks "The Habit"

Still waiting even to believe - Allison Eir Jenks "Night Train from Barcelona"

Excavators & bulldozers that wait, like vultures, to ruin me - Jacqueline Jiang "If My Body Is Dying, Tell Me You Love Me"

Waiting to build their homes over my bones - Jacqueline Jiang "If My Body Is Dying, Tell Me You Love Me"

Opulence waits to be won - Emily Pauline Johnson "Brandon"

Wait in the still eternity - Georgia Douglas Johnson "Black Woman"

Wait with the trembling stars - James Weldon Johnson "Down by the Carib Sea"

How I waited a whole year for September - Rindon Johnson "There Is a Black Fly in Your Chardonnay"

And waited not to join the caravan - Annie Fellows Johnston "It Was the Road to Jericho"

Who waits for the moon to drown - Saeed Jones "Last Call"

Waited three days and nights - Zilka Joseph "Pantoum for Chik-cha Halwa"

If you do we will look the other way and wait - Karan Kapoor "In an Attempt to Seduce Death My Sister Starts Calling Him Love" [Strange Horizons 17 Feb. 2025]

Waited patient through each halting breath - Roz Kaveney "The Ballad of the Death and the Maid"

And time has shadows waiting in predestined ways - Henry Kendall "At Her Window"

A theft waiting to happen - Ruth Ellen Kocher "Grow"

A whole life of waiting - Snigdha Koirala "Fragments on Naturalization"

A thin gray absence waiting there - Ted Kooser "Ink Black"

And waits for the storm to tire - Archibald Lampman "The Woodcutter's Hut"

Witnesses waiting to be sworn - Joan Larkin "My Father's Tie Rack"

Knows to wait for starshine - Irene Latham "What Rhino Knows"

I wait in a thaw of anxiety - D.H. Lawrence "Anxiety"

How to wait for the loneliest of feasts - D.H. Lawrence "The Elephant is Slow to Mate"

The silence waiting to take them all up again - D.H. Lawrence "Silence"

Another kind of waiting - Aimee Le "Ode to Phil"

Waiting for something other than arrival - Sammy Lê "Lotus Descends to Visit Nova"

we wait for the earth to burn - Joseph Lease "Falling"

Happy in eternal waiting - Li-Young Lee "Spoken For"

The heart of ice is fire waiting - Philip Levine "A Walk with Tom Jefferson"

Wait for starlight - J. Patrick Lewis "Cow Dreams"

Wait for a yellow crane to ride - Li Po "River Song" transl. by Arthur Waley

Waiting for gentle souls to offer help - Jack Kin Lim "Kuala Lumpur Urban Legends"

A million strangers waiting for you to fall - Angela Liu "The Subway Is Another Place to Die"

As the seaweed waits for the lifting tide - Lily A. Long "The Singing Place"

And waits to be made free once more - Amy Lowell "The Coal Picker"

And wait for the wind - Thomas Lux "A Clearing, a Meadow, in Deep Forest"

Pleasure waits with her siren train - Anne C. Lynch "The Battle of Life" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.5, Nov. 1848]

Cannot wait to slip into the void - Kettly Mars "Between midnight and eternity" transl. by Nathan H. Dize

Watchers that wait upon heaven - George Martin "Street Waif"

On each solution a mystery waits to leap - Harry Martinson "Aniara 33" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

Waiting for the sun to mend the ravages in nature's forests - Harry Martinson "Aniara 60" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

Waiting for a star to shake loose from the others - Harry Martinson "Aniara 72: The Song of Karella" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

Invented new words for waiting - Shara McCallum "Gravid Gravitas"

Wait for a signal from the sun and air - Shane McCrae "The Shoots"

Where the dead wait in line - Michael McGriff "Men Keep on Dying"

Star in circle his web waits - George Meredith "Seed-Time"

The whole grammar of waiting - W.S. Merwin "A Codex"

The hushed fox waits - W.S. Merwin "Harm's Way"

Grey months to wait for spring - Charlotte Mew "In Nunhead Cemetery"

And can not tell what waits us at the brink - Harriet Monroe "A Hymn"

Waits at life's swung gates - Harriet Monroe "Love Song"

To wait the breeze of Fortune - Lewis Morris "The Epic of Hades book I: Tartarus: Sisyphus"

Who waited so long for the wheat - Pablo Neruda "Cataclysm" transl. by Maria Jacketti

The night waiting like a widow - Pablo Neruda "The Long Day Called Thursday" transl. by Alastair Reid

Twisted chairs waiting for winter - Pablo Neruda "Ode with a Lament" translated by Donald D. Walsh

Feast under the hunting moon and light fires to wait for winter - Margaret Noodin "Halfway Away" transl. by the author

A fraternity ghost waiting to stay home - Frank O'Hara "Ann Arbor Variations"

Sky after sky waiting to fall - January Gill O'Neil "The Blower of Leaves"

Waiting for the angel of the future - "Oration on Charles Sumner, Addressed to Colored People"

Upon whose silver stair expectant angels wait - "Oration on Charles Sumner, Addressed to Colored People"

Stole on fairy wings into my waiting soul - Frances S. Osgood "A Farewell to a Happy Day" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.4, Oct. 1848]

Let me calmly wait the summons - Samuel D. Patterson "The Prayer of the Dying Girl" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.3, Sept. 1848]

Even the dead have to wait - Willie Perdomo "Where I'm From"

Waiting, winged with fire - Frederick Erastus Pierce "God and the Farmer"

A sudden vengeance waits - Alexander Pope "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady"

Assassins laid in wait for Caesar - Alexander Posey "The Conquerors"

Waiting me at the end of Sunlight Street - Miriam Clark Potter "The Highest Hill in Happy Town"

For strange delights are waiting me - Miriam Clark Potter "Roads"

Winter waiting for a meadow - Charles Rafferty "Mal Evans Counting"

Line up and wait to fall - Matt Rasmussen "Ekphrastifilia"

Your waitings on the marriages of flowers - Charles George Douglas Roberts "A Nocturne of Consecration"

Not given to know the riper fruit that waits - Edwin Arlington Robinson "John Brown"

When hell waits on the dawn - Edwin Arlington Robinson "John Brown"

But we wait for a day that dawns not - Rennell Rodd "At Tiber Mouth"

Wait not along the shore - Rennell Rodd "Atalanta"

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

And one star waits for the dawning light - Rennell Rodd "In the Coliseum"

Box of wishes waiting for time to stop - Purbasha Roy "A Thought for Wishes"

Cannot abandon waiting - Kay Ryan "The Pieces That Fell To Earth"

waited for God to fall out of my mouth - Abu Bakr Sadiq "Mona Lisa's Abecedarian to Leonardo da Vinci"

Where her secluded oak table always waited - David St. John "Los Angeles, 1954"

Nothing but waiting and watching the dust fall - David Salisbury "On Mars"

The wind of the lake shore waits and wanders - Carl Sandburg "The Windy City"

Galleys waiting for the gale - George Santayana "A Hermit of Carmel"

Hermes waits to lead me home - Jessie M.E. Saxby "Persephone: A Lay of Spring" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 5th series, no.114-v.III, 6 March 1886]

The joyous zenith and the mute nadir wait - Herman George Scheffauer "The Masque of the Elements"

Into cramped stillness whispering, Wait - E.F. Schraeder "Procrastination (A Lullaby)"

May wait in silence & unasked - Ann K. Schwader "Wind Shift"

For summer and his pleasures wait - William Shakespeare "Sonnet XCVII"

Where the old April wait, unfaltering - Francis Sherman "The Deserted City: The House of Sin"

We are waiting for every last tear - Joyce Sidman "Illness: A Conversation"

Huddled in our buds waiting to bloom - Joyce Sidman "Letter to the Sun"

My heart waits for direction - Joyce Sidman "Song in a Strange Land"

For the light that shines there, waiting - Kaya Skovdatter "What Beautiful Heavens These"

Waiting a foe where four roads meet - Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard "Before the Mirror"

Do we not bloom after lying in wait - Blaize Kelly Strothers "The West Is Dead"

Waiting in the tall reeds till the intruders pass - Su Tong po "Like a Cormorant" transl. not credited [The Jade Flute, c.1960, Project Gutenberg]

The tree that's ready to wait for its forest - Alison Swan "Courage"

A stage lighted and waiting for your step - May Swenson "Earth Your Dancing Place"

Holding black candles and waiting - Nancy Ellis Taylor "Voodoo Corner Bus Stop"

Waiting for a bus that would never come - Nancy Ellis Taylor "Voodoo Corner Bus Stop"

Smoke and mystery waiting for an emergency rescue - Nancy Ellis Taylor "Voodoo Corner Bus Stop"

Where the sole-thoughted Dante waited him - Francis Thompson "Victorian Ode for Jubilee Day, 1897"

Which bravely wait the charge of Winter's cavalry - Henry David Thoreau "The Fall of the Leaf"

In a shadow waiting - Z.G. Tomaszewski "If I Last the Night"

nothing waiting to start again - Edwin Torres "In Each Look Our Years"

Waiting like a vast arch of quietness - Iris Tree "Moods IV"

Revenge of Time that waits within the clock - Iris Tree "[Old woman forever sitting]"

A waiting for the edge to fall - Leah Umansky "Desire [even in the time of the tyrant]"

While idly we wait for a windfall here - "Under the Pear Trees" [Happy Days for Boys and Girls, 1877]

to all the gods in waiting - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "As The Universe Yawns Brer Rabbit Spins A Yarn"

Worthy to wait alone - Paul Valery "Palme" as translated by May Sarton in 1954

Filtering through the waiting of the grownups - Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez "A Light to Do Shellwork By"

A gathering of golden quail waiting - Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez "Summer 1945"

Waits no longer minute than she must - Mark Van Doren "Midwife Cat"

Comes one day to the minds of waiting men - Mark Van Doren "Waterfall Sound"

Bidding the heart of man to wait - Henry van Dyke "Victor Hugo"

That breaks the waiting - Emily van Kley "Ways to Hunt Deer"

Thunder-gone waiting - Derek Walcott "Storm Figure"

A blur behind the sharpness of irises, waiting - T.D. Walker "Iris"

Waiting for you on the sands - Arthur Weir "Pere Brosse"

Who sits and waits to see me dead - Edith Wharton "The Last Token. A.D. 107. (She Speaks)"

He waits to row me to a fairer shore - Ella Wheeler Wilcox "An Autumn Reverie"

Gods deadened by the weight of waiting - Keith S. Wilson "Heliocentric"

As the thrush once waited for childhood's end - Humbert Wolfe "THE WOODCUTTERS OF HÜTTELDORF"

Where the hooded crow is waiting with the raven - Humbert Wolfe "THE WOODCUTTERS OF HÜTTELDORF"

Waiting is a coffin - Jane Yolen "Behind a Closed Door"

Waiting for the god under the anthill to speak - Dean Young "Quiet Grass, Green Stone"

Forlorn with waiting - Francis Brett Young "Thamar (To Thamar Karsavina)"

Waiting for footsteps - Matthew Zapruder "First Time, Long Time"

Wait for a bolt of lightning's fire - Zheng Min "Death of a Poet #9" translator not credited. Source: https://projects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/archive2/DACHS_Leiden/poetry/MD/Zheng_Min_trans.pdf


The universal ballad of the waiting room - Gregory Pardlo "Epistemology of the Phone Booth"


the waitress takes moonbeams into her mouth - Lee Ballentine "Cryogenica"


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