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Author: DOTY, MARK
Matches Found: 156


Doty, Mark    Poet's Biography
156 poems available by this author


63RD STREET Y       
First Line: All night steam heat pours
Last Line: Though I will not stay to watch them
Subject(s): Homosexuality


A DISPLAY OF MACKEREL    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: They lie in parallel rows
Subject(s): Mackerel


A GREEN CRAB'S SHELL    Poem Text    
First Line: Not, exactly, green:
Subject(s): Summer


ADONIS THEATER    Poem Text    
First Line: It must have seemed the apex of dreams
Subject(s): Americans; United States; America


ADONIS THEATER       
First Line: It must have seemed the apex of dreams
Last Line: In this light, whether we look to %or away from the screen
Subject(s): Americans; United States


ADVENT CALENDARS       
First Line: These were our first instruction
Last Line: Half the windows closed. %there is no single location of miracle


AGAINST PARADISE       
First Line: Past the paperwhites breathing
Last Line: I couldn't love any world but this. %it's almost dark. Johnny boy


ALMOST BLUE    Poem Text    
First Line: If hart crane played the trumpet
Last Line: And you let to and why not
Subject(s): Baker, Chet (1929-1988); Jazz; Music & Musicians


ALMOST BLUE       
First Line: If hart crane played the trumpet
Last Line: Breathing in the lindins %and you let go and why not
Subject(s): Baker, Chet (1929-1988); Jazz; Music And Musicians


ANCIENT WORLD       
First Line: Today the masons are auctioning
Last Line: Even if we hardly know them, %even if it no longer signifies, if it only shines


ANNA KARENINA       
First Line: This morning a hurrying white boat
Last Line: Her thoughts are on the future so


ARARAT    Poem Text    
First Line: Wrapped in gold foil, in the search


ARARAT       
First Line: Wrapped in gold foil, in the search
Last Line: And there were two of every animal inside me


ART LESSONS       
First Line: Bored with the still life her painting teacher
Last Line: Perfect collonades. Mother, father, %listen: I was not born but made


AT THE GYM    Poem Text    
First Line: This salt-stain spot
Subject(s): Gymnasia


ATLANTIS: 1. FAITH    Poem Text    
First Line: I've been having these / awful dreams, each a little different
Last Line: I didn’t know who I was trying to protect
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness; Dreams; Dogs; Gay & Lesbians; Illness


ATLANTIS: 1. FAITH       
First Line: I've been having these %awful dreams, each a little different
Last Line: I didn't know who I was trying to protect
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


ATLANTIS: 2. REPRIEVE    Poem Text    
First Line: I woke in the night / and thought, it was a dream
Last Line: It was only a dream
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness; Dreams; Dogs; Gay & Lesbians; Illness


ATLANTIS: 2. REPRIEVE       
First Line: I woke in the night %and thought, it was a dream
Last Line: Nothing's wrong now, %it was only a dream
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


ATLANTIS: 3. MICHAEL'S DREAM    Poem Text    
First Line: Michael writes to tell me his dream
Last Line: What something is in order to hold it
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness; Dreams; Dogs; Gay & Lesbians; Illness


ATLANTIS: 3. MICHAEL'S DREAM       
First Line: Michael writes to tell me his dream
Last Line: What something is in order to hold it
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


ATLANTIS: 4. ATLANTIS    Poem Text    
First Line: I thought your illness a kind of solvent
Last Line: Drenched, unchanged
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness; Dreams; Dogs; Gay & Lesbians; Illness


ATLANTIS: 4. ATLANTIS       
First Line: I thought your illness a kind of solvent
Last Line: Drenched, unchanged
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


ATLANTIS: 5. COASTAL    Poem Text    
First Line: Cold april and the neighbor girl
Last Line: Stubborn girl.
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness; Dreams; Dogs; Gay & Lesbians; Illness


ATLANTIS: 5. COASTAL       
First Line: Cold april and the neighbor girl
Last Line: She cradles the wild form. %stubborn girl
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


ATLANTIS: 6. NEW DOG    Poem Text    
First Line: Jimmy and tony / can't keep dino
Last Line: The animal, the new
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness; Dreams; Dogs; Gay & Lesbians; Illness


ATLANTIS: 6. NEW DOG       
First Line: Jimmy and tony %can't keep dino
Last Line: The animal, the new
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


BECOMING A MEADOW       
First Line: A bookstore in a seaside town
Last Line: Of the one before, %and half blows away in spray, backward the open sea


BEGINNERS    Poem Text    
First Line: The year miss tynes enrolled our class
Subject(s): Education; Schools; Students


BEGINNERS       
First Line: The year miss tynes enrolled our class
Last Line: Might lean toward it and whisper, %until it was more ancient, with all it knew
Subject(s): Education; Schools


BILL'S STORY    Poem Text    
First Line: When my sister came back from africa
Last Line: Shut up, mother, I said, and annie died
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness; Dreams; Dogs; Gay & Lesbians; Illness


BILL'S STORY       
First Line: When my sister came back from africa
Last Line: It was to reach her, if I heard her calling. %shut up, mother, I said, and annie died
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


BOOTBLACK       
First Line: What can be said of this happiness?
Last Line: He is the image of achieved joy


BOX OF LILIES       
First Line: I'm driving to work, late
Last Line: The trumpets in their brave clusters %year after year


BRIAN AGE SEVEN    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Grateful for their tour
Subject(s): Children; Portraits; Childhood


BRILLIANCE       
First Line: Maggie's taking care of a man
Last Line: Doubloons, icon-colored fins %troubling the water?


BROADWAY    Poem Text    
First Line: Under grand central's tattered vault
Last Line: The jewel of love for us
Subject(s): Cities; New York City; Urban Life; Manhattan; New York, New York; The Big Apple


BROADWAY       
First Line: Under grand central's tattered vault
Last Line: Are replenishing the jewel of love for us
Subject(s): Cities; New York City


CEMETERY ROAD    Poem Text    
First Line: No one's been buried here for years
Subject(s): Cemeteries; Graveyards


CEMETERY ROAD       
First Line: No one's been buried here for years
Last Line: Though perhaps what lies before you %can't be called that
Subject(s): Cemeteries


CHANTEUSE       
First Line: Prendergast painted the public garden
Last Line: My city, my false, %my splendid chanteuse


CHARLIE HOWARD'S DESCENT    Poem Text    
First Line: Between the bridge and the river
Subject(s): Diving & Divers; Death; Dead, The


CHARLIE HOWARD'S DESCENT       
First Line: Between the bridge and the river
Last Line: Can afford to give


COLLECTION OF MINERALS       
First Line: Weekdays on the island my father
Last Line: From the box one by one and traded them %for something I now cannot remember


COUTURE    Poem Text    
First Line: Peony silks
Subject(s): Beauty; Clothing & Dress


CREPE DE CHINE    Poem Text    
First Line: These drugstore windows
Last Line: Call me crepe de chine
Subject(s): Gays & Lesbians; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men


CREPE DE CHINE       
First Line: These drugstore windows
Last Line: Call me crepe de chine
Subject(s): Homosexuality


DAYS OF 1981    Poem Text    
First Line: Cambridge street, summer
Last Line: A blue I could barely see
Subject(s): Popular Culture - United States


DAYS OF 1981       
First Line: Cambridge street, summer
Last Line: The astonishing flowers, seething %a blue a could barely see
Subject(s): Popular Culture - United States


DEATH OF ANTINOUS       
First Line: When the beautiful young man drowned
Last Line: Become its own object, the way %that desire can make anything into a god
Subject(s): Homosexuality


DEEP LANE        Recitation by Author
Subject(s): Dogs


DEMOLITION    Poem Text    
First Line: The intact facade's almost black


DEMOLITION       
First Line: The intact facade's now almost black
Last Line: And the whole thing wavers as though we'd dreamed it, %our black classic, and it topples all at once


DIFFERENCE    Poem Text    
First Line: The jellyfish / float in the bay shallows
Subject(s): Gays & Lesbians; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men


DIFFERENCE       
First Line: The jellyfish %float in the bay shallows
Last Line: So full %of longing for the world, %changes its shape?
Subject(s): Homosexuality


DOOR TO THE RIVER       
First Line: He means,I think, there's an out
Last Line: Of course this is what death will be. Fine


ELIZABETH BISHOP, CROTON (WATERCOLOR, 9 X 5.75 , N.D.)       
First Line: Exiles see xiles everywhere
Last Line: Autobigraphical. Or: %enisled, this ellipse is coral & sable...
Subject(s): Paintings And Painters


ELIZABETH BISHOP, CROTON (WATERCOLOR, 9 X 5.75, N.D.)    Poem Text    
First Line: Exiles see exiles everywhere
Last Line: Enisled, this ellipse is coral & sable
Subject(s): Paintings & Painters


ESTA NOCHE       
First Line: In a dress with a black tulip's sheen
Last Line: We have to stand on. Put it on, %it's the only thing we have to wear


EXHIBITION OF QUILTS       
First Line: Necessity bloomed %into an exuberance of scraps
Last Line: Whirling and sleeping stars, %bethlehem in broad daylight


FIRE TO FIRE    Poem Text    
First Line: All smolder and oxblood
Last Line: Which is why the corona’d seedhead flashes the finches down
Subject(s): Fire; War


FIRE TO FIRE       
First Line: All smolder and oxblood
Last Line: The corona'd seedhead flashes the finches down
Subject(s): Fire; War


FLIT    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: =
Subject(s): Chickadees; Winter


FOG       
First Line: The crested iris by the front gate waves
Last Line: I would say anything else %in the world, any other word


FOG SUITE: 1. A FIVE PANELED SCREEN       
First Line: Fog-lacquered, %varnished in thin
Last Line: Where desire begins


FOG SUITE: 2.       
First Line: What I love about language
Last Line: The world's lustered by the veil


FOG SUITE: 3.       
First Line: Or else I love fog
Last Line: Of a ghost's embrace


FOR LOUISE MICHEL       
First Line: Above all else, I am taken by the revolution %you wished %dogs would bite
Last Line: Do they still send soldiers %against the people


FOUR CUT SUNFLOWERS, ONE UPSIDE DOWN       
First Line: Turbulent stasis on a blue ground
Last Line: Evening is overtaking them. %in this last light they are voracious


GARDEN OF THE MOON       
First Line: The school bus rattled around more turns
Last Line: With that same breathless look


GARDENIAS       
First Line: In puerto rico in 1939 my mother has leaned
Last Line: For the truck grinding gravel at the foot of the hill


GOLDEN RETRIEVALS    Poem Text    
First Line: Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
Subject(s): Dogs


GREEN CRAB'S SHELL       
First Line: Not, exactly, green
Last Line: Of ourselves, %similarly, %revealed some sky


GROSSE FUGE       
First Line: This october morning, %soft lavender bursts above the plymouth
Last Line: There is no resolution in the fugue
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


HAIR    Poem Text    
First Line: In a scene in the film
Subject(s): Hair; Motion Pictures; Concentration Camps; Movies; Cinema


HAIR       
First Line: In a scene in the film
Last Line: Is a part of her, her own


HARBOR LIGHTS    Poem Text    
First Line: I'm coming home through the red lacquered lobby
Subject(s): Cities; Urban Life


HARBOR LIGHTS       
First Line: I'm coming home through the red lacquered lobby
Last Line: Of appearances behind her window, %her glaze of rain, her veil
Subject(s): Cities


HEAVEN       
First Line: Tonigh there's a mirror on the sidewalk
Last Line: Out of their contexts. She knew she could lie there, %with her stranger, with the living animal betw


HEAVEN FOR HELEN    Poem Text    
First Line: Helen says heaven, for her,
Subject(s): Heaven; Paradise


HEAVEN FOR STANLEY    Poem Text    
First Line: For his birthday, I gave stanley a hyacinth bean
Subject(s): Friendship


HOMO WILL NOT INHERIT    Poem Text    
First Line: Downtown anywhere and between the roil
Last Line: Gorgeous, and on fire. I have my kingdom
Subject(s): Alienation (social Psychology); Dissenters; Exiles; Gays & Lesbians; Marginality, Social; Estrangement; Outcasts; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men


HOMO WILL NOT INHERIT       
First Line: Downtown anywhere and between the roil
Last Line: Gorgeous, and on fire. I have my kingdom
Subject(s): Alienation (social Psychology); Dissenters; Exiles; Homosexuality; Marginality, Social


HORSES       
First Line: The nights were blue and star-regular as church
Last Line: To give birth, lovely and not ours


HORSES AFTER A HURRICANE       
First Line: How they eased out from the bamboo brake
Last Line: With the gobs, and after, when we were faithless, %and entirely tender


HUMAN FIGURES       
First Line: On the number fifteen bus on porttrero hill
Last Line: Behind them firures molded %into something intimate, something to hide


HURRICANE       
First Line: When our local psychic
Last Line: And we lit more candles, to more brightly see us


IN THE FORM OF SNOW       
First Line: The summer I turned eighteen I worked
Last Line: Could have happened, and this did


INDEPENDENCE DAY       
First Line: Benches spangled in shade
Last Line: As if even the stars spoke to each other as they fell


ISIS: DOROTHY EADY, 1924       
First Line: I was never this beautiful
Last Line: Though the audience accepts it, %as they always have, and are moved


LA BELLE ET LA BETE       
First Line: My heart,' he said, 'is the heart
Last Line: Everything, the coming to love


LAMENT-HEAVEN       
First Line: What hazed around the branches
Last Line: That could not go go on without us, %and I was inconsolable


LATE CONVERSATION       
First Line: From the window twenty-eighth is slick with rain
Last Line: My face, yours, closing


LATE FLIGHT    Poem Text    
First Line: The pilot of the little plane must stop his engines
Last Line: The self is made of night
Subject(s): Aviation & Aviators; Flight; Airplanes; Air Pilots; Flying


LATE FLIGHT       
First Line: The pilot of the little plane must stop his engines
Last Line: The self isn't made of language; the self is made of night
Subject(s): Aviation And Aviators; Flight


LATIN DANCES       
First Line: My father writes from arizona
Last Line: The rhythmic and reeling pleasures of survivors


LETTER FROM THE COAST       
First Line: All afternoon the town readied for storm
Last Line: I wish you were here


LETTER TO GOD    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: The dogs were tired and bewildered
Last Line: It’s still possible a reply might reach them
Subject(s): God; Prayer; Religion; Theology


LILACS IN NYC       
First Line: Monday evening, e. 22nd %in front of jimmy and vincent's
Last Line: As april does to lilacwood


LILIES IN NEW YORK    Poem Text    
First Line: A drawing: smudged shadow, deep worked areas of graphite
Last Line: Open. And who could hope to draw that?
Subject(s): Flowers; Lilies; New York City; Manhattan; New York, New York; The Big Apple


LOST IN THE STARS       
First Line: The cafe musicale: %a sort of salon organized %by billy-sweet, irksome billy
Last Line: The black glove opens %and there it is, still falling, %beyond memory, beyond recovery, %the snow of


MESSIAH (CHRISTMAS PORTIONS)       
First Line: A little heat caught %in gleaming rags
Last Line: Waves of praise? Still time. %still time to change


MURANO       
First Line: Toxic salts, arsenic and copper
Last Line: Stolen from byzantium? %and now you're glass


NANCY OUTSIDE IN JULY       
First Line: In these prints, twenty-five variations
Last Line: And awkward as it is, spells out nothing %if not your name


NIGHT FERRY       
First Line: We're launched into the darkness
Last Line: Woodsmoke risen from the chilly store


NO       
First Line: The children have brought their wood turtle
Last Line: His prayer, %the single word of the shell, %which is no


NOCTURNE IN BLACK AND GOLD       
First Line: Tonight the harbor's %one lustrous wall, the air a warm gray
Last Line: As shimmer is. Go. %don't go. Go


NOIR       
First Line: It's the hotel balcony, after midnight


ONE OF THE ROOMING-HOUSES OF HEAVEN       
First Line: Last night I dreamed of bobby again
Last Line: I can't remember now a single thing he said
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


PARADISE: 1       
First Line: For you it's a hotel whose prime is long past
Last Line: Or, heaven is somewhere you don't need %to love anyone to feel all right


PARADISE: 2       
First Line: I read that blind children
Last Line: Whether the subject of object %of desire is made more beautiful


PARADISE: 3       
First Line: I forget who told the story
Last Line: And it's all right


PARADISE: 4.       
First Line: Maybe the dead look back
Last Line: In longing, like the rest of us


PARAGON PARK       
First Line: Across the highway's a city beach
Last Line: And before them the horses hurrying away


PAUL'S TATTOO    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: The flesh dreams toward permanence,


PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER       
First Line: The youth groups have all built floats
Last Line: In which she must imagine the form of her son


PINK PALACE       
First Line: My father would take me, saturdays
Last Line: Look at this one, and held me higher


PLAYLAND    Poem Text    
First Line: The black piano player's straightened hair
Last Line: "continues, yes, light the light, I’ll be home, late tonight,
Subject(s): African Americans - Song & Music


PLAYLAND       
First Line: The black piano player's straightened hair
Last Line: Continues, yes, light the light, I'll be home %late tonight
Subject(s): African Americans - Song And Music


PRIVATE LIFE       
First Line: Little kaiser, the parrot %in our local headshop's sidewalk cage
Last Line: Lifts and curls out to the world, performing %all night in his blanketed cage


REPLICA OF THE PARTHENON       
First Line: One of my presents, one christmas
Last Line: This was in nashville, in 1957


ROBERT HARMS PAINTS THE SURFACE OF LITTLE FRESH POND    Poem Text    
First Line: Surface the action of the day,


ROCKET       
First Line: In iowa, 1971, I wore my hair
Last Line: Than he remembered, less dangerous


ROW OF IDENTICAL COTTAGES       
First Line: All night the flag outside our window
Last Line: Stenciled on the clapboard along the waterfront: %cleome, peony, rose


SHAKER ORCHARD    Poem Text    
First Line: Holding even flowers subject


SHAKER ORCHARD       
First Line: Holding even flowers subject
Last Line: Having managed both to contain light %and to bear


SIDESHOW       
First Line: The goat without ears coughs
Last Line: In the miserable tent, my teacher


SIGNAL    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Lost cockatiel, cried the sign, hand-lettered


SIX THOUSAND TERRA-COTTA MEN AND HORSES       
First Line: Some farmers digging a well
Last Line: Into the dark perfectly for two thousand years, %good-natured, their faces open and uncomplicated


STAIRS       
First Line: Back when arden could still climb our stairs
Last Line: The fear that makes the stairway steeper


STATEMENT OF CONSCIENCE       
First Line: Poetry has always been a voice fro those without voices, a
Subject(s): Politics & Government; War


STATEMENT OF CONSCIENCE       
First Line: Poetry has always been a voice fro those without voices, a
Last Line: Profiteering, to the careless destruction of life
Subject(s): Politics; War


THE DEATH OF ANTINOUS    Poem Text    
First Line: When the beautiful young man drowned
Subject(s): Gays & Lesbians; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men


THE EMBRACE    Poem Text    
First Line: You weren't well or really ill yet either;
Subject(s): Illness


THE HOUSE OF BEAUTY    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: In jersey city, on tonnelle avenue,


THREE SUNDAYS, A SATURDAY, ROSES, PHOTOGRAPHS    Poem Text    
First Line: Sunday after you're gone I photograph
Subject(s): Love


THREE SUNDAYS, A SATURDAY, ROSES, PHOTOGRAPHS       
First Line: Sunday after you're gone I photograph
Last Line: These are the wonders of the world
Subject(s): Love


TIARA    Poem Text    
First Line: Peter died in a paper tiara cut
Last Line: But ask for it?
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness; Illness


TIARA       
First Line: Peter died in a paper tiara cut
Last Line: What could any of us ever do %but ask for it
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness


TO BESSIE DRENNAN    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
Subject(s): Paintings & Painters


TO BESSIE DRENNAN       
First Line: Bessie, you've made space dizzy
Last Line: Is it anything but joyous, %the arc his red scarf %transcribes in the air?


TO CAVAFY       
First Line: We were talking about desire
Last Line: But that wasn't what mattered at all


TO THE ENGRAVER OF MY SKIN    Poem Text    
First Line: I understand this pact is mortal,


TUNNEL MUSIC       
First Line: Times square, the shuttle's quick chrome
Last Line: So utterly of the coming world it is


TURTLE, SWAN    Poem Text    
First Line: Because the road to our house
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Gays & Lesbians; Sickness; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men; Illness


TURTLE, SWAN       
First Line: Because the road to our house
Last Line: Of polished tortoise - I do not want you ever to die
Subject(s): Aids (disease); Homosexuality; Sickness


WARE COLLECTION OF GLASS FLOWERS AND FRUIT, HARVARD ....       
First Line: Strange paradise, complete with worms
Last Line: Mouthed to the shape of how soft things are, %how good, before the disappear


WHERE YOU ARE: 1    Poem Text    
First Line: Flung to your salt parameters in all that wide gleam
Subject(s): Gays & Lesbians; Love; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men


WHERE YOU ARE: 1       
First Line: Flung to your salt parameters in all that wide gleam
Last Line: And ask are you awake
Subject(s): Homosexuality; Love


WHERE YOU ARE: 2. EVERYWHERE    Poem Text    
First Line: I thought I'd lost you. But you said I'm inbued
Subject(s): Gays & Lesbians; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men


WHERE YOU ARE: 2. EVERYWHERE       
First Line: I thought I'd lost you. But you said I'm inbued
Last Line: Where breath ends, air starts
Subject(s): Homosexuality


WHERE YOU ARE: 3. VAN GOGH, FLOWERING ROSEBUSHES: 1889    Poem Text    
First Line: A billow of attention
Subject(s): Gays & Lesbians; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men


WHERE YOU ARE: 3. VAN GOGH, FLOWERING ROSEBUSHES: 1889       
First Line: A billow of attention
Last Line: Of each arriving wave
Subject(s): Homosexuality


WHITE POURING       
First Line: I was a swan, %and I slept in the reeds
Last Line: The beautiful kingdom is over


WINGS       
First Line: The bored child at the auction
Last Line: Which has become itself %as it has disappeared


WITH ANIMALS       
First Line: Wet grass, headlights streaking morning fog
Last Line: And the flooding darkness. The life does'nt care. %the life only wants, the fugitive life