The Zingara Project

Tag: Sonnet

  • Sonnet XLII

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    "My future will not copy fair my past"--
    I wrote that once; and thinking at my side
    My ministering life-angel justified
    The word by his appealing look upcast
    To the white throne of God, I turned at last,
    And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied
    To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried
    By natural ills, received the comfort fast,
    While budding, at thy sight, my pilgrim's staff
    Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled.
    I seek no copy now of life's first half:
    Leave here the pages with long musing curled,
    And write me new my future's epigraph,
    New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

  • a modern sonnet by Cleopatra Lim

    i know that it is okay because i said yes but it should mean
    that i don’t have to feel like a suckling pig before slaughter
    and i did this, i think, to feel like an adult now that i’m eighteen
    but i went too far– i go too far– ten bucks that he has a daughter

    somehow i can see myself in an hour, picking the curly aged hairs he shed
    off polka-dotted sheets that laid witness to my first lunar blood
    and soon he’ll unlock my beloved chest, spill jewels of cherry-red–
    hindsight says once a flower blooms, it’ll never again be a bud

    but reason and rationale are always late and the party don’t start
    til they walk in and see me: emptied and filled with cheap wine
    and tears… they said when it happened, i would feel in my heart
    completed, perfected, and his gaze would be sugary sunshine….

    instead the bed shakes and i am seasick until the north star, i can mark.
    he tries to see me but he can’t. i am with the stars that glow in the dark.

    —

    Cleopatra Lim is a student currently attending Columbia University. She most enjoys writing prose poetry and personal essays, and has been published in some smaller literary journals. She currently works in NYC as a marketing assistant and a junior agent at a talent agency. In the future, she hopes to be able to work with both film and writing, working to incorporate poetry on to the big screen.