With autumn imagery that ranges from familiar and comforting to supernatural and Gothic, these poems provide rich explorations of what it means to be human in a cold and shifting world.
“Scarecrow” by Jericho Brown
Told from the perspective of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, this poem navigates the relationship between love, violence, and exploitation.
"A building in which I am mistaken
For a broom, handled as such,
And given to the floor. To dust."
“Poppies in October” by Sylvia Plath
Plath masterfully transforms a sighting of late-blooming poppies into a contemplation of the tension between life and death, the role of beauty in a cold and violent world.
"A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for"
“At the Pumpkin Festival, My Lips Burn Bright” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Nezhukumatathil's rich autumn imagery is at once tender and humorously sinister; the supernatural becomes a vehicle to explore a complicated but ultimately loving mother-daughter relationship.
"The salty crunch
of toasted seeds—the only protection my mouth
has against witches."
“Terrible Music” by Chessy Normile
This poem’s commitment to its own absurdity makes it all the more heartbreaking. Normile humorously engages with terror and ruminates on death in a way that feels powerfully informed by love.
"You were screaming in your sleep beside me,
thrashing like a dead shark
held in the arms of a living man.
You were both the shark and the man, which impressed me."
“Zombie Sunday” by Josh Bell
This poem features winding sentences and flurrying images, instantaneous shifts into memory, intricate musical metaphors that embody pain and grief—all of which feel deeply autumnal, and which illustrate the seeping of cold into warmth.
"you gathering up a responsible speed in the human lung
and coming out a scream which combs the moon,
like a knot of hair, bleeding from the trees."
“After His Ex Died” by Ada Limon
With the help of cats and ghosts, this poem authentically explores the aftermath of tragedy and how the living grapple with death and grief in crude ways.
"He said we don’t believe in the afterlife. I stopped him and said, I don’t believe in God, but I do have some very interesting thoughts concerning ghosts."
“November for Beginners” by Rita Dove
With the most stunningly precise language, Dove finds both misery and beauty in autumn’s constant anticipation of winter.
"So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline."
“As a child I ate and mourned” by Diane Seuss
Seuss’s uncanny and haunting images–bloody fruits, gravediggers, snakes in cemeteries–give readers a glimpse of the incomprehensibility of death and the strangeness of grief.
“A cheap box of tissues on the card table. /
I slid one out and balled it up, stuck it in my mouth.”