This page contains recent poems and poems from recent years. There is also an exhaustive list including almost every poem since 1998.

Half an hour before, I step through 
the door 
into the semidark. Unpack, 
undress, body thrown 
at sofa in tired, 
languid heap;

half an hour before picking up again, 
watch, wallet, phone, 
security badge, 
a knot around the waist, pieces of 
my duration—
I step across the brink into the light
again, ready to work.

Dale Chou
2025-08-21

Admire the clearness of the water. Stare hard at the water. Lunge
forward, as I falter.
                        Crash into the cold. Use expletives four
or five times through false air. Swim
                                        like hell to stay warm. 
Every Wednesday morning.

Dale Chou
2024-10-23

Back at this corner purplish and blue listening 
     to the streets waking up.

Dale Chou
2023-12-13

Cori likes to play the piano 
when I play the piano.

A note here.
A note there.

'The notes are like birds, 
like feathers,' she said. 

'The rests
are like cats.

When the cats come, 
the birds fly away.'

Dale Chou
2022-11-08

Those days of dreams and dampness
—of symbols large enough to settle
—of insects pale-almost-translucent
with their fearsome mandibles.
They have their innards stolen; they toil
hard, my wakeful tenants, 
always carving away pieces within me
to stuff their hungry husks.
We fight all the time. I for what I am 
left with; they for the lack.

Dale Chou
2021-12-27