Ada Limón

Biography

Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying (Milkweed, 2018), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her book Bright Dead Things (Milkweed, 2015) was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Limón was also the host of the critically acclaimed poetry podcast The Slowdown. She is the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States.

See Work

POETRY / Winter 2021

Intimacy

By Ada Limón

I remember watching my mother / with the horses, the cool, fluid / way she’d guide those enormous / bodies around the long field

POETRY / Winter 2021

Forsythia

By Ada Limón

At the cabin in Snug Hollow near McSwain Branch creek, just spring, all the animals are out, and my beloved and I are lying in bed in a soft silence.

POETRY / Winter 2021

Sanctuary

By Ada Limón
POETRY / Winter 2021

Invasive

By Ada Limón

What’s the thin break / inescapable, a sudden thud / on the porch, a phone / vibrating with panic on the nightstand?

POETRY / Fall 2017

Sacred Objects

By Ada Limón

I’m driving down to Tennessee, but before I get there, I stop at the Kentucky state line to fuel up and pee. The dog’s in the car and the weather’s fine. As I pump the gas a man in his black Ford F150 yells out his window about my body. I...

POETRY / Fall 2017

Losing

By Ada Limón

After your father gets lost for the third time,
      you get angry because he won’t answer his phone.
Part of me wants him to stay lost. God, what has stolen my generosity? 

POETRY / Fall 2017

After His Ex Died

By Ada Limón

 

We were quick to tell each other what we wanted. I said, I want to be cremated and then I want my ashes to be tossed in the Pacific and the Atlantic. He said I was greedy for wanting both coasts, but he’d do it.

POETRY / Fall 2017

The Vulture & the Body

By Ada Limón

On my way to the fertility clinic,

                                  I pass five dead animals.

First a raccoon with all four paws to the sky
               like he’s going to catch whatever bullshit load falls on him next.