No More Cake Here

“My Brother at 3 A.M.” by Natalie Diaz (2012)

This poem also appears in the collection When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012). It is a pantoum, a poem written in four-line stanzas wherein the second and fourth lines of each stanza appear as the first and third lines of the next. The repetition in this poem loops through a scene in which a mother witnesses her son having a hallucination in the middle of the night.

“Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation” by Natalie Diaz (2012)

This poem uses the abecedarian form—a form that starts each new line with a successive letter of the alphabet. It considers the historical and lasting impact of the Christian Church and white European culture on people living in a native community.

“Naloxone” by William Brewer (2017)

This poem includes couplets—stanzas consisting of two lines each. It takes the perspective of a heroin addict. The speaker expresses their terror of being stuck in a perpetual cycle of near-death experiences after an overdose.

“Party’s End” by Pablo Neruda (1968)

A long poem in thirteen parts, Neruda’s piece speaks of family, poverty, work, and the meaning of human existence with dream-like language and specificity.