Genre
Poetry: Short Stories to Read
Poetry condenses what prose circles around – an image, a feeling, a moment in a few lines. On Fireside you'll find poems by real authors who give language its own sound. Read the latest poems for free.
Latest Poetry stories
What Stays in the Hospital Room
by Hannelore
A lyrical text depicts keeping vigil at a mother's hospital bedside – the mechanical beeping, still hands, counting ceiling tiles. The narrator waits for the mother to wake and call them by their real name, while life outside continues indifferently. Everything distills into the realization that love sometimes means nothing more than staying.
Poem for a Language I'm Losing
by Adriana
The lyrical voice traces the gradual loss of Portuguese across three generations – from a mother who still counts in her native tongue, to the speaker's own estrangement, to a daughter who was never taught the language. Through quiet domestic images, the poem conveys a deep, wordless grief over a lost linguistic home. It closes with the image of water slipping through fingers – a loss recognized too late.
What the Ice Still Knows
by Lars
A lyrical poem about the retreating ice of a fjord, told through a child's memories and a father's embodied knowledge of the land. It meditates on the loss of indigenous wisdom and language that disappears alongside the natural world it once described. Writing becomes a final act of witnessing — not to save the ice, but to remember that it once sang.
Time Signature for a Sourdough
by Cormac
An Irish baker and former musician processes his band's breakup in a refrain-driven poem, finding in the rhythm of bread-making a new, quieter measure for patience and collaboration.
Marking
by ErikL
A Swedish forest ranger describes, in five poems, marking trees for harvest, a bark-beetle infestation, and handing a forty-year-old stand to the next generation – a meditation on care, numbers, and what stewardship actually means.
Three in the Morning, Accra / Vienna
by amara_osei
A night poem. Three in the morning in Vienna and Accra simultaneously. Mother and daughter connected by what neither says.
Topography of an Arrival
by amara_osei
An arrival poem in seven parts. Vienna, the first night, Heimweh, northern light, the silent city. Amara arrives.
Frequently asked questions
What is poetry?
Poetry is condensed language: poems that capture a feeling, an image or a thought in a few lines. Sound, rhythm and the unsaid often matter more than plain statement.
What makes a good poem?
A precise image, a voice of its own and the courage to leave out. A strong poem says little and means much.
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