1. A faded Boy -- in sallow Clothes - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1588 times on American Poems.

A faded Boy -- in sallow Clothes
Who drove a lonesome Cow
To pastures of Oblivion --
A statesman's Embryo --

The Boys that whistled are extinct --
The Cows that fed and thanked
Remanded to a Ballad's Barn
Or Clover's Retrospect --(Read full poem)

This poem was found written on a paper bag by Richard
Brautigan in a laundromat in San Francisco.  The author is unknown.

By accident, you put
Your money in my
Machine (#4)
By accident, I put
My money in another
Machine (#6)
On purpose, I... (Read full poem)

3. Perhaps they do not go so far - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1720 times on American Poems.

Perhaps they do not go so far
As we who stay, suppose --
Perhaps come closer, for the lapse
Of their corporeal clothes --

It may be know so certainly
How short we have to fear
That comprehension antedates
And estimates us there --(Read full poem)

Behold, my child, this touching scene,
The golfer on the golfing-green;
Pray mark his legs’ uncanny swing,
The golf-walk is a gruesome thing!

See how his arms and shoulders ride
Above his legs in haughty pride,
While over bunker, hill and... (Read full poem)

5. The Poem You Asked For - written by Larry Levis
From Wrecking Crew, University of Pittsburgh Press . Published in 1972. Read 3255 times on American Poems.

My poem would eat nothing. 
I tried giving it water 
but it said no, 
  
worrying me. 
Day after day, 
I held it up to the llight, 
  
turning it over, 
but it only pressed its lips 
more tightly together. 
  
It grew sullen, like a toad 
through... (Read full poem)

I WISH to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and a white dress
For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister
And told him we would love each other and take... (Read full poem)

7. How fits his Umber Coat - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1169 times on American Poems.

How fits his Umber Coat
The Tailor of the Nut?
Combined without a seam
Like Raiment of a Dream --

Who spun the Auburn Cloth?
Computed how the girth?
The Chestnut aged grows
In those primeval Clothes --

We know that we are wise --
Accomplished in... (Read full poem)

All week she's cleaned
someone else's house,
stared down her own face
in the shine of copper--
bottomed pots, polished
wood, toilets she'd pull
the lid to--that look saying

Let's make a change, girl.

But Sunday mornings are hers--
church clothes... (Read full poem)

9. In a Breath - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Published in 1912. Read 3580 times on American Poems.

To the Williamson Brothers

HIGH noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue
asphalt. Drum of hoofs and whirr of motors.
Women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catching
play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes.

Inside the playhouse are movies... (Read full poem)

There was a young belle of old Natchez
Whose garments were always in patchez.
When comment arose
On the state of her clothes,
She replied, When Ah itchez, Ah scratchez.(Read full poem)

11. Romeo and Juliet - written by Richard Brautigan
Read 9993 times on American Poems.

If you will die for me, 
I will die for you 
and our graves will be like two lovers washing 
their clothes together 
in a laundromat 
If you will bring the soap 
I will bring the bleach.(Read full poem)

Why did Albert Schirding kill himself
Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools,
Blest as he was with the means of life
And wonderful children, bringing him honor
Ere he was sixty?
If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand,
Or one... (Read full poem)

13. The Liars - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 8064 times on American Poems.

(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar goes in rags.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.
And the stonecutters earn a living—with lies—on the tombs... (Read full poem)

This is not the way I am.
Really, I am much taller in person,
the hairline I conceal reaches back
to my grandfather, and the shyness my wife
will not believe in has always been why
I was bold on first dates. My father a crack salesman.
I've saved... (Read full poem)

15. Flashbacks - written by Bill Knott
Read 943 times on American Poems.

All it takes is Laura Riding's riding-
crop across my butt, and I'm off:
Git-up horsie she cries astride me as

I crash sweetly onto the carpet.
Boredom what an esthetic,
cleansing the days-
I laud the vintage of my toothpick.

Small-husband to the... (Read full poem)

As he writes, without looking at the sea,
he feels the tip of his pen begin to tremble.
The tide is going out across the shingle.
But it isn't that. No,
it's because at that moment she chooses
to walk into the room without any clothes on.
Drowsy,... (Read full poem)

17. I Am The People, The Mob - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Published in 1900. Read 5088 times on American Poems.

I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The... (Read full poem)

I WAITED today for a freight train to pass.
Cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the
bars, went by.
And a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between
cars.
Well, the cattle are respectable, I thought.
Every steer has its... (Read full poem)

19. Tempestrousseau - written by Bill Knott
Read 611 times on American Poems.

The clock is dressed in drag, I mean it wears
space instead of its own proper aspect
but if it wore time, would it disappear
isn't visibility an effect 

of transvestism, that shield pastime whose
crosscasual aim unmasks the eye: must you
assume the... (Read full poem)

at the edge of the city in
the garbagedump where the
trucks never stop unloading
a crazy congregation stumbles
from trashmound to trashheap
they smash their fists down on
whatever's intact they tear
to bits the pitifew items
that have remained whole... (Read full poem)

21. Hamlet Off-Stage: Laertes Cool - written by D.C. Berry
Read 708 times on American Poems.

Laertes has groupies, proof he has taste,
has cool. Wears skate-board clothes: elephant pants,
the crotch snagging his knees, tent-size tee-shirt.
He wants the play staged at a roller rink:
him, Fortinbras, and me wearing in-lines,
the rest in... (Read full poem)

So it has come to this
insomnia at 3:15 A.M., 
the clock tolling its engine 

like a frog following 
a sundial yet having an electric 
seizure at the quarter hour. 

The business of words keeps me awake. 
I am drinking cocoa, 
that warm brown mama.... (Read full poem)

23. April - written by Louise Gluck
From The Wild Iris. Published in 1993. Read 1721 times on American Poems.

No one's despair is like my despair--

You have no place in this garden
thinking such things, producing
the tiresome outward signs; the man
pointedly weeding an entire forest,
the woman limping, refusing to change clothes
or wash her... (Read full poem)

's an interesting
custom, involving such in-
         visible items as the food
that's not on the table, the clothes
         that are not on the back
the radio whose music
         is silence. Doing without
is a great protector of reputations... (Read full poem)

25. Despair - written by Anne Sexton
Read 8519 times on American Poems.

Who is he?
A railroad track toward hell?
Breaking like a stick of furniture?
The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool?
The love that goes down the drain like spit?
The love that said forever, forever
and then runs you over like a truck?
Are you... (Read full poem)