1. Meditation By The Stove - written by Linda Pastan
From Carnival Evening. Published in 1998. Read 920 times on American Poems.

I have banked the fires
of my body
into a small but steady blaze
here in the kitchen
where the dough has a life of its own,
breathing under its damp cloth
like a sleeping child;
where the real child plays under the table,
pretending the tablecloth... (Read full poem)

BODY of Jesus taken down from the cross
Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ,
It is a child’s handful you are here,
The breadth of a man’s finger,
And this ivory loin cloth
Speaks an interspersal in the day’s work,
The carver’s... (Read full poem)

3. Diagnosis - written by Terence Winch
From The Drift of Things. Published in 2001. Read 1042 times on American Poems.

for David Lehman

I woke up this morning feeling
incredibly Gorky. So I made an appointment
to see my Doctorow. He said my Hemingways
looked a little swollen and sent me to
get an M.R. James and a complete Shakespeare.
By that time, I began... (Read full poem)

THE FINE cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt,
Something Sinbad, the sailor, took away from robbers,
Something a traveler with plenty of money might pick up
And bring home and stick on the walls and say:
“There’s a little thing... (Read full poem)

5. Girl In A Miniskirt Reading The Bible Outside My Window - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 6443 times on American Poems.

Sunday, I am eating a
grapefruit, church is over at the Russian 
Orthadox to the
west.

she is dark
of Eastern descent,
large brown eyes look up from the Bible
then down. a small red and black
Bible, and as she reads
her legs keep moving,... (Read full poem)

I was the Widow McFarlane,
Weaver of carpets for all the village.
And I pity you still at the loom of life,
You who are singing to the shuttle
And lovingly watching the work of your hands,
If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth.
For... (Read full poem)

7. L'Art - written by Ezra Pound
Read 3283 times on American Poems.

Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.(Read full poem)

Today, because I couldn't find the shortcut through,
I had to walk this town's entire inner
perimeter to find
where the medieval walls break open
in an eighteenth century
arch. The yellow valley flickered on and off
through cracks and the gaps
for... (Read full poem)

9. The Woman At The Washington Zoo - written by Randall Jarrell
Read 3238 times on American Poems.

The saris go by me from the embassies.

Cloth from the moon.  Cloth from another planet.  
They look back at the leopard like the leopard.

And I. . . .
                this print of mine, that has kept its color
Alive through so many cleanings;... (Read full poem)

Ay, workman, make me a dream,
A dream for my love.
Cunningly weave sunlight,
Breezes, and flowers.
Let it be of the cloth of meadows.
And -- good workman --
And let there be a man walking thereon.(Read full poem)

11. How fits his Umber Coat - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1118 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)

-to S.

The light lay in shreds across the bed,
only your waking could make it whole;
resuming its costume of day, its role
which seems to overnight get ragged--

Fate latent as weights in theater
curtainhems, what soul is sewn here
to be rung down... (Read full poem)

13. Low-Anchored Cloud - written by Henry David Thoreau
Read 3319 times on American Poems.

Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream-drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern... (Read full poem)

DELICATE cluster! flag of teeming life! 
Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining! 
Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing! 
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!) 
Flag cerulean! sunny flag!... (Read full poem)

15. July 10 - written by David Lehman
Read 1137 times on American Poems.

The sky was a midnight blue
velvet cloth draping
a birdcage and no moon
but the breeze was whistling
and the sound of a car
on Valentine Place was
the rush of a waterfall
on the phone in New York City
and that's when the muse
turned up with curly... (Read full poem)

Back of my back, they talk of me,
Gabble and honk and hiss;
Let them batten, and let them be-
Me, I can sing them this:

"Better to shiver beneath the stars,
Head on a faithless breast,
Than peer at the night through rusted bars,
And share an... (Read full poem)

17. Leaving Early - written by Sylvia Plath
Read 8995 times on American Poems.

Lady, your room is lousy with flowers.
When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,
Me, sitting here bored as a loepard
In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,
Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I... (Read full poem)

It is a summer evening.
The yellow moths sag
against the locked screens
and the faded curtains
suck over the window sills
and from another building
a goat calls in his dreams.
This is the TV parlor
in the best ward at Bedlam.
The night nurse is... (Read full poem)

19. Three Ghosts - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 1899 times on American Poems.

THREE tailors of Tooley Street wrote: We, the People.
The names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts.
  
Cutters or bushelmen or armhole basters, they sat
cross-legged stitching, snatched at scissors, stole each
other thimbles.
  
Cross-legged,... (Read full poem)

This poem is for my wife.
I have made it plainly and honestly:
The mark is on it
Like the burl on the knife.

I have not made it for praise.
She has no more need for praise
Than summer has
Or the bright days.

In all that becomes a... (Read full poem)

21. Hysteria - written by T.S. Eliot
From Prufrock and Other Observations. Published in 1917. Read 5196 times on American Poems.

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth
were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at
each momentary recovery, lost finally in the... (Read full poem)

This salt-stain spot
marks the place where men
lay down their heads,
back to the bench,

and hoist nothing
that need be lifted
but some burden they've chosen
this time: more reps,

more weight, the upward shove
of it leaving,... (Read full poem)

23. Design - written by Robert Frost
From A Further Range. Published in 1936. Read 26045 times on American Poems.

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth... (Read full poem)

An apple arc'd toward Kleitos; whose great King
wroth & of wine did study where his sword,
sneaked away, might be . . .
with swollen lids staggered up and clung
dim to the cloth of gold. An un-Greek word
blister, to him guard,

and the... (Read full poem)

25. In the footsteps of the walking air - written by Kenneth Patchen
Read 579 times on American Poems.

In the footsteps of the walking air
Sky's prophetic chickens weave their cloth of awe
And hillsides lift green wings in somber journeying.

Night in his soft haste bumps on the shoulders of the abyss
And a single drop of dark blood covers the... (Read full poem)