1. The House Of Dust: Introduction - written by Conrad Aiken
From The House of Dust. Published in 1917. Read 2230 times on American Poems.

THE HOUSE OF DUST
A Symphony

BY
CONRAD AIKEN

To Jessie

NOTE

. . . Parts of this poem have been printed in "The North American
Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review". . . . I am
indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the... (Read full poem)

All that I do
Is in review
To his enamored mind
I know his eye
Where e'er I ply
Is pushing close behind
Not any Port
Nor any flight
But he doth there preside
What omnipresence lies in wait
For her to be a Bride(Read full poem)

3. General Review of the Sex Situation - written by Dorothy Parker
From Enough Rope. Published in 1926. Read 10854 times on American Poems.

Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?(Read full poem)

Nimbus clouds erasing stars above Lamoni. 
Jaundiced lights. Silos. Loose dogs. Cows
whose stench infuses the handful of homes,
whose sad voices storm the plains with longing.(Read full poem)

5. The last of Summer is Delight -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1970 times on American Poems.

The last of Summer is Delight --
Deterred by Retrospect.
'Tis Ecstasy's revealed Review --
Enchantment's Syndicate.

To meet it -- nameless as it is --
Without celestial Mail --
Audacious as without a Knock
To walk within the Veil.(Read full poem)

My mother never heard of Freud
and she decided as a little girl
that she would call her husband Dick
no matter what his first name was
and did. He called her Ditty. They
called me Bud, and our generic names
amused my analyst. That must, she... (Read full poem)

7. Curtain - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 1934 times on American Poems.

the final curtain on one of the longest running
musicals ever, some people claim to have
seen it over one hundred times.
I saw it on the tv news, that final curtain:
flowers, cheers, tears, a thunderous
accolade.
I have not seen this particular... (Read full poem)

Like Some Old fashioned Miracle
When Summertime is done --
Seems Summer's Recollection
And the Affairs of June

As infinite Tradition
As Cinderella's Bays --
Or Little John -- of Lincoln Green --
Or Blue Beard's Galleries --

Her Bees have a... (Read full poem)

9. Picture - written by Bill Knott
From The Unsubscriber. Published in 2000. Read 553 times on American Poems.

Meadow of matchsticks,
soon to be rekindled
by Spring the incendiary.

The exact flame of your blossoms
will ignite the passions
happily sapped by time--

Dripdrop their excess went
and now miners' hats
light up like love before

your vein, the... (Read full poem)

naked along the side of the house,
8 a.m., spreading sesame seed oil
over my body, Jesus, have I come
to this?
I once battled in dark alleys for a
laugh.
now I'm not laughing.
I splash myself with oil and wonder,
how many years do you want?
how many... (Read full poem)

11. Swing Shift Blues - written by Alan Dugan
From American Poetry Review 25th Anniv. Issue. Read 538 times on American Poems.

What is better than leaving a bar
in the middle of the afternoon
besides staying in it or not
having gone into it in the first place
because you had a decent woman to be with?
The air smells particularly fresh
after the stale beer and piss... (Read full poem)

When I knew, it was raining.
Winter in decline.  I was tired. 
You in your soaked shirt diffused
into the western sky bulging with clouds,
speeding cars a few feet away—
why would they not slow down?

Though afternoon, a slip of moon 
busied... (Read full poem)

13. The Maple - written by Bob Hicok
From Cream City Review. Read 577 times on American Poems.

The Maple

is a system of posture for wood. 
A way of not falling down 
for twigs that happens 
to benefit birds. I don't know. 
I'm staring at a tree, 
at yellow leaves 
threshed by wind and want you 
reading this to be staring 
at the same tree. I... (Read full poem)

She's rubbing his shoulder
and he's reading about
Western birds. There's a scoop
of light just above my knee

it resembles the world, the one I know
a layer of smoke spread thin, a shelf

my mind returns again &
again to the picture
you gave me.... (Read full poem)

15. The Moss Of His Skin - written by Anne Sexton
Read 4240 times on American Poems.

"Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next
to their fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the goddesses
of the tribes..."

--Harold Feldman, "Children of the Desert" Psychoanalysis
and Psychoanalytic Review, Fall 1958

It was only... (Read full poem)

The yard half a yard, 
half a lake blue as a corpse. 
The lake will tell things you long to hear: 
get away from here. 
Three o'clock. Dry leaves rat-tat like maracas. 

Whisky-colored grass
breaks at every step and trees 
are slowly realizing they... (Read full poem)

17. Ballade at Thirty-Five - written by Dorothy Parker
From Enough Rope. Published in 1926. Read 3512 times on American Poems.

This, no song of an ingenue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments,
I loved them until they loved me.

Decked... (Read full poem)

The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
when some academic son of a bitch,
to test her reputation as a drunk,
gave her a beer glass full of wine
after our... (Read full poem)

19. Santa Fe In Winter - written by Deborah Ager
From New England Review. Published in 2002. Read 2186 times on American Poems.

The city is closing for the night.
Stores draw their blinds one by one,
and it's dark again, save for the dim

infrequent streetlight bending at the neck
like a weighted stem. Years have built
the city in layers: balustrades filled in

with brick,... (Read full poem)

Florida

An Airedale rolling through green frost,
cabbage palms pointing their accusing leaves 
at whom, petulant waves breaking at my feet. 
I ran from them. Nights, yellow lights 
scoured sand. What was ever found 
but women in skirts folded... (Read full poem)

21. Night: San Francisco - written by Deborah Ager
From New England Review. Published in 2002. Read 4063 times on American Poems.

Rain drenches the patio stones.
All night was spent waiting 
for an earthquake, and instead 

water stains sand with its pink foam.
Yesterday's steps fill in with gray crabs.  
Baritone of a fog horn. A misty light 

warns tankers, which block the... (Read full poem)

My father's head has become a mystery to him.
We finally have something in common.
When he moves his head his eyes 
get big as roses filled 
with the commotion of spring. 
Not long ago he was a man 
who had tomato soup for lunch 
and dusted with the... (Read full poem)

23. To Various Persons Talked To All At Once - written by Kenneth Koch
From American Poetry Review, M/J 1999. Published in 1999. Read 1081 times on American Poems.

You have helped hold me together.
I'd like you to be still.
Stop talking or doing anything else for a minute.
No. Please. For three minutes, maybe five minutes.
Tell me which walk to take over the hill.
Is there a bridge there? Will I want... (Read full poem)

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final... (Read full poem)

25. The Procession - written by Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
Read 398 times on American Poems.

The legislators pass along
A solemn, self-important throng!
Just raised from the common mass,
They feel themselves another class.
--But let them in the sunshine play
For every dog must have his day.

There moves the law's close-wedged... (Read full poem)