1. Your Dog Dies - written by Raymond Carver
Read 37971 times on American Poems.

it gets run over by a van. 
you find it at the side of the road 
and bury it. 
you feel bad about it. 
you feel bad personally, 
but you feel bad for your daughter 
because it was her pet, 
and she loved it so. 
she used to croon to it 
and let it... (Read full poem)

BABY vamps, is it harder work than it used to be?
Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons?
  Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night?
In the winter at the skating rinks, in... (Read full poem)

3. Poem - written by Donald Justice
Read 46426 times on American Poems.

This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does no matter.
The poem will... (Read full poem)

1

the legend is whispered
in the women's tent
how the moon when she rises
full
follows some men into themselves
and changes them there
the season is short
but dreadful shapeshifters
they wear strange hands
they walk through the... (Read full poem)

5. The Pattern - written by Russell Edson
Read 1366 times on American Poems.

A women had given birth to an old man.

  He cried to have again been caught in the pattern.

  Oh well, he sighed as he took her breast to his mouth.

  The woman is happy to have her baby, even if it is old.

  Probably it got mislaid in the baby... (Read full poem)

The light along the hills in the morning
comes down slowly, naming the trees
white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.

Notice what this poem is not doing.

A house, a house, a barn, the old
quarry, where the river shrugs--
how much of... (Read full poem)

7. dying is fine)but Death - written by e.e. cummings
Read 37697 times on American Poems.

dying is fine)but Death

?o
baby
i

wouldn't like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying
's miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly... (Read full poem)

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at... (Read full poem)

9. Introduction To Poetry - written by Billy Collins
From The Apple that Astonished Paris. Published in 1988. Read 10026 times on American Poems.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light 
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I... (Read full poem)

I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen
and so I swung into action and wrote a poem

and it was miserable, for that was how I thought
poetry worked: you digested experience shat

literature.  It was 1960 at The Showplace, long since
defunct,... (Read full poem)

11. Ars Poetica - written by Archibald MacLeish
Read 7925 times on American Poems.

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-- 

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

                 *

A... (Read full poem)

Words of a poem should be glass
But glass so simple-subtle its shape
Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.

A glass spun for itself is empty,
Brittle, at best Venetian trinket.
Embossed glass hides the poem of its absence.

Words should... (Read full poem)

13. Glass - written by Robert Francis
Read 2640 times on American Poems.

Words of a poem should be glass
But glass so simple-subtle its shape
Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.

A glass spun for itself is empty,
Brittle, at best Venetian trinket.
Embossed glass hides the poem or its absence.

Words should be... (Read full poem)

After your death,
Naomi, your hair will escape to become
a round animal, nameless.(Read full poem)

15. Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry - written by Stephen Dunn
Read 11531 times on American Poems.

Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist 
somewhere in the... (Read full poem)

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour.  I know you are reading this poem
standing up in... (Read full poem)

17. The Crying Room - written by Lee Upton
Read 540 times on American Poems.

The church had a crying room—
up at the opposite side of the altar.
Good for the baby.
It was glass on all sides like a tank.
A microphone brought in the priest’s voice.
From the crying room we could see
how things happened backstage:
someone... (Read full poem)

My new Web site is dropdead.com
It's interactive you get to choose how
you'll die, where, and at what age
and it'll still come as a complete
surprise to you I guarantee
but let's not get morbid it's a game
it's more fun than bullshit.com and a lot... (Read full poem)

19. the lost baby poem - written by Lucille Clifton
Read 2850 times on American Poems.

the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned

you would have been born in... (Read full poem)

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)

21. (End) of Summer (1966) - written by Bill Knott
Read 1285 times on American Poems.

I'm tired of murdering children.
Once, long ago today, they wanted to live;
now I feel Vietnam the place
where rigor mortis is beginning to set-in upon me.

I force silence down the throats of mutes,
down the throats of mating-cries of animals who... (Read full poem)

May you find help from action figures I keep.
May you find them in the top drawer
And bring them out while you sleep
And I welcome darkness--
The flickering TV, helicopters
hopscotched overhead.

May these nightdolls help you,
When every... (Read full poem)

23. Little Brown Baby - written by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Read 2621 times on American Poems.

Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes, 
Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh -- makin' san' pies?
Look at dat bib -- you's es du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf -- dat's merlasses, I bet;
Come hyeah, Maria, an'... (Read full poem)

WHAT does the hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
Him if it was a good day’s work
And everything went well or do... (Read full poem)

25. Never To Dream Of Spiders - written by Audre Lorde
Read 2406 times on American Poems.

Time collapses between the lips of strangers
my days collapse into a hollow tube 
soon implodes against now
like an iron wall
my eyes are blocked with rubble 
a smear of perspectives
blurring each horizon 
in the breathless precision of... (Read full poem)