1. With No Experience In Such Matters - written by Stephen Dunn
From Stephen Dunn -- New and Selected Poems 1974 - 1994. Read 1160 times on American Poems.

To hold a damaged sparrow
under water until you feel it die
is to know a small something
about the mind; how, for example,
it blames the cat for the original crime,
how it wants praise for its better side.

And yet it's as human
as pulling the plug... (Read full poem)

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.

I can't remember the tale,
but... (Read full poem)

3. A High-Toned Old Christian Woman - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 3162 times on American Poems.

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But... (Read full poem)

The bird that feeds from off my palm
Is sleek, affectionate, and calm,
But double, to me, is worth the thrush
A-flickering in the elder-bush.(Read full poem)

5. A Postcard From The Volcano - written by Wallace Stevens
From Wallace Stevens: The Palm at the End of the Mind Selected Poems and a Play. Published in 1936. Read 3158 times on American Poems.

Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our... (Read full poem)

The Heart is the Capital of the Mind --
The Mind is a single State --
The Heart and the Mind together make
A single Continent --

One -- is the Population --
Numerous enough --
This ecstatic Nation
Seek -- it is Yourself.(Read full poem)

7. Mind Loves - written by Jenny Factor
Read 681 times on American Poems.

Who mind loved would not rather be loved body too.
Since all is all. Want eyes through everything. Like
comb through hair. Like water washing gold. Who
Mind loved would not rather love body to body since
all is more than map making map that... (Read full poem)

Heaven is so far of the Mind
That were the Mind dissolved --
The Site -- of it -- by Architect
Could not again be proved --

'Tis vast -- as our Capacity --
As fair -- as our idea --
To Him of adequate desire
No further 'tis, than Here --(Read full poem)

9. Lorena - written by Lucille Clifton
Read 534 times on American Poems.

it lay in my palm soft and trembled
as a new bird and i thought about
authority and how it always insisted
on itself, how it was master
of the man, how it measured him, never
was ignored or denied, and how it promised
there would be sweetness... (Read full poem)

On the then-below-zero day, it was on,
near the patients' chair, the old heater
kept by the analyst's couch, at the end,
like the infant's headstone that was added near the foot
of my father's grave. And it was hot, with the almost
laughing satire... (Read full poem)

11. By a flower -- By a letter - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 5555 times on American Poems.

By a flower -- By a letter --
By a nimble love --
If I weld the Rivet faster --
Final fast -- above --

Never mind my breathless Anvil!
Never mind Repose!
Never mind the sooty faces
Tugging at the Forge!(Read full poem)

The Mind lives on the Heart
Like any Parasite --
If that is full of Meat
The Mind is fat.

But if the Heart omit
Emaciate the Wit --
The Aliment of it
So absolute.(Read full poem)

13. Soil of Flint, if steady tilled -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1426 times on American Poems.

Soil of Flint, if steady tilled --
Will refund by Hand --
Seed of Palm, by Libyan Sun
Fructified in Sand --(Read full poem)

speaking of love(of
which Who knows the
meaning;or how dreaming
becomes
   
if your heart's mind)i
guess a grassblade
Thinks beyond or
around(as poems are
   
made)Our picking it. this
caress that laugh
both quickly signify
life's only half(through... (Read full poem)

15. Civilization -- spurns -- the Leopard! - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2326 times on American Poems.

Civilization -- spurns -- the Leopard!
Was the Leopard -- bold?
Deserts -- never rebuked her Satin --
Ethiop -- her Gold --
Tawny -- her Customs --
She was Conscious --
Spotted -- her Dun Gown --
This was the Leopard's nature -- Signor --
Need -- a... (Read full poem)

AS Adam, early in the morning, 
Walking forth from the bower, refresh’d with sleep; 
Behold me where I pass—hear my voice—approach, 
Touch me—touch the palm of your hand to my Body as I pass; 
Be not afraid of my Body.         5(Read full poem)

17. Such are the inlets of the mind -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1024 times on American Poems.

Such are the inlets of the mind --
His outlets -- would you see
Ascend with me the eminence
Of immortality --(Read full poem)

In the Japanese tongue of the mind's eye one two syllable word tells of the fringe of rain clinging to the eaves and of the grey-green fronds of wild parsley. (Read full poem)

19. Love And Death - written by Sara Teasdale
Read 3446 times on American Poems.

Shall we, too, rise forgetful from our sleep,
And shall my soul that lies within your hand
Remember nothing, as the blowing sand
Forgets the palm where long blue shadows creep
When winds along the darkened desert sweep?

Or would it still remember,... (Read full poem)

My mind was a mirror: 
It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. 
In youth my mind was just a mirror 
In a rapidly flying car, 
Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. 
Then in time 
Great scratches were made on the mirror, 
Letting... (Read full poem)

21. Nomad Exquisite - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 1066 times on American Poems.

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life,

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth hymn and hymn
From the beholder,
Beholding all these green sides
And gold sides of green sides,

And blessed... (Read full poem)

Across the millstream below the bridge 
Seven blue swallows divide the air 
In shapes invisible and evanescent, 
Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s 
Or memory’s power to keep them there. 

“History is where tensions were,” 
“Form is the diagram... (Read full poem)

23. A Thought went up my mind today -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2336 times on American Poems.

A Thought went up my mind today --
That I have had before --
But did not finish -- some way back --
I could not fix the Year --

Nor where it went -- nor why it came
The second time to me --
Nor definitely, what it was --
Have I the Art to say... (Read full poem)

His mind of man, a secret makes
I meet him with a start
He carries a circumference
In which I have no part --

Or even if I deem I do
He otherwise may know
Impregnable to inquest
However neighborly --(Read full poem)

25. Mind - written by Jorie Graham
Read 2603 times on American Poems.

The slow overture of rain, 
each drop breaking 
without breaking into 
the next, describes 
the unrelenting, syncopated 
mind. Not unlike 
the hummingbirds 
imagining their wings 
to be their heart, and swallows 
believing the horizon 
to be a line... (Read full poem)