1. Cooney Potter - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 728 times on American Poems.

I inherited forty acres from my Father
And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters
From dawn to dusk, I acquired
A thousand acres. But not content,
Wishing to own two thousand acres,
I bustled through the years with axe and... (Read full poem)

What streets, what taxis transport them
over bridges & speed bumps-my daughters swift

in pursuit of union? What suitors amuse them, what mazes
of avenues tilt & confuse them as pleasure, that pinball

goes bouncing off light posts &... (Read full poem)

3. Lambert Hutchins - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 342 times on American Poems.

I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
One, the house I built on the hill,
With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate;
The other, the lake-front in Chicago,
Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,
With whistling engines and... (Read full poem)

My mother's playing cards with my aunt,
Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game
my grandmother taught all her daughters.

Midsummer: too hot to go out.
Today, my aunt's ahead; she's getting the good cards.
My mother's dragging,... (Read full poem)

5. Where It Was At Back Then - written by Anne Sexton
Read 2442 times on American Poems.

Husband,
last night I dreamt
they cut off your hands and feet.
Husband,
you whispered to me,
Now we are both incomplete.

Husband,
I held all four
in my arms like sons and daughters.
Husband,
I bent slowly down
and washed them in magical... (Read full poem)

The gathering family
throws shadows around us,
it is the late afternoon
Of the family.

There is still enough light
to see all the way back,
but at the windows
that light is wasting away.

Soon we will be nothing
but silhouettes: the sons'
as... (Read full poem)

7. Walking The Marshland - written by Stephen Dunn
From Stephen Dunn -- New and Selected Poems 1974 - 1994. Read 844 times on American Poems.

It was no place for the faithless,
so I felt a little odd
walking the marshland with my daughters,

Canada geese all around and the blue 
herons just standing there;
safe, and the abundance of swans.

The girls liked saying the... (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)

9. Days - written by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read 10261 times on American Poems.

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds... (Read full poem)

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 
Muffled and dumb, like barefoot dervishes, 
And marching single in an endless file, 
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 
To each they offer gifts, after his will,-- 
Bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky that... (Read full poem)

11. Paralytic - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1963. Read 3131 times on American Poems.

It happens. Will it go on? ----
My mind a rock,
No fingers to grip, no tongue,
My god the iron lung

That loves me, pumps
My two
Dust bags in and out,
Will not

Let me relapse
While the day outside glides by like ticker tape.
The night brings... (Read full poem)

In January everything freezes.
We have two children. Both are she'ses.
This is our January rule:
One girl in bed, and one in school.

In February the blizzard whirls.
We own a pair of little girls.
Blessings upon of each the head ----
The one in... (Read full poem)

13. Heritage - written by Bill Knott
Read 1777 times on American Poems.

"...here thy generations endeth in accord."

I physically resemble my mother
And father and therefore must have been
Adopted, because on my TV screen
The role-children rarely share a feature
With either parent. The fact they're actors
And I'm not is... (Read full poem)

TO the garden, the world, anew ascending, 
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding, 
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being, 
Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber; 
The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, have... (Read full poem)

15. Questionnaire - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 1611 times on American Poems.

HAVE I told any man to be a liar for my sake?
Have I sold ice to the poor in summer and coal to the poor in winter for the sake of daughters who nursed brindle bull terriers and led with a leash their dogs clothed in plaid wool jackets?
Have I given... (Read full poem)

Doc Meyers said I had satyriasis,
And Doc Hill called it leucaemia --
But I know what brought me here:
I was sixty-four but strong as a man
Of thirty-five or forty.
And it wasn't writing a letter a day,
And it wasn't late hours seven nights... (Read full poem)

17. the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls - written by e.e. cummings
Read 10074 times on American Poems.

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church's protestant blessings
daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow,both dead,
are invariably... (Read full poem)

Come touch me baby in his waking dream
disordered Henry murmured. I'll read you Hegel
and that will hurt your mind
I can't remember when you were unkind
but I will clear that block, I'll set you on fire
along with our babies

to save them... (Read full poem)

19. Ode To Neptune - written by Phillis Wheatley
Read 903 times on American Poems.

On Mrs. W-----'s Voyage to England.

I.
WHILE raging tempests shake the shore,
While AElus' thunders round us roar,
And sweep impetuous o'er the plain
Be still, O tyrant of the main;
Nor let thy brow contracted frowns betray,
While my... (Read full poem)

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the... (Read full poem)

21. To A Small Boy Standing On My Shoes While I Am Wearing Them - written by Ogden Nash
Read 3454 times on American Poems.

Let's straighten this out, my little man,
And reach an agreement if we can.
I entered your door as an honored guest.
My shoes are shined and my trousers are pressed,
And I won't stretch out and read you the funnies
And I won't pretend that we're... (Read full poem)

Here! You sons of the men
Who fought with Washington at Valley Forge,
And whipped Black Hawk at Starved Rock,
Arise! Do battle with the descendants of those
Who bought land in the loop when it was waste sand,
And sold blankets and guns to the... (Read full poem)

23. Suicide Note - written by Anne Sexton
Read 20539 times on American Poems.

"You speak to me of narcissism but I reply that it is 
a matter of my life" - Artaud

"At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers 
to my daughters and their daughters" - Anonymous

Better, 
despite the worms talking to 
the mare's hoof... (Read full poem)

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the midnight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying,... (Read full poem)

25. Aaron Hatfield - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 715 times on American Poems.

Better than granite, Spoon River,
Is the memory-picture you keep of me
Standing before the pioneer men and women
There at Concord Church on Communion day.
Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth
Of Galilee who went to the city
And was... (Read full poem)