1. Carlos - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 602 times on American Poems.

Last night I knelt low at my lady’s feet.
One soft, caressing hand played with my hair, 
And one I kissed and fondled. Kneeling there, 
I deemed my meed of happiness complete.

She was so fair, so full of witching wiles –
Of fascinating tricks... (Read full poem)

Why is the world at peace.
This may astonish you a little but when you realise how
easily Mrs. Charles Bianco sells the work of American
painters to American millionaires you will recognize that
authorities are constrained to be relieved.  Let me... (Read full poem)

3. Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams - written by Kenneth Koch
Read 1682 times on American Poems.

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

     	2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with... (Read full poem)

Wisteria, hysteria is as obvious a rhyme
as Viagra and Niagara there must be a reason
honeymooners traditionally went to the Falls
which were, said the divine Oscar,
an American bride's second biggest disappointment
tell me which do you like... (Read full poem)

5. Returned To Say - written by William Stafford
From Contemporary American Poetry. Read 1951 times on American Poems.

When I face north a lost Cree
on some new shore puts a moccasin down,
rock in the light and noon for seeing,
he in a hurry and I beside him

It will be a long trip; he will be a new chief;
we have drunk new water from an unnamed stream;
under little... (Read full poem)

The beautiful American word, Sure,
As I have come into a room, and touch
The lamp's button, and the light blooms with such
Certainty where the darkness loomed before,

As I care for what I do not know, and care
Knowing for little she might not have... (Read full poem)

7. Sympathy - written by Eileen Myles
From American Poetry Review and Best American Poetry 2002. Read 1116 times on American Poems.

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)

The Story of White Man Leading Viet Cong Patrol
     -AP Dispatch, Des Moines Register, August 4, 1968

The slain enemy resembled 
an American Marine
who was 18 years old
when he disappeared.

The violent episode
was one of the strangest
in this... (Read full poem)

9. The Story Of White Man Leading Viet Cong Patrol - written by Eric Torgersen
From Quickly Aging Here: Some Poets of the 1970s; Doubleday Anchor Books, 1969. Published in 1969. Read 833 times on American Poems.

The Story of White Man Leading Viet Cong Patrol
     -AP Dispatch, Des Moines Register, August 4, 1968

The slain enemy resembled 
an American Marine
who was 18 years old
when he disappeared.

The violent episode
was one of the strangest
in this... (Read full poem)

He finds on cheap match covers.
PLEASE MAKE ME 
TASTE LIKE A MAN
is the first one he reads after lighting up
an American Spirit cigarette on the corner
of Broadway and Houston. The painted Statue
of Liberty on the giant DKNY ad on the side
of... (Read full poem)

11. The End Of Your Life - written by Philip Levine
Read 773 times on American Poems.

First light. This misted field 
    is the world, that man 
        slipping the greased bolt 

back and forth, that man 
    tunneled with blood 
        the dark smudges of whose eyes 

call for sleep, calls 
    for quiet, and the woman... (Read full poem)

I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. 
But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. 
And I hunger. 

I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. 
I have been in the fields all day. My throat is... (Read full poem)

13. Bird Nesting - written by Ellis Parker Butler
From American Magazine. Published in 1906. Read 687 times on American Poems.

O wonderful! In sport we climbed the tree,
Eager and laughing, as in all our play,
To see the eggs where, in the nest, they lay,
But silent fell before the mystery.

For, one brief moment there, we understood
By sudden sympathy too fine for... (Read full poem)

There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.

"Shall I have naught that is fair?" saith he;
"Have naught but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of... (Read full poem)

15. Song of Thyrsis - written by Philip Freneau
From The Little Book of American Poets: 1787-1900. Published in 1915. Read 2293 times on American Poems.

THE turtle on yon withered bough,
That lately mourned her murdered mate,
Has found another comrade now--
Such changes all await!
Again her drooping plume is drest,
Again she's willing to be blest
And takes her lover to her nest.

If nature... (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)

17. The Irish Riviera - written by Terence Winch
From Irish Musicians/American Friends. Published in 1985. Read 761 times on American Poems.

I wish I could remember the names
of these two old guys I used to see
when I was a kid and spent my summers
in Rockaway which was known as The Irish Riviera
one of them played the fiddle the other played
the accordion and I think one of them... (Read full poem)

Once upon a time I was sitting outside the cafe
watching twilight in Umbria when a girl came
out of the bakery with the bread her mother wanted.
She did not know what to do. Already bewildered
by being thirteen and just that summer a woman,
she now... (Read full poem)

19. The Water Nymphs - written by Ellis Parker Butler
From American Magazine. Published in 1905. Read 353 times on American Poems.

They hide in the brook when I seek to draw nearer,
  Laughing amain when I feign to depart;
Often I hear them, now faint and now clearer—
  Innocent bold or so sweetly discreet.
Are they Nymphs of the Stream at their playing
  Or but the brook... (Read full poem)

Swimming the English Channel,
struggling to make it to Calais,
I swam into Laura halfway across.
My body oiled for warmth,
black rubber cap on my head,
eyes hidden behind goggles,
I was exhausted, ready to drown,
when I saw her coming toward... (Read full poem)

21. A Promise to California. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 2841 times on American Poems.

A PROMISE to California, 
Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon: 
Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust
    American
	love;
	
For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you,... (Read full poem)

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt  grandchild sliding
on off... (Read full poem)

23. 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)

BEHOLD this swarthy face—these gray eyes, 
This beard—the white wool, unclipt upon my neck, 
My brown hands, and the silent manner of me, without charm; 
Yet comes one, a Manhattanese, and ever at parting, kisses me lightly on the lips... (Read full poem)

25. For A Depressed Woman - written by James A. Emanuel
From Whole Grain: Collected Poems, 1958-1989. Published in 1991. Read 3384 times on American Poems.

I
My friends do not know.
But what could my friends not know?
About what? What friends?

II
She sleeps late each day,
stifling each reason to rise,
choked into the quilt.

III
"I'll never find work."
She swallows this thought with pills,
finds tears... (Read full poem)