The Death Of A Fly by Russell Edson
The Death Of A Fly by Russell Edson There was once a man who disguised himself as a housefly and went about the neighborhood depositing flyspecks. Well, he has to do something hasn’t he? said someone to someone else. Of course, said someone else back to someone. Then what’s all the fuss? said someone to […]
The Changeling by Russell Edson
The Changeling by Russell Edson A man had a son who was an anvil. And then sometimes he was an automobile tire. I do wish you would sit still, said the father. Sometimes his son was a rock. I realize that you have quite lost boundary, where no excess seems excessive, nor to where poverty […]
The Autopsy by Russell Edson
The Autopsy by Russell Edson In a back room a man is performing an autopsy on an old raincoat. His wife appears in the doorway with a candle and asks, how does it go? Not now, not now, I’m just getting to the lining, he murmurs with impatience. I just wanted to know if you […]
The Alfresco Moment by Russell Edson
The Alfresco Moment by Russell Edson A butler asks, will Madam be having her morning coffee alfresco? If you would be so good as to lift me out of my bed to the veranda I would be more than willing to imbibe coffee alfresco. Shall I ask the Master to join you for coffee alfresco, […]
A Performance At Hog Theater by Russell Edson
A Performance At Hog Theater by Russell Edson There was once a hog theater where hogs performed as men, had men been hogs. One hog said, I will be a hog in a field which has found a mouse which is being eaten by the same hog which is in the field and which has […]
On The Eating Of Mice by Russell Edson
On The Eating Of Mice by Russell Edson A woman prepared a mouse for her husband’s dinner, roasting it with a blueberry in its mouth. At table he uses a dentist’s pick and a surgeon’s scalpel, bending over the tiny roastling with a jeweler’s loupe . . . Twenty years of this: curried mouse, garlic […]
The Closet by Russell Edson
The Closet by Russell Edson Here I am with my mother, hanging under the molt of years, in a garden of umbrellas and rubber boots, together always in the vague perfume of her coat. See how the fedoras along the shelf are the several skulls of my father, in this catacomb of my family. ————— […]
Soup Song by Russell Edson
Soup Song by Russell Edson How I make my soup: I draw water from a tap . . . I am not an artist. And the water is not so much drawn as allowed to fall, and to capture itself in a pot. Perhaps not so much captured, as allowed to gather itself from its […]
The Bridge by Russell Edson
The Bridge by Russell Edson In his travels he comes to a bridge made entirely of bones. Before crossing he writes a letter to his mother: Dear mother, guess what? the ape accidentally bit off one of his hands while eating a banana. Just now I am at the foot of a bone bridge. I […]
One Lonely Afternoon by Russell Edson
One Lonely Afternoon by Russell Edson Since the fern can’t go to the sink for a drink of water, I graciously submit myself to the task, bringing two glasses from the sink. And so we sit, the fern and I, sipping water together. Of course I’m more complex than a fern, full of deep thoughts […]
Ape And Coffee by Russell Edson
Ape And Coffee by Russell Edson Some coffee had gotten on a man’s ape. The man said, animal did you get on my coffee? No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me. You’re sure you didn’t spill on my coffee? said the man. Do I look like a liquid? peeped the ape. Well […]
Accidents by Russell Edson
Accidents by Russell Edson The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair. Oops, says the barber, but it musn’t’ve been a very good ear, it came off with very little complaint. It wasn’t, says the customer, it was always overly waxed. I […]
A Journey Through The Moonlight by Russell Edson
A Journey Through The Moonlight by Russell Edson In sleep when an old man’s body is no longer aware of his boundaries, and lies flattened by gravity like a mere of wax in its bed . . . It drips down to the floor and moves there like a tear down a cheek . . […]
Counting Sheep by Russell Edson
Counting Sheep by Russell Edson A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture for them. They are like grains of rice. He wonders if it is possible to shrink something out of existence. He wonders if the sheep are aware of their tininess, if […]
Sleep by Russell Edson
Sleep by Russell Edson There was a man who didn’t know how to sleep; nodding off every night into a drab, unprofessional sleep. Sleep that he’d grown so tired of sleeping. He tried reading The Manual of Sleep, but it just put him to sleep. That same old sleep that he had grown so tired […]
Paying The Captain by Russell Edson
Paying The Captain by Russell Edson We get on a boat, never mind if it sinks, we pay the captain by throwing him overboard. And when he gets back onboard we say, captain, please don’t be angry. And he forgives us this time. And so we throw him overboard again just to make sure we […]
Grass by Russell Edson
Grass by Russell Edson The living room is overgrown with grass. It has come up around the furniture. It stretches through the dining room, past the swinging door into the kitchen. It extends for miles and miles into the walls . . . There’s treasure in grass, things dropped or put there; a stick of […]
Angels by Russell Edson
Angels by Russell Edson They have little use. They are best as objects of torment. No government cares what you do with them. Like birds, and yet so human . . . They mate by briefly looking at the other. Their eggs are like white jellybeans. Sometimes they have been said to inspire a man […]
Hands by Russell Edson
Hands by Russell Edson There was a road that leads him to go to find a certain time where he sits. Smokes quietly in the evening by the four legged table wagging its (well why not) tail, friendly chap. Hears footsteps, looks to find his own feet gone. The road absorbs everything with rumors of […]
The Fall by Russell Edson
The Fall by Russell Edson There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree. To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living room as your roots may ruin the carpet. He said I […]
The Family Monkey by Russell Edson
The Family Monkey by Russell Edson We bought an electric monkey, experimenting rather recklessly with funds carefully gathered since grandfather’s time for the purchase of a steam monkey. We had either, by this time, the choice of an electric or gas monkey. The steam monkey is no longer being made, said the monkey merchant. But […]
Elephant Dormitory by Russell Edson
Elephant Dormitory by Russell Edson An elephant went to bed and pulled a crazy quilt up under its tusks. But just as the great gray head began filling with the gray wrinkles of sleep it was awakened by the thud of its tail falling out of bed. Would you get my tail? said the elephant […]
A Historical Breakfast by Russell Edson
A Historical Breakfast by Russell Edson A man is bringing a cup of coffee to his face, tilting it to his mouth. It’s historical, he thinks. He scratches his head: another historical event. He really ought to rest, he’s making an awful lot of history this morning. Oh my, now he’s buttering toast, another piece […]
The Space Heater by Sharon Olds
The Space Heater by Sharon Olds 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 of a fire’s heat, […]
The Pact by Sharon Olds
The Pact by Sharon Olds We played dolls in that house where Father staggered with the Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her one ounce of cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to kill herself. We kneeled over the rubber bodies, gave them baths carefully, scrubbed their little orange hands, wrapped them […]
The Mortal One by Sharon Olds
The Mortal One by Sharon Olds Three months after he lies dead, that long yellow narrow body, not like Christ but like one of his saints, the naked ones in the paintings whose bodies are done in gilt, all knees and raw ribs, the ones who died of nettles, bile, the one who died roasted […]
The End by Sharon Olds
The End by Sharon Olds We decided to have the abortion, became killers together. The period that came changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple who had been for life. As we talked of it in bed, the crash was not a surprise. We went to the window, looked at the crushed cars and […]
The Borders by Sharon Olds
The Borders by Sharon Olds To say that she came into me, from another world, is not true. Nothing comes into the universe and nothing leaves it. My mother—I mean my daughter did not enter me. She began to exist inside me—she appeared within me. And my mother did not enter me. When she lay […]
Primitive by Sharon Olds
Primitive by Sharon Olds I have heard about the civilized, the marriages run on talk, elegant and honest, rational. But you and I are savages. You come in with a bag, hold it out to me in silence. I know Moo Shu Pork when I smell it and understand the message: I have pleased you […]
1954 by Sharon Olds
1954 by Sharon Olds Then dirt scared me, because of the dirt he had put on her face. And her training bra scared me—the newspapers, morning and evening, kept saying it, training bra, as if the cups of it had been calling the breasts up—he buried her in it, perhaps he had never bothered to […]
Winter by Shaunna Harper
She does not thaw in summer, her iced skeleton a visceral display of sapphire veins and pulses bolting in shock to the outskirts of her shores, splayed like a victim. She is perpetual frost, crying sharp diamond tears that leave chips across hard flesh like braille, like fallen teeth from a corpse; the sun bores […]
Twilight by Shaunna Harper
A prayer lifts itself from my mouth between tight teeth and soft lips, grows wings, leaves like a moth by the window trying to find the moon, sings, as the moist earth cools below. As always, twilight has come too soon. Lifted by light like a Chinese lantern, I watch the night sink, its star […]
The Other Half by Shaunna Harper
The Other Half by Shaunna Harper Your lips are still on my lipstick. Your eyes are still on my eyeshadow brush. You’re still wearing my favourite shirt; go on, keep it, if you must. The bags you unpacked are under your eyes; see that drawing? It’s tattooed on your skin. All those lies I heard […]
River by Shaunna Harper
River by Shaunna Harper You can’t tell a river which way to run. Trees flank his cerulean depths like soldiers, armed with sticks and leaves, ever-reaching, seizing, only to be swept aside. A river has no place to hide. He is never the same when he comes back; a little older, a little darker, carrying […]
Passing by Shaunna Harper
They’ve strung up your face on canvas carved in glass across the city’s overpass. Your eyes are bulging mole-hills. Your hair is sprouting grass. In the backdrop of a cheap shop’s parking lot, a broken sign curls around your head like a halo; when winter comes you will sparkle with snow. Each fractured letter blinks […]
Book Leaf by Shaunna Harper
They tread between lines, hanging metaphors like rope, veined toes curled around loops like branches. They reach from depths to skies, scatter each other here and there like soft blessings, seeping like ink into paper. They press between pages like insects, intricate, frail, anorexic outbursts in perpetual shock. They dance off-beat like drunkards, ignorant of […]
Workin’ It Out by Shel Silverstein
Well I’ve been spendin’ my life lookin’ for a shoulder To rest my head when the nights get colder But the days are gettin’ longer and I’m gettin’ older Been long time workin’ it out I been a long time workin’ it out I been a long time workin’ it out I been a long […]
Who’s Taller? by Shel Silverstein
Depends on if the judge is fair, Depends how high the heels you wear, Depends on if they count the hair, Depends if they allow the chair. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry […]
Who does she think she is…. by Shel Silverstein
I asked the Zebra: Are you black with white stripes? Or white with black stripes? And the zebra asked me: Are you good with bad habits? Or are you bad with good habits? Are you noisy with quiet times? Or are you quiet with noisy times? Are you happy with some sad days? Or are […]
Tryin’ On Clothes by Shel Silverstein
I tried on the farmer’s hat, Didn’t fit… A little too small – just a bit Too floppy. Couldn’t get used to it, Took it off. I tried on the dancer’s shoes, A little too loose. Not the kind you could use for walkin’. Didn’t feel right in ’em, Kicked ’em off. I tried on […]