All Poems

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The Autopsy

© 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?

Montenegro

© Robert Laurence Binyon

Coiled in shadow, the serpent seas
Engirdle perilous hills sublime:
By tortuous, steep degrees
Toward the morn I climb.

The Reason Why The Closet-Man Is Never Sad

This is the house of the closet-man. There are no rooms,
just hallways and closets.
Things happen in rooms. He does not like things to
happen . . . Closets, you take things out of closets,
you put things into closets, and nothing happens . . .

Light Lover

© Aline Murray Kilmer

WHY don't you go back to the sea, my dear?

I am not one who would hold you;

The Position

© Russell Edson

They let me in. I went right up to the nursery
and climbed into the crib, and assumed the famous
fetal position.

The Colossi Of The Plain

© Mathilde Blind

Ah, once below you through the glittering plain
Stretched avenues of Sphinxes to the Nile;
And, flanked with towers, each consecrated fane
Enshrined its god. The broken gods lie prone
In roofless halls, their hallowed terrors gone,
Helpless beneath Heaven's penetrating smile.

The Floor

© Russell Edson

The floor is something we must fight against.
Whilst seemingly mere platform for the human
stance, it is that place that men fall to.
I am not dizzy. I stand as a tower, a lighthouse;
the pale ray of my sentiency flowing from my face.

Madge Linsey, Or The Three Souls

© Dora Sigerson Shorter

Then by Madge Linsey's side knelt he a little while,
"So of our wilful sins pay we the toll.
Even as she were I, had I but followed her.
But the Lord succoured me saving my soul."

The Marionettes Of Distant Masters

© Russell Edson

Then another butterfly begins to annoy the first butterfly.
He again wonders if he shouldn't call the police.
But, perhaps they are marionette-butterflies? He thinks
they are, belonging to rival masters seeing whose butterfly can
annoy the other's the most.

Brittle Bones

© Robert Graves

Though I am an old man

With my bones very brittle,

Conjugal

© Russell Edson

A man is bending his wife. He is bending her
around something that she has bent herself
around. She is around it, bent as he has bent
her.

Erasing Amyloo

© Russell Edson

A father with a huge eraser erases his daughter. When he
finishes there's only a red smudge on the wall.
His wife says, where is Amyloo?
She's a mistake, I erased her.

Tea At The Palaz Of Hoon

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

The Father Of Toads

It's hard enough to love a toad, but when it turns out to be
your own son then revulsion is without any tender inhibition,
he said.

On The Eating Of Mice

Twenty years of this: curried mouse, garlic and butter
mouse, mouse sauteed in its own fur, Salisbury mouse,
mouse-in-the-trap, baked in the very trap that killed it,
mouse tartare, mouse poached in menstrual blood at the full
of the moon . . .