Best Famous Russell Edson Poems
Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Russell Edson poems. This is a select list of the best famous Russell Edson poetry by classical and contemporary poets. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Russell Edson poetry is a great pasttime. These top poems are the best examples of Russell Edson poems written by famous poets
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Grass
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 rust that was once a penknife, a
grave marker. . . All hidden in the grass at the
scalp of the window . . .
In a cellar under the grass an old man sits in a
rocking chair, rocking to and fro. In his arms he
holds an infant, the infant body of himself. And
he rocks to and fro under the grass in the
dark . . .
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The Pattern
A women had given birth to an old man.
He cried to have again been caught in the pattern.
Oh well, he sighed as he took her breast to his mouth.
The woman is happy to have her baby, even if it is old.
Probably it got mislaid in the baby place, and when they
found it and saw that it was a little too ripe, they said,
well, it is good enough for this woman who is almost
deserving of nothing.
She wonders if she is the only mother with a baby old
enough to be her father.
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Angels
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
to do more with his life than he might have.
But what is there for a man to do with his life?
. . . They burn beautifully with a blue flame.
When they cry out it is like the screech of a tiny hinge;
the cry of a bat. No one hears it . . .
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The Father Of Toads
A man had just delivered a toad from his wife's armpit. He
held it by its legs and spanked it.
Do you love it? said his wife.
It's our child, isn't it?
Does that mean you can't love it? she said.
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.
Do you mean you would not like to call it George Jr.?
she said.
But we've already called the other toad that, he said.
Well, perhaps we could call the other one George Sr.,
she said.
But I am George Sr., he said.
Well, perhaps if you hid in the attic, so that no one needed
to call you anything, there would be no difficulty in calling
both of them George, she said.
Yes, if no one talks to me, then what need have I for a name?
he said.
No, no one will talk to you for the rest of your life. And
when we bury you we shall put Father of Toads on your
tombstone.
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On The Eating Of Mice
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 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 . . .
Twenty years of this, eating their way through the
mice . . . And yet, not to forget, each night, one less vermin
in the world . . .
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The Family Monkey
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 the family always planned on a steam monkey.
Well, said the monkey merchant, just as the wind-up monkey
gave way to the steam monkey, the steam monkey has given way
to the gas and electric monkeys.
Is that like the grandfather clock being replaced by the
grandchild clock?
Sort of, said the monkey merchant.
So we bought the electric monkey, and plugged its umbilical
cord into the wall.
The smoke coming out of its fur told us something was wrong.
We had electrocuted the family monkey.
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The Pilot
Up in a dirty window in a dark room is a star
which an old man can see. He looks at it. He can
see it. It is the star of the room; an electrical
freckle that has fallen out of his head and gotten
stuck in the dirt on the window.
He thinks he can steer by that star. He thinks he
can use the back of a chair as a ship's wheel to
pilot his room through the night.
He says to himself, brave Captain, are you afraid?
Yes, I am afraid; I am not so brave.
Be brave, my Captain.
And all night the old man steers his room through
the dark . . .
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Mr. Brain
Mr Brain was a hermit dwarf who liked to eat shellfish off
the moon. He liked to go into a tree then because there is a
little height to see a little further, which may reveal now the
stone, a pebble--it is a twig, it is nothing under the moon that
you can make sure of.
So Mr Brain opened his mouth to let a moonbeam into his head.
Why to be alone, and you invite the stars to tea. A cup of
tea drinks a luminous guest.
In the winter could you sit quietly by the window, in the
evening when you could have vinegar and pretend it to be
wine, because you would do well to eat doughnuts and
pretend you drink wine as you sit quietly by the window. You
may kick your leg back and forth. You may have a tendency
to not want to look there too long and turn to find darkness in
the room because it had become nighttime.
Why to be alone. You are pretty are you not/you are as
pretty as you are not, or does that make sense.
You are not pretty, that is how you can be alone. And
then you are pretty like fungus and alga, you are no one
without some one, in theory alone.
Be good enough to go to bed so you can not think too
much longer.
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Elephant Dormitory
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 to another
elephant also tucked up under a crazy quilt.
I was just in the gray wrinkles of my sleep, sighed the other
elephant.
But I can't sleep without my tail, said the first elephant, I
like it stuck just above my anus; I feel more secure that way,
that it holds my anus from drifting out to heaven.
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Accidents
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 tried putting a wick in it to burn out the wax, thus to find my
way to music. But lighting it I put my whole head on fire. It
even spread to my groin and underarms and to a nearby
forest. I felt like a saint. Someone thought I was a genius.
That's comforting, says the barber, still, I can't send you
home with only one ear. I'll have to remove the other one. But
don't worry, it'll be an accident.
Symmetry demands it. But make sure it's an accident, I
don't want you cutting me up on purpose.
Maybe I'll just slit your throat.
But it has to be an accident . . .
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