Advanced Poem Search

Submit Poem

Contests

Member Poems Poets

Famous Poems Poets Quotes

Fun

Member Area

Member Area
My Poems
My Profile
My Inboxes
My Outboxes
Submit Poem

Soup Social

The Wall
Chat Room
Soup Facebook Page
Poetry Forum
Events Calendar
Who is Online
Past Polls (Archives)

Member Poets/Poems

Premium Members For Life
Poets
Poets - New
Poets - by Country
Poets - Top 100 Poems
Poets - Top 100 Popular
Poets - Top 100 Contests
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poems
Poems - Best Poems
Poems - by Country
Poems - Hindi
Poems - Long Poems
Poems - New
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Poem Topics
Poems - Poetry
Poems - Random Poem
Poems - Read Poems
Poems - Search Poems
Poems - Short Poems
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Top 100 Recent
Poems - Unread
Poems - Urdu

Famous Poets/Poems

Famous Poets
Famous Poets - All
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Biographies
Famous Poets - Black
Famous Poets - by Country
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Popular
Famous Poets - Quotes
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poems
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Black
Famous Poems - Category
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Random
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100

Contests

Contests: by PoetrySoup
Contests: by Members
Contest Winners: Soup
Contest Winners: Member
Contest Status: Member

Lyrics

Lyrics
Lyrics - Search

Resources

About PoetrySoup
The Bible
Character Counter
Cliches in Poetry
Common English Words
Copyright Information
Dictionary
eBooks - Poetry
FAQs
Grammar
Haiku Syllable Counter
History of Poetry
Homonyms
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Love Poem Generator
Meter and Foot in Poetry
National Poetry Month
Poet Laureate
Poetics
Poetics of Aristotle
Poetry For Kids
Poetry
Poetry Definitions
Poetry Slam
Poetry Store
Poetry Out Loud
Prose
Publishing
Punctuation in Poetry
Quotes - Quotations
Resources - External
Resources - For Teachers
Rhyming Dictionary
Rhyme in Poetry
Spell Checker
Syllables
Syllable Counter
Syllable Rules
Teaching Prose and Poetry
Thesaurus
Videos: Poetry/Writing
What is Good Poetry?
What is Poetry?
Word Counter

Email Poem

From Email:
To Email:
Subject
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem	The West Village by then was changing; before long the rundown brownstones at its farthest edge would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived, impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of rubber trees, with three cats, a canary—refuse from whose cage kept sifting down and then germinating, a yearning seedling choir, around the saucers on the windowsill—and an inexorable cohort of roaches she was too nearsighted to deal with, though she knew they were there, and would speak of them, ruefully, as of an affliction that might once, long ago, have been prevented. Unclassifiable castoffs, misfits, marginal cases: when you're one yourself, or close to it, there's a reassurance in proving you haven't quite gone under by taking up with somebody odder than you are. Or trying to. "They're my friends," she'd say of her cats—Mollie, Mitzi and Caroline, their names were, and she was forever taking one or another in a cab to the vet—as though she had no others. The roommate who'd become a nun, the one who was Jewish, the couple she'd met on a foliage tour, one fall, were all people she no longer saw. She worked for a law firm, said all the judges were alcoholic, had never voted. But would sometimes have me to dinner—breaded veal, white wine, strawberry Bavarian—and sometimes, from what she didn't know she was saying, I'd snatch a shred or two of her threadbare history. Baltic cold. Being sent home in a troika when her feet went numb. In summer, carriage rides. A swarm of gypsy children driven off with whips. An octogenarian father, bishop of a dying schismatic sect. A very young mother who didn't want her. A half-brother she met just once. Cousins in Wisconsin, one of whom phoned her from a candy store, out of the blue, while she was living in Chicago. What had brought her there, or when, remained unclear. As did much else. We'd met in church. I noticed first a big, soaring soprano with a wobble in it, then the thickly wreathed and braided crimp in the mouse- gold coiffure. Old? Young? She was of no age. Through rimless lenses she looked out of a child's, or a doll's, globular blue. Wore Keds the year round, tended otherwise to overdress. Owned a mandolin. Once I got her to take it down from the mantel and plink out, through a warm fuddle of sauterne, a lot of giddy Italian airs from a songbook whose pages had started to crumble. The canary fluffed and quivered, and the cats, amazed, came out from under the couch and stared. What could the offspring of the schismatic age and a reluctant child bride expect from life? Not much. Less and less. A dream she'd had kept coming back, years after. She'd taken a job in Washington with some right-wing lobby, and lived in one of those bow-windowed mansions that turn into roominghouses, and her room there had a full-length mirror: oval, with a molding, is the way I picture it. In her dream something woke her, she got up to look, and there in the glass she'd had was covered over—she gave it a wondering emphasis—with gray veils. The West Village was changing. I was changing. The last time I asked her to dinner, she didn't show. Hours— or was it days?—later, she phoned to explain: she hadn't been able to find my block; a patrolman had steered her home. I spent my evenings canvassing for Gene McCarthy. Passing, I'd see her shades drawn, no light behind the rubber trees. She wasn't out, she didn't own a TV. She was in there, getting gently blotto. What came next, I wasn't brave enough to know. Only one day, passing, I saw new shades, quick-chic matchstick bamboo, going up where the waterstained old ones had been, and where the seedlings— O gray veils, gray veils—had risen and gone down.
	CAPTCHA Preview Type the characters you see in the picture