Famous Laundry Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Laundry poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous laundry poems. These examples illustrate what a famous laundry poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Murray, Les
...and dry iron of this seaboard.
In jellied glare, through the nettle-rash season
we've watched the sky's fermenting laundry
portend downpours. Some came, and steamed away,
and we were clutched back into the rancid
saline midnights of orifice weather,
to damp grittiness and wiping off the air.
Metaphors slump irritably together in
the muggy weeks. Shark and jellyfish shallows
become suburbs where you breathe a fat towel;
babies burst like tomatoes with discom...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...r>
The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.<...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...e
Coal barges as they snaked beneath the bridge
In black tarpaulin shrouds and clouds of steam
Hissed from Easy Road Laundry, the breaths of a
Monster, half man, half machine, the terrifying
Figures in a dream and on the Empire’s stage
I saw Doctor Wonder’s Mechanical Robot raise
An axe and chop in half his master and the two
Halves haunted me always, their fusion and
Diffusion some terrible portent to meet me
In darkness and in dreams.
3
Luck, where did...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...self, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I'm not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...s so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead....Read more of this...
by
Brodsky, Joseph
...row more blond, the skin gains its distant, lordly
white, while the bedding already coils
desperately in the basement laundry.
...Read more of this...
by
Simic, Charles
...How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the...Read more of this...
by
Mueller, Lisel
...stance
to divert you from the two
boarded-up chambers
where someone has died.
V. Washing Day
Each year her laundry line gets lighter.
One by one they disappear,
ten little Indians. They take their socks,
their jeans, their stiff plaid shirts.
Above the Ford on its concrete blocks,
striped and zippered,
her cotton dress flutters on and on....Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...Homage Kenneth Koch
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sp...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...ng cliffs of water
Or late at night
Sweet under the differently-swung stars,
When the chance sight
Of a girl doing her laundry in the steerage
Ramifies endlessly.
This is being young,
Assumption of the startled century
Like new store clothes,
The huge decisions printed out by feet
Inventing where they tread,
The random windows conjuring a street....Read more of this...
by
Amichai, Yehuda
...On a roof in the Old City
Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
The towel of a man who is my enemy,
To wipe off the sweat of his brow.
In the sky of the Old City
A kite.
At the other end of the string,
A child
I can't see
Because of the wall.
We have put up many flags,
They have put up many flags.
To make us thin...Read more of this...
by
Wilbur, Richard
...is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every
blessed day,
And cries,
"Oh, let there be nothing on
earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising
steam
And clear dances done in the sight of
heaven."
Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks
and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter
love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns
and rises,
"Bring them down from their ruddy
gallows;
...Read more of this...
by
Piercy, Marge
...ss by untouched?
Nothing you got, Nun said the dreydl
as the room stopped spinning.
The angel folded you up like laundry
your body thin as an empty dress.
Your clothes were curtains
hanging on the window of what had
been your flesh and now was glass.
Outside in Florida shopping plazas
loudspeakers blared Christmas carols
and palm trees were decked with blinking
lights. Except by the tourist
hotels, the beaches were empty.
Pelicans with pregn...Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ard has a
very long front window filled with signs and merchandise.
There was a sign in the window advertising a laundry
marking machine for $65. 00. The original cost of the mach-
ine was $175. 00. Quite a saving.
There was another sign advertising new and used two and
three ton hoists. I wondered how many hoists it would take
to move a trout stream.
There was another sign that said:
THE FAMILY GIFT CENTER,
GIFT SUGGESTION...Read more of this...
by
Pollitt, Katha
...fee and cigarettes in a clean cafe,
forsythia lit like a damp match against
a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone,
the laundry cool and crisp and folded away
again in the lavender closet-too late to find
comfort enough in such small daily moments
of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine
people would rather be happy than suffering
and inflicting suffering. We're near the end,
but O before the end, as the sparrows wing
each night to their secret nests in the elm's g...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...neighbours said) a national disgrace.
And sure enough that animal was eminently famous
For masticating every rag of laundry round the place.
For shirts to skirts prodigiously it proved its powers of chewing;
The question of digestion seemed to matter not at all;
But you'll agree, I think with me, its limit of misdoing
Was reached the day it swallowed Missis Rooney's ould red shawl.
Now Missis Annie Rooney was a winsome widow women,
And many a bouncing boy had sou...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...he toilet
it is my other who sits in a ball and cries.
My other beats a tin drum in my heart.
My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep.
My other cries and cries and cries
when I put on a cocktail dress.
It cries when I prick a potato.
It cries when I kiss someone hello.
It cries and cries and cries
until I put on a painted mask
and leer at Jesus in His passion.
Then it giggles.
It is a thumbscrew.
Its hatred makes it clairvoyant.
I c...Read more of this...
by
Villani, Luisa
...e
and the arms that are missing come to me
Yes, it's a song, one I don't quite comprehend
although I do understand the laundry.
White ash and rain water, a method
my aunt taught me, but I'll never know
how she learned it in Brooklyn. Her mind
has gone to seed, blown by a stroke,
and that dandelion puff called memory
has flown far from her eyes. Some things remain.
Procedures. Methods. If you burn
a fire all day, feeding it snapped
branches and ne...Read more of this...
by
Duhamel, Denise
...thusiastically enough
for you to realize I mean no.
You can imagine the confusion
surrounding our movie dates, the laundry,
who will take out the garbage
and when. I remind him
I'm an American, that all has yeses sound alike to me.
I tell him here in America we have shrinks
who can help him to be less of a people-pleaser.
We have two-year-olds who love to scream "No!"
when they don't get their way. I tell him,
in America we have a popular book,
When...Read more of this...
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