Russell Edson Poems
A collection of select Russell Edson famous poems that were written by Russell Edson or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.
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by
Russell Edson
A man is a rock in a garden of chairs and waits
for a longtime to be over.
It is easier for a rock in a garden than a man
inside his mother. He decided to be a rock when
he got outside.
A rock asks only what is a rock.
A rock waits to be a rock.
A...Read more of this...
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 rust that was once a penknife, a
grave...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
They let me in. I went right up to the nursery
and climbed into the crib, and assumed the famous
fetal position.
They didn't know what to make of it. They stood
by the crib looking down at me.
They were young. This was their house. Instead
of an infant, a grown man is in the nursery.
Of course they hadn't planned...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
You haven't finished your ape, said mother to father,
who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.
I've had enough monkey, cried father.
You didn't eat the hands, and I went to all the
trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.
I'll just nibble on its forehead, and then I've had enough,
said father.
I...Read more of this...
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 they have any sense of scale....Read more of this...
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 of
history is being made.
He wonders why it should...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
The big one went to sleep as to die and dreamed he
became a tiny one. So tiny as to have lost all substance. To have
become as theoretical as a point.
Then someone said, get up, big one, you're not doing
yourself any good. You puddle and stagnate in your weight.
Best to be up and toward. It irrigates you.
...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon,
squealing and grinding forward on small wheels,
even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda
is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost
the size of the night . . .
He looks up and sees a huge shoe
ponderously mounting out of the earth.
Up in...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
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...Read more of this...
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 was fooling I am not a tree and he...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
I think, therefore I am, said a man whose mother quickly
hit him on the head, saying, I hit my son on the head,
therefore I am.
No no, you've got it all wrong, cried the man.
So she hit him on the head again and cried, therefore I am.
You're not, not that way; you're supposed to think,...Read more of this...
by
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.
What about all her lovely things? asks his wife.
I'll erase them too.
All her pretty clothes? . . .
I'll erase her closet, her dresser--shut up...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
A lighted window floats through the night
like a piece of paper in the wind.
I want to see into it. I want to climb
through into its lighted room.
As I reach for it it slips through the
trees. As I chase it it rolls and tumbles
into the air and skitters on through the
night . ....Read more of this...
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
to do more with his life than he might have.
But what is there for...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
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 . . .
Why do you have such a strange house?
I am...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which is simply a path leading through an archway called adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth. Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you. And it is here the future lives in the several postures...Read more of this...
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 the family always planned on a steam monkey.
Well, said...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
Some gentlemen are floating in the meadow over
the yellow grass.
They seem to hover by those wonderful blue
little flowers that grow there by those rocks.
Perhaps they have floated up from that nearby
graveyard?
They drift a little when the wind blows.
Butterflies flutter through them . . ....Read more of this...
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 to another
elephant also tucked up under a crazy quilt.
...Read more of this...
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 sleep.
And then he looked for himself and...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
They have grafted pieces of an ape with a dog. . .
Then, what they have, wants to live in a tree.
No, it wants to lift its leg and piss on the tree. . ....Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner.
Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the
rest of his life.
His mother asked why.
He said, because it's held captive, because it is
captured.
Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know
whether it's in a garden or not. Eternity and...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
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...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
A man stumbled on some rat droppings.
Hey, who put those there? That's dangerous, he said.
His wife said, those are pieces of a rat.
Wait, he's coming apart, he's all over the floor, said the
husband.
He can't help it; you don't think he wants to drop pieces of
himself all over the floor, do you? said the wife.
But...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
One night a woman's breast came to a man's room and
began to talk about her twin sister.
Her twin sister this and her twin sister that.
Finally the man said, but what about you, dear breast?
And so the breast spent the rest of the night talking about
herself.
It was the same as when she talked about her sister:...Read more of this...