Russell Edson's Poems

The Goldilocks Compulsion
Sleep
Bread
Let Us Consider
Counting Sheep
Paying The Captain
The Fight
A Stone Is Nobody's
The Bridge
The Closet
The Position
The Changeling
The Lighted Window
The Ox
The Death Of A Fly
The Autopsy
The Man Rock
The Theory
The Gentlemen In The Meadow
The Road
The Sad Message
The Alfresco Moment
The Pattern
The Wounded Breakfast
The Father Of Toads
The Tree
The Melting
The Having To Love Something Else
Soup Song
The Rat's Tight Schedule
The Reason Why Closet-Man Is Never Sad
The Marionettes Distant Masters
Vomit
The Family Monkey
The Pilot
Grass
The Floor
Erasing Amyloo
The Toy-Maker
The Breast
The Philosophers
Conjugal
Mr. Brain
Angels
Elephant Dormitory
The Fall
Ape And Coffee
A Journey Through The Moonlight
A Historical Breakfast
You
Accidents
Hands
A Performance At Hog Theater
Antimatter
On The Eating Of Mice
Ape
One Lonely Afternoon

One Lonely Afternoon

One Lonely Afternoon
By Russell Edson

Since the fern can't go to the sink for a drink of
water, I graciously submit myself to the task, bringing two
glasses from the sink.
And so we sit, the fern and I, sipping water together.


Of course I'm more complex than a fern, full of deep
thoughts as I am. But I lay this aside for the easy company
of an afternoon friendship.

I don't mind sipping water with a fern, even though,
had I my druthers, I'd be speeding through the sky for
Stockholm, sipping a bloody mary with a wedge of lime.

And so we sit one lonely afternoon sipping water
together. The fern looking out of its fronds, and I, looking
out of mine . . . 

Ape

Ape
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 stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said
mother.

Why don't you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay
the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured
skull, the same singed fur; like someone who died horribly. These
aren't dinners, these are post-mortem dissections.

Try a piece of its gum, I've stuffed its mouth with bread,
said mother.

Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit. How can I bite into
its cheek with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father.

Break one of the ears off, they're so crispy, said mother.

I wish to hell you'd put underpants on these apes; even a
jockstrap, screamed father.

Father, how dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything
more thn simple meat, screamed mother.

Well what's with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates?
screamed father.

Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature?
That I would submit my female opening to this brute? That after
we had love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven, after
breaking his head with a frying pan; and then serve him to my husband,
that my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity . . . ?

I'm just saying that I'm damn sick of ape every night,
cried father. 

On The Eating Of Mice

On The Eating Of Mice
By Russell Edson

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 . . . 

Antimatter

Antimatter
By Russell Edson

On the other side of a mirror there's an inverse world, 
where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the 
earth and recede to the first slime of love.

And in the evening the sun is just rising.

Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon 
childhood robs them of their pleasure.

In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, 
is joy. 

A Performance At Hog Theater

A Performance At Hog Theater
By Russell Edson

There was once a hog theater where hogs performed 
as men, had men been hogs.

One hog said, I will be a hog in a field which has 
found a mouse which is being eaten by the same hog 
which is in the field and which has found the mouse, 
which I am performing as my contribution to the 
performer's art.

Oh let's just be hogs, cried an old hog.

And so the hogs streamed out of the theater crying, 
only hogs, only 

hogs . . . 

Hands

Hands
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 even he was gone. 

Looked for the road and even that . . . 

Accidents

Accidents
By Russell Edson

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 . . . 

You

You
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 of 
arm on windowsill, cheek on this; elbows on knees, face in 
the hands; sometimes the head thrown back, eyes staring into 
the ceiling . . . This into nothing down the long day's arc . . . 

A Historical Breakfast

A Historical Breakfast
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 have fallen on him to be 
so historical. Others probably just don't have it, 
he thinks, it is, after all, a talent.
He thinks one of his shoelaces needs tying. Oh well, 
another important historical event is about to take 
place. He just can't help it. Perhaps he's taking up 
too large an area of history? But he has to live, hasn't 
he? Toast needs buttering and he can't go around with 
one of his shoelaces needing to be tied, can he?
Certainly it's true, when the 20th century gets written 
in full it will be mainly about him. That's the way the 
cookie crumbles--ah, there's a phrase that'll be quoted 
for centuries to come.
Self-conscious? A little; how can one help it with all 
those yet-to-be-born eyes of the future watching him?
Uh oh, he feels another historical event coming . . . 
Ah, there it is, a cup of coffee approaching his face at 
the end of his arm. If only they could catch it on film, 
how much it would mean to the future. Oops, spilled it all 
over his lap. One of those historical accidents that will 
influence the next thousand years; unpredictable, and 
really rather uncomfortable . . . But history is never easy, 
he thinks . . .