Russell Edson Poems

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.
...

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,
...

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.
...

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.
...

There was a man who didn't know how to sleep; nodding
off every night into a drab, unprofessional sleep. Sleep that
he'd grown so tired of sleeping.
He tried reading The Manual of Sleep, but it just put him
...

A man is fighting with a cup of coffee. The rules: he must not
break the cup nor spill its coffee; nor must the cup break the
man's bones or spill his blood.
...

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.
...

Some coffee had gotten on a man's ape. The man said,
animal did you get on my coffee?

No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me.
...

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
...

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
...