Category

Dramatic Monologue

Showing 1-20 of 193 results
  • Poem
    By David Roderick
    I wear a flower in my lapel.
    I like the sweetness of its lie in my nose.
    A carnation, the fool’s flower,

    its heart a wilting empire.
    In late-night editing sessions,
    I imagine I’m planting flowers

    in the sockets of eyes. Whatever helps
    me reach our rigor...
  • Poem
    By Lorine Niedecker
    Nothing worth noting
    except an Andromeda
    with quadrangular shoots—
                the boots
    of the people

    wet inside: they must swim
    to church thru the floods
    or be taxed—the blossoms
                from the bosoms
    of the leaves


    *


    Fog-thick morning—
    I see only
    where I now walk. I carry
                my clarity
    with me.


    *


    Hear
    where her snow-grave is
    the You
                ah you

    of...
  • Poem
    By Anne Sexton
    Child, the current of your breath is six days long.   
    You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;   
    lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
    at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed   
    with love. At first hunger is...
  • Poem
    By Anne Sexton
    It was only important
    to smile and hold still,
    to lie down beside him
    and to rest awhile,
    to be folded up together
    as if we were silk,
    to sink from the eyes of mother   
    and not to talk.
    The black room took us
    like a cave or a...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Hitting Bottom

    By Marilyn Nelson
    Our love still young,                              our marriage new,
      Robert and I                                 ...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Little Albert, 1920

    By Joyce Carol Oates
    I was Little Albert.
    Nine months old in the famous film.
    In a white cotton nightie, on a lab
    table sitting upright
    facing a camera.
    Remember me? Sure.
    You do.

    First, you saw that I was a “curious” baby.
    You saw that I blinked and stared
    with all the...
  • Poem
    By Mona Van Duyn
    I was out last night,
    the very picture of a sneak, dark and hunched-over,
    breaking and entering again.
    Why do I do it?

    And why, when I can afford serious residences,
    do I keep to this one room?
    Perhaps if I had not lost track of...
  • Poem
    By Langston Hughes
    My name is Johnson—
    Madam Alberta K.
    The Madam stands for business.   
    I’m smart that way.

    I had a
    HAIR-DRESSING PARLOR   
    Before
    The depression put
    The prices lower.

    Then I had a
    BARBECUE STAND   
    Till I got mixed up   
    With a no-good man.

    Cause I had a insurance   
    The WPA
    Said, We can’t use you   
    Wealthy...
  • Poem
    By R. T. Smith
    Two nights he came to me, mute,   
    on fire, no dream. I woke to find   
    the window embered and fog filling   
    the willows. The third time
    he was milder and early, his gray form
    all ash. He said to me at bedside, kneeling,   
    “You must say...
  • Poem
    By Donald Revell
    The bar in the commuter stationThe Title: "The Northeast Corridor" In his book The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye (2007), Revell called it “a title taken from newspeak and describing that cindery ganglion of railways between Boston to the...
  • Poem
    By Louise Erdrich
    You knew I was coming for you, little one,
    when the kettle jumped into the fire.
    Towels flapped on the hooks,
    and the dog crept off, groaning,
    to the deepest part of the woods.

    In the hackles of dry brush a thin laughter started up.
    Mother...
  • Poem
    By Delmore Schwartz
    When I fall asleep, and even during sleep,
    I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking
    Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial,   
    Having no relation to my affairs.   

    Dear Mother, is any time left to us
    In which to be happy? My debts are immense.
    My bank account is...
  • Poem
    By Ishmael Reed
    My Dear Khomeini:

    I read your fourteen thousand dollar
    ad asking me why the Vatican waited
    all of these years to send an envoy
    to complain about conditions in Iran
    You’re right, we should have sent one
    when the Shah was in power, look,
    I’m in total...
  • Poem
    By Rudyard Kipling
    You may talk o’ gin and beer   
    When you’re quartered safe out ’ere,   
    An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it;
    But when it comes to slaughter   
    You will do your work on water,
    An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.   
    Now...
  • Poem
    By Louise Erdrich
    They say I am excitable! How could
    I not scream? The Swiss monk’s tonsure
    spun till it blurred yet his eyes were still.
    I snapped my gaiter, hard, to stuff back

    my mirth. Lords, he then began to speak.
    Indus catarum, he said, presenting the...
  • Poem
    By Louise Erdrich
    This is Tarsus, one place like anyplace else.   
    And this is my circuit, the rodeo, fair.
    The farmboys blow through here in pickups, wild
    as horses in their oat sacks.   
    The women wear spurs.
    In the trailers the cattle are pounding for air.

    My room is...
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