Alan Dugan Poems

I know but will not tell
you, Aunt Irene, why there
are soap suds in the whiskey:
Uncle Robert had to have
...

Oh I got up and went to work
and worked and came back home
and ate and talked and went to sleep.
Then I got up and went to work
...

The trees in time
have something else to do
besides their treeing. What is it.
I'm a starving to death
...

Nothing is plumb, level, or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
...

Now his nose’s bridge is broken, one eye
will not focus and the other is a stray;
trainers whisper in his mouth while one ear
...

After your first poetry reading
I shook hands with you
and got a hard-on. Thank you.
We know that old trees
...

The skin ripples over my body like moon-wooed water,
rearing to escape me. Where could it find another
...

Because of the unaccountable spirit of the troops
oh we were marched as we were never marched before
...

In order to perfect all readers
the statements should he carved
on rock walls, on cave walls,
and on the sides of pillars so
...

Once, one of my students read a book we had.
She was doing a history assignment on
the decline and fall of the Roman Empire
...