The best American poetry, 1996

The tombs / Latif Asad Abdullah

Capital punishment / Sherman Alexie

Morning in the burned house / Margaret Atwood

Cancer garden / Thomas Avena

Porkskin panorama / Marie Annharte Baker

Strong's winter / Sidney Burris

David Talamantez on the last day of second grade / Rosemary Catacalos

Cauldron / Marilyn Chin

American sonnet / Wanda Coleman

Me again / Jacqueline Dash

Transfer / Ingrid de Kok

The arrival of the Titanic / William Dickey

The history of navigation / Nancy Eimers

A night without stars / Nancy Eimers

Sleeping on the bus / Martin Espada

Rednecks / Martin Espada

Poem not to be read at your wedding / Beth Ann Fennelly

In this place / Robert C. Fuentes

Salmo: para el / Ramon Garcia

Two girls / Suzanne Gardinier

Kapital / Frank Gaspar

White beach / Reginald Gibbons

All facts, stories, chance / C.S. Giscombe

Possession: a zuihitsu / Kimiko Hahn

Plainsong / Gail Hanlon

The prisoner of Camau / Henry Hart

The steadying / William Heyen

Renewal / Jonathan Johnson

Reading aloud to my father / Jane Kenyon

Two Canadian landscapes / August Kleinzahler

Nude study / Yusef Komunyakaa

Touch me / Stanley Kunitz

Boxing the female / Natasha Le Bel

Foot fire burn dance / Natasha Le Bel

Kolohe or communication / Carolyn Lei-Lanilau

It is not / Valerie Martinez.

The river and under the river / Davis McCombs

Edge effect / Sandra McPherson

Body / James Merrill

Lament for the makers / W.S. Merwin

Far away / Jane Miller

Girl tearing up her face / Susan Mitchell

Mangos y limones / Pat Mora

One of the longest times / Alice Notley

The small vases from Hebron / Naomi Shihab Nye

The eight and thirteenth / Alicia Ostriker

Harlem suite / Raymond Patterson

As from a quiver of arrows / Carl Phillips

Song of calling souls / Wang Ping

Two poems / Sterling Plumpp

Sestina for Jaime / Katherine Alice Power

Twenty-one years / Reynolds Price

Domingo Limon / Alberta Alvaro Rios

Abundance and satisfaction / Pattiann Rogers

Prometheus at Coney Island / Quentin Rowan

For the evening land / David Shapiro

Crepuscule / Angela Shaw

Skin trade / Reginald Shepherd

Passive resistance / Enid Shomer

Fair trade / Gary Soto

Flight / Jean Starr

Heat / Deborah Stein

Honeycomb perfection of this form before me / Roberto Tejada

Aisle of dogs / Chase Twichell

Ghost sickness / Luis Alberto Urrea

Tell me, what is the soul / Jean Valentine

Crazy courage / Alma Luz Villanueva

The case / Karen Volkman

The butcher's apron / Diane Wakoski

Yellow wolf spirit / Ron Welburn

Run on a warehouse / Susan Wheeler

Meeting like this / Paul Willis

The mill race / Anne Winters

Vespers / C. Dale Young

Our bird Aegis / Ray A. Young Bear.