The best American poetry, 2006 / Billy Collins, editor ; David Lehman, series editor.

Verities / Kim Addonizio
See the pyramids along the Nile / Dick Allen
from Couple from Hell / Craig Arnold
A worldly country / John Ashbery
Speech in a chamber / Jesse Ball
Letter from my ancestors / Krista Benjamin
You must have been a beautiful baby / Ilya Bernstein
Apologia to the blue tit / Gaylord Brewer
Rhetorical figures / Tom Christopher
Sestina for the newly married / Laura Cronk
Our generation / Carl Dennis
Toward some bright moment / Stephen Dobyns
Please don't sit like a frog, sit like a queen / Denise Duhamel
The land of Is / Stephen Dunn
Souvenir / Beth Ann Fennelly
List of first lines / Megan Gannon
For my niece, Sidney, age six / Amy Gerstler
Bust of a young boy in the snow / Sarah Gorham
The death of Winckelmann / George Green
My first mermaid / Debora Gregor
The curve / Eamon Grennan
Monsieur Pierre est mort / Daniel Gutstein
from Sects from A to Z / R.S. Gwynn
Bird, weasel, fountain / Rachel Hadas
Refusal to notice beautiful women / Mark Halliday
On the way to the doctor's / Jim Harrison
The problem of describing color / Robert Hass
Hour / Christian Hawkey
Talk / Terrance Hayes
My career as a director / Bob Hicok
The Ferry / Katia Kapovich
At Gettysburg / Laura Kasischke
Just a second ago / Joy Katz
Seventeen ways from Tuesday / David Kirby
The laws of probability in Levittown / Jennifer L. Knox
Found / Ron Koertge.

Sally's hair / John Koethe
Tonight / Mark Kraushaar
Double abecedarian : please give me / Julie Larios
Demographic / Dorianne Laux
That's not butter / Reb Livingston
Eyes scooped out and replaced by hot coals / Thomas Lux
Blenheim / Paul Muldoon
Albert Hinckley / Marilyn Nelson
Briefcase of sorrow / Richard Newman
The poet with his face in his hands / Mary Oliver
Small town rocker / Danielle Pafunda
The sharper the berry / Mark Pawlak
Race / Bao Phi
Two poets meet / Donald Platt
The great poem / Lawrence Raab
Roadside special / Betsy Retallack
The other woman's point of view / Liz Rosenberg
Discounting Lynn / J. Allyn Rosser
Thin / Kay Ryan
A phone call to the future / Mary Jo Salter
Memoir / Vijay Seshadri
Misjudged fly ball / Alan Shapiro
House of cards / Charles Simic
Homesick / Gerald Stern
The loser / James Tate
Body english / Sue Ellen Thompson
Misprision / Tony Towle
What I never told you about the abortion / Alison Townsend
Counterman / Paul Violi
Harvesting the cows / Ellen Bryant Voigt
The Driver / David Wagoner
Prayer to tear the sperm-dam down / Charles Harper Webb
Ponies / C.K. Williams
Sex elegy / Terence Winch
Gratification / Susan Wood
A happy thought / Franz Wright
Religion / Robert Wrigley
The call / David Yezzi
Clam ode / Dean Young.