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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shel Silverstein
Shel Silverstein
Shel Silverstein was a composer, an artist, and the author of numerous books of prose and poetry for younger readers. His prose works include such modern classics as The Giving Tree (1963),...
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FURTHER READING
Poems About Illness
A Litany in Time of Plague
by Thomas Nashe
Bedside
by William Olsen
Breathing
by Josephine Dickinson
Evening
by Gail Mazur
Having it Out with Melancholy
by Jane Kenyon
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
by W. H. Auden
Mastectomy
by Wanda Coleman
The Embrace
by Mark Doty
The Land of Counterpane
by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Sick Child
by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Subalterns
by Thomas Hardy
The Transparent Man
by Anthony Hecht
Tubes
by Donald Hall
Units
by Albert Goldbarth
Visits to St. Elizabeths
by Elizabeth Bishop
Waking in the Blue
by Robert Lowell
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
by John Milton
Back to School Poems
All the World's a Stage
by William Shakespeare
Apples
by Grace Schulman
Art Class
by James Galvin
Being Jewish in a Small Town
by Lyn Lifshin
Evening Walk as the School Year Starts
by Sydney Lea
First Gestures
by Julia Spicher Kasdorf
From "One A.M."
by David Young
In Michael Robins’s class minus one
by Bob Hicok
Mary's Lamb
by Sarah Josepha Hale
Messieur Degas Teaches Art and Science at Durfy Intermediate School, Detroit 1942
by Philip Levine
Niggerlips
by Martín Espada
Panty Raid
by Terri Ford
Pledge
by Elizabeth Powell
Sentimental Education
by Mary Ruefle
The Hand
by Mary Ruefle
The Junior High School Band Concert
by David Wagoner
The Shout
by Simon Armitage
The Testing-Tree
by Stanley Kunitz
Theme for English B
by Langston Hughes
We Real Cool
by Gwendolyn Brooks
Why Latin Should Still Be Taught in High School
by Christopher Bursk
Poems for Kids
At the Zoo
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face
by Jack Prelutsky
Bleezer's Ice Cream
by Jack Prelutsky
Dream Variations
by Langston Hughes
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)
by Emily Dickinson
Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll
maggie and milly and molly and may
by E. E. Cummings
Mary's Lamb
by Sarah Josepha Hale
Mother Doesn't Want a Dog
by Judith Viorst
Mr. Grumpledump's Song
by Shel Silverstein
My Shadow
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Since Hannah Moved Away
by Judith Viorst
The Crocodile
by Lewis Carroll
The Eagle
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
The Land of Counterpane
by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe
The Tyger
by William Blake
We never know how high we are (1176)
by Emily Dickinson
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
by Eugene Field
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Sick  
by Shel Silverstein

"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more--that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut--my eyes are blue--
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke--
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!"



From Shel Silverstein: Poems and Drawings; originally appeared in Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. Copyright © 2003 by HarperCollins Children's Books. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
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