poems-by-women

[poems-by-women]

Happy

by Jayne Anne Phillips

She knew if she loved him she could make him happy, but she didn’t. Or she did, but it sank into itself like a hole and curled up content. Surrounded by the blur of her own movements, the thought of making him happy was very dear to her. She moved it from place to place, a surprise she never opened. She slept alone at night, soul of a naked priest in her sweet body. Small soft hands, a bread of desire rising in her stomach. When she lay down with the man she loved and didn’t, the man opened and opened. Inside him an acrobat tumbled over death. And walked thin wires with nothing above or below. She cried, he was so beautiful in his scarlet tights and white face the size of a dime.

#jayne anne phillips

[poems-by-women]

Lantau

by Marilyn Chin

While sitting prostrate before the ivory feet of the great Buddha, I spilled almost an entire can of Diet Coke on the floor. I quickly tried to mop up the mess with my long hair. I peeked over my left shoulder: the short nun said nothing and averted her eyes. To my right, the skinny old monk was consumed by a frightful irritation of his own. He was at once swatting and dodging two bombarding hornets that were fascinated by his newly shaved head. “I hope he’s not allergic,” I giggled. And beyond us was the motherless Asian sea, glittering with the promise of eternity.

#marilyn chin

[poems-by-women]

The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Fredonia, NY

Of course I regret it. I mean there I was under umbrellas of fruit so red they had to be borne of Summer, and no other season. Flip-flops and fishhooks. Ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs of mint to slip in blue glasses of tea. I was dusty, my ponytail all askew and the tips of my fingers ran, of course, red.

from the fruitwounds of cherries I plunked into my bucket and still—he must have seen some small bit of loveliness in walking his orchard with me. He pointed out which trees were sweetest, which ones bore double seeds—puffing out the flesh and oh the surprise on your tongue with two tiny stones

(a twin spit), making a small gun of your mouth. Did I mention my favorite color is red? His jeans were worn and twisty around the tops of his boot; his hands thick but careful, nimble enough to pull fruit from his trees without tearing the thin skin; the cherry dust and fingerprints on his eyeglasses.

I just know when he stuffed his hands in his pockets, said Okay. Couldn’t hurt to try? and shuffled back to his roadside stand to arrange his jelly jars and stacks of buckets, I had made a terrible mistake. I just know my summer would’ve been full of pies, tartlets, turnovers—so much jubilee.

#aimee nezhukumatathil

[poems-by-women]

In the Years After the Psych Ward

by Jeanann Verlee

after John Murillo

I have to whisper soft as a child. First time she pinches her eyes closed, I notice but go on. For months, she barricades herself beneath pillows, flinches when the lights come on. Or off. Flinches if a door rattles down the hall, if I reach to stroke her hair or her hand or cradle her breast or press my lips to hers or change my shoes or unbuckle anything. I’ve learned not to ask what their bodies did to hers, which hell urged her into madness. I know it is not for me to know. It’s not that she won’t let me touch her. It’s that she does. Though her skin tightens, jaw clasps. Though she demands it face- down to hide wince, cringe. This sick gift: offering herself to me like a platter of spoiled meat. How do I refuse? Been this way since she’s back in the world. The bridge, the overdose, the spilled wrist. That she’s even here is a miracle. Guess you could say the same of me.

Italicized lines are adapted from “The Prisoner’s Wife” by John Murillo.

#jeanann verlee

[poems-by-women]

The Dirt-Eaters

by Elizabeth Alexander

“Southern Tradition of Eating Dirt Shows Signs of Waning” —headline, New York Times, 2/14/84

tra dition wanes I read from North ern South: D.C.

Never ate dirt but I lay on Great- grandma’s grave when I was small.

“Most cultures have passed through a phase of earth- eating most pre valent today among rural Southern black women.”

Geo phagy: the practice of eating earthy matter esp. clay or chalk.

(Shoe- boxed dirt shipped North to kin)

The gos sips said that my great- grand ma got real pale when she was preg nant:

“Musta ate chalk, Musta ate starch, cuz why else did her babies look so white?”

The Ex pert: “In ano ther gener ation I sus pect it will dis appear al together.”

Miss Fannie Glass of Creuger, Miss.: “I wish I had some dirt right now.”

Her smile famili ar as the smell of dirt.

#elizabeth alexander

[poems-by-women]

The Planned Child

by Sharon Olds

I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had taken a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry as if sliding the backbone up out of his body, and made a chart of the month and put her temperature on it, rising and falling, to know the day to make me—I would have liked to have been conceived in heat, in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex, not on cardboard, the little x on the rising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wine and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted, I took the wine against my lips as if my mouth were moving along that valved wall in my mother’s body, she was bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then bearing down, pressing me out into the world that was not enough for her without me in it, not the moon, the sun, Orion cartwheeling across the dark, not the earth, the sea—none of it was enough, for her, without me.

#sharon olds

[poems-by-women]

Theorem

by Eeva-Liisa Manner

Let prose be hard, let it provoke unease. But the poem is an echo that is heard when life is mute:

shadows gliding on mountains; the image of wind and cloud, the passage of smoke or life: bright, dusky, bright,

a river flowing silent, deep cloudy forests, houses mouldering slowly, lanes radiating heat,

a worn-down threshold, the stillness of shadow, a child’s timorous step into the darkness of the room,

a letter that comes from afar and is pushed under the door, so big and white that it fills the house,

or a day so stiff and bright that you can hear how the sun nails shut the abandoned blue door.

#eeva-liisa manner

[poems-by-women]

Magic Cats

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

With acknowledgements to Susan Musgrave, whose “Strawberry” poems started it all

Most cats, with the exception of Burmese, do not celebrate their birthdays.   Rather, they are extremely sentimental about Palm Sunday and Labour Day, at which times they survive solely on white lace and baloney sandwiches. Cats on the whole are loath to discuss God. Generally speaking, cats have no money, although some of them secretly collect rare and valuable coins. Cats believe that all human beings, animals and plants should congregate in a huge heap in the centre of the universe and promptly fall asleep together. Of all the cats I have known, the ones I remember most are: Bumble Bee, Buttonhole, Chocolate Bar, Molten Lava and Mushroom. I also remember Tabby who was sane as a star and spent all his time lying on his back in the sink, thinking up appropriate names for me. Cats see their Keepers as massive phantoms, givers of names and the excellent gravy of their days. Cats who have been robbed of balls and claws do not lament. They become their Keeper’s keepers. When cats are hosts to fleas they assume the fleas are guests. Most cats would rather be covered with live fleas than dead ones. Cats hold no grudges and have no future. They invade nets of strangers with their eyes. The patron saint of cats is called: Beast of the Skies, Warm Presence, Eyes. Cats do not worry about the gurgling horrors of the disease listed in catbooks, some of which are Hairballs Enteritis and Bronchitis. But they do become very upset about Symptoms, which is the worst disease of all. When cats grow listless (i.e. lose their list) they cease to entertain fleas. They mumble darkly about radishes and death. They listen to Beethoven and become overly involved in Medieval History. When cats decide to die       they lie alone       lost among leaves beneath the dark winds and broad thunders of the world and pray to the Beast of the Skies, Warm, Presence, Eyes. Broadly speaking, cats do not read Gothic novels, although they tend to browse through Mary Shelley on the day before Christmas. The only reason cats do not carry passports is because they have no pockets. When a black cat crosses your path it usually means that he is trying to get to the other side of the street. Cats never get baptized. They lose their dry. Cats only perspire during Lent. Cats have no memory and no future. They are highly allergic to Prime Ministers, radishes, monks, poets, and death.

#gwendolyn macewen

[poems-by-women]

Fado

by Jane Hirshfield

A man reaches close and lifts a quarter from inside a girl’s ear, from her hands takes a dove she didn’t know was there. Which amazes more, you may wonder: the quarter’s serrated murmur against the thumb or the dove’s knuckled silence? That he found them, or that she never had, or that in Portugal, this same half-stopped moment, it’s almost dawn, and a woman in a wheelchair is singing a fado that puts every life in the room on one pan of a scale, itself on the other, and the copper bowls balance.

#jane hirshfield

[poems-by-women]

Survivor’s Guilt

by Patricia Kirkpatrick

How I’ve changed may not be apparent. I limp. Read and write, make tea at the stove as I practiced in rehab. Sometimes, like fire, a task overwhelms me. I cry for days, shriek when the phone rings. Like a page pulled from flame, I’m singed but intact: I don’t burn down the house.

Later, cleared to drive, I did outpatient rehab. Others lost legs or clutched withered minds in their hands. A man who can’t speak recognized me and held up his finger. I knew he meant One year since your surgery. Sixteen since his. Guadalupe wishes daily to be the one before. Nobody is that. Sometimes, like love, the neurons just cross fire. You don’t get everything back.

#patricia kirkpatrick

[poems-by-women]

April Aubade

by Sylvia Plath

Worship this world of watercolor mood in glass pagodas hung with veils of green where diamonds jangle hymns within the blood and sap ascends the steeple of the vein.

A saintly sparrow jargons madrigals to waken dreamers in the milky dawn, while tulips bow like a college of cardinals before that papal paragon, the sun.

Christened in a spindrift of snowdrop stars, where on pink-fluted feet the pigeons pass and jonquils sprout like solomon’s metaphors, my love and I go garlanded with grass.

Again we are deluded and infer that somehow we are younger than we were.

#sylvia plath

[poems-by-women]

Letter to the Local Police

by June Jordan

Dear Sirs:

I have been enjoying the law and order of our community throughout the past three months since my wife and I, our two cats, and miscellaneous photographs of the six grandchildren belonging to our previous neighbors (with whom we were very close) arrived in Saratoga Springs which is clearly prospering under your custody

Indeed, until yesterday afternoon and despite my vigilant casting about, I have been unable to discover a single instance of reasons for public-spirited concern, much less complaint

You may easily appreciate, then, how it is that I write to your office, at this date, with utmost regret for the lamentable circumstances that force my hand

Speaking directly to the issue of the moment:

I have encountered a regular profusion of certain unidentified roses, growing to no discernible purpose, and according to no perceptible control, approximately one quarter mile west of the Northway, on the southern side

To be specific, there are practically thousands of the aforementioned abiding in perpetual near riot of wild behavior, indiscriminate coloring, and only the Good Lord Himself can say what diverse soliciting of promiscuous cross-fertilization

As I say, these roses, no matter what the apparent background, training, tropistic tendencies, age, or color, do not demonstrate the least inclination toward categorization, specified allegiance, resolute preference, consideration of the needs of others, or any other minimal traits of decency

May I point out that I did not assiduously seek out this colony, as it were, and that these certain unidentified roses remain open to viewing even by children, with or without suitable supervision

(My wife asks me to append a note as regards the seasonal but nevertheless seriously licentious phenomenon of honeysuckle under the moon that one may apprehend at the corner of Nelson and Main

However, I have recommended that she undertake direct correspondence with you, as regards this: yet another civic disturbance in our midst)

I am confident that you will devise and pursue appropriate legal response to the roses in question If I may aid your efforts in this respect, please do not hesitate to call me into consultation

                 Respectfully yours,

#june jordan

[poems-by-women]

The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator

by Anne Sexton

The end of the affair is always death.   She’s my workshop. Slippery eye,   out of the tribe of myself my breath   finds you gone. I horrify those who stand by. I am fed.   At night, alone, I marry the bed. Finger to finger, now she’s mine.   She’s not too far. She’s my encounter.   I beat her like a bell. I recline in the bower where you used to mount her.   You borrowed me on the flowered spread.   At night, alone, I marry the bed. Take for instance this night, my love,   that every single couple puts together   with a joint overturning, beneath, above,   the abundant two on sponge and feather,   kneeling and pushing, head to head.   At night, alone, I marry the bed. I break out of my body this way,   an annoying miracle. Could I   put the dream market on display?   I am spread out. I crucify. My little plum is what you said.   At night, alone, I marry the bed. Then my black-eyed rival came. The lady of water, rising on the beach,   a piano at her fingertips, shame   on her lips and a flute’s speech. And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.   At night, alone, I marry the bed. She took you the way a woman takes   a bargain dress off the rack and I broke the way a stone breaks. I give back your books and fishing tack.   Today’s paper says that you are wed.   At night, alone, I marry the bed. The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.   They take off shoes. They turn off the light.   The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are overfed.   At night, alone, I marry the bed.

#anne sexton

[poems-by-women]

Mesoplodon Pacificus

by Helen Farish

I have shown myself to you only as drift and you have presumed to deduce me from this.

I routinely descend into abysmal depths, am far from land, secretive.

But what do you know of my breach, how the lightless world bursts off me—

how I can feed on this for thousands of miles, the routine weight of air crushing

the sea’s surface suddenly gone, suddenly an opening into which I pour.

#helen farish

[poems-by-women]

Fragment Thirty-Six

by H.D.

I know not what to do, my mind is reft: is song's gift best? is love's gift loveliest? I know not what to do, now sleep has pressed weight on your eyelids. Shall I break your rest, devouring, eager? is love's gift best? nay, song's the loveliest: yet were you lost, what rapture could I take from song? what song were left? I know not what to do: to turn and slake the rage that burns, with my breath burn and trouble your cool breath? so shall I turn and take snow in my arms? (is love's gift best?) yet flake on flake of snow were comfortless, did you lie wondering, wakened yet unawake. Shall I turn and take comfortless snow within my arms? press lips to lips that answer not, press lips to flesh that shudders not nor breaks? Is love's gift best? shall I turn and slake all the wild longing? O I am eager for you! as the Pleiads shake white light in whiter water so shall I take you? My mind is quite divided, my minds hesitate, so perfect matched, I know not what to do: each strives with each as two white wrestlers standing for a match, ready to turn and clutch yet never shake muscle nor nerve nor tendon; so my mind waits to grapple with my mind, yet I lie quiet, I would seem at rest. I know not what to do: strain upon strain, sound surging upon sound makes my brain blind; as a wave-line may wait to fall yet (waiting for its falling) still the wind may take from off its crest, white flake on flake of foam, that rises, seeming to dart and pulse and rend the light, so my mind hesitates above the passion quivering yet to break, so my mind hesitates above my mind, listening to song's delight. I know not what to do: will the sound break, rending the night with rift on rift of rose and scattered light? will the sound break at last as the wave hesitant, or will the whole night pass and I lie listening awake?

#h.d. #hilda doolittle

[poems-by-women]

Ghazal: Back Home

by Zeina Hashem Beck

For Syria, September 2015

Tonight a little boy couldn’t walk on water or row back home. The sea turned its old face away. Again, there was a no, no, back home.

Bahr* is how we were taught to measure poetry, bahr is how we’ve stopped trying to measure sorrow, back home.

“All that blue is the sea, and it gives life, gives life,” says God to the boy standing wet at heaven’s gate—does he want to return, to go back home?

My friend who hates cooking has made that eggplant dish, says nothing was better than yogurt and garlic and tomato, back home.

On the train tracks, a man shouts, “Hold me, hold me,” to his wife, bites her sleeve, as if he were trying to tow back home.

Thirteen-year-old Kinan with the big eyes says, “We don’t want to stay in Europe.” “Just stop the war,” he repeats, as if praying, Grow, grow back, home.

Habibi, I never thought our children would write HELP US on cardboard. Let’s try to remember how we met years ago, back home.

On our honeymoon we kissed by the sea, watched it rock the lights, the fishing boats to and fro, back home.

*Bahr is Arabic for sea. Also, in Arabic, bahr means meter.

Zeina Hashem Beck: “This ghazal is for Syrian refugees, whose stories this week (and every week) are heartbreaking and surreal. The poem refers to many tragedies that we’ve read about this week: the little toddler drowned in the Aegean sea, the refugees at the train station in Budapest, that video of the Syrian boy simply saying “Just stop the war,” and the video of the man holding on to his wife and baby on the train tracks.” (website)

#zeina hashem beck

[poems-by-women]

by Izumi Shikibu

In this world love has no color yet how deeply my body is stained by yours.

#izumi shikibu