Poemunity — your poem community

Women                                 Or they should be                              should be pedestals                              little horses moving                                 those wooden pedestals                              sweet moving                                 oldfashioned to the                                    painted motions                                 rocking of men                                  horses the gladdest things in the toyroom The                                       feelingly pegs                                     and then of their                                 unfeelingly ears                                     To be so familiar                            joyfully and dear                               ridden to the trusting                      rockingly fists                                    ridden until To be chafed                        the restored egos dismount and the legs stride away Immobile                            willing sweetlipped                         to be set sturdy                                 into motion and smiling                         Women women                                 should be should always                        pedestals be waiting                              to men

Women who lie alone at midnight because there is no one else to lie to Women who lie alone at midnight at noon in the laundromat destroying their own socks Women who lie alone at midnight: Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates Women who lie alone at midnight as the first furl of starlight pearls the moon with nacre Women who lie alone at midnight sending a postcard bearing the face of a bawling infant who cries “I am for the new” Women who lie alone at midnight reciting the names of shoes Women who lie alone at midnight spurting unjustified tears, the kind that run sideways never reaching the mouth, the kind you cannot swallow Women who lie alone at midnight singing breast away the burden of my tender and afterwards burp Women who lie alone at midnight obeying the laws of physics Women who let their dreams curl at the end Women in a monastery of flamingos Women who die alone at midnight contributing to the end, to lost time, to the rain and flies, seeing the bird they saw trapped in the airport surviving by the water fountain What’s more, try it sometime It works

Lockers, metal detectors, steel doors, C.O. to C.O., different forms, desks—mouth open, turn—so slow I use the time to practice patience, grace, tenderness for glassed-in guards. The rules recited as if they were the same rules every week: I can wear earrings. I cannot wear earrings. I can wear my hair up. I cannot wear my hair up. I dressed by rote: cords in blue or brown, grey turtleneck, black clogs. The prisoners, all in grey sweatshirts, blue jeans, joked I looked like them, fit in. I didn't think about it, until I dreamed of being shuffled in and locked in there, hustled through the heavy doors. In the dream the guards just shook their heads, smirked when I spelled out my name, shook the freezing bars. Instead of nightly escorts out, I'd stay in there forever. Who would know? So I went to Goodwill, spent ten bucks on pink angora, walked back down those halls a movie star. When I stood at the front of the class there rose a sharp collective sigh. The one who said she never heard of pandering until the arraignment said OK,I'm going to tell her. Then she told me: freedom is wasted on women like me. They hate the dark cotton, jeans they have to wear, each one a shadow of the other their whole sentence.You could wear red! she accused. Their favorite dresses, silk slips, wool socks all long gone, bagged up for sisters, moms—maybe Goodwill, maybe I flicked past them looking for this cotton candy pink angora cardigan, pearl buttons. They can't stop staring, so I take it off and pass it around, let each woman hold it in her arms, appraise the wool between her fingers, a familiar gesture, second nature, from another world.

They are thin and rarely marry, living out their long lives in spacious rooms, French doors giving view to formal gardens where aromatic flowers grow in profusion. They play their pianos in the late afternoon tilting their heads at a gracious angle as if listening to notes pitched above the human range. Age makes them translucent; each palpitation of their hearts visible at temple or neck. When they die, it’s in their sleep, their spirits shaking gently loose from a hostess too well bred to protest.

Women who sleep on stones are like brick houses that squat alone in cornfields. They look weatherworn, solid, dusty, torn screens sloughing from the window frames. But at dusk a second-story light is always burning. Used to be I loved nothing more than spreading my blanket on high granite ledges that collect good water in their hollows. Stars came close without the trees staring and rustling like damp underthings. But doesn’t the body foil what it loves best? Now my hips creak and their blades are tender. I can’t rest on my back for fear of exposing my gut to night creatures who might come along and rip it open with a beak or hoof. And if I sleep on my belly, pinning it down, my breasts start puling like baby pigs trapped under their slab of torpid mother. Dark passes as I shift from side to side to side, the blood pooling just above the bone. Women who sleep on stones don’t sleep. They see the stars moving, the sunrise, the gnats rising like a hairnet lifted from a waitress’s head. The next day they’re sore all over and glad for the ache: that’s how stubborn they are.

Mid-morning Monday she is staring peaceful as the rain in that shallow back yard she wears flannel bedroom slippers she is sipping coffee she is thinking— —gazing at the weedy bumpy yard at the faces beginning to take shape in the wavy mud in the linoleum where floorboards assert themselves Women whose lives are food breaking eggs with care scraping garbage from the plates unpacking groceries hand over hand Wednesday evening: he takes the cans out front tough plastic with detachable lids Thursday morning: the garbage truck whining at 7 Friday the shopping mall open till 9 bags of groceries unpacked hand over certain hand Men whose lives are money time-and-a-half Saturdays the lunchbag folded with care and brought back home unfolded Monday morning Women whose lives are food because they are not punch-carded because they are unclocked sighing glad to be alone staring into the yard, mid-morning mid-week by mid-afternoon everything is forgotten There are long evenings panel discussions on abortions, fashions, meaningful work there are love scenes where people mouth passions sprightly, handsome, silly, manic in close-ups revealed ageless the women whose lives are food the men whose lives are money fidget as these strangers embrace and weep and mis- understand and forgive and die and weep and embrace and the viewers stare and fidget and sigh and begin yawning around 10:30 never made it past midnight, even on Saturdays, watching their braven selves perform Where are the promised revelations? Why have they been shown so many times? Long-limbed children a thousand miles to the west hitch-hiking in spring, burnt bronze in summer thumbs nagging eyes pleading Give us a ride, huh? Give us a ride? and when they return nothing is changed the linoleum looks older the Hawaiian Chicken is new the girls wash their hair more often the boys skip over the puddles in the GM parking lot no one eyes them with envy their mothers stoop the oven doors settle with a thump the dishes are rinsed and stacked and by mid-morning the house is quiet it is raining out back or not raining the relief of emptiness rains simple, terrible, routine at peace

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon babylon Once a great city in Biblical times, see Psalms 137. both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between between / starshine and clay Compare to John Keats’s “betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay” in “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.” starshine and clay, between / starshine and clay Compare to John Keats’s “betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay” in “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.” my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.

How like an angel came I down! How bright are all things here! When first among his works I did appear O how their glory me did crown! The world resembled his eternity, In which my soul did walk; And ev’ry thing that I did see Did with me talk. The skies in their magnificence, The lively, lovely air; Oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair! The stars did entertain my sense, And all the works of God, so bright and pure, So rich and great did seem, As if they ever must endure In my esteem. A native health and innocence Within my bones did grow, And while my God did all his glories show, I felt a vigour in my sense That was all spirit. I within did flow With seas of life, like wine; I nothing in the world did know But ’twas divine. Harsh ragged objects were conceal’d, Oppressions tears and cries, Sins, griefs, complaints, dissensions, weeping eyes Were hid, and only things reveal’d Which heav’nly spirits, and the angels prize. The state of innocence And bliss, not trades and poverties, Did fill my sense. The streets were pav’d with golden stones, The boys and girls were mine, Oh how did all their lovely faces shine! The sons of men were holy ones, In joy and beauty they appear’d to me, And every thing which here I found, While like an angel I did see, Adorn’d the ground. Rich diamond and pearl and gold In ev’ry place was seen; Rare splendours, yellow, blue, red, white and green, Mine eyes did everywhere behold. Great wonders cloth’d with glory did appear, Amazement was my bliss, That and my wealth was ev’ry where: No joy to this! Curs’d and devis’d proprieties, With envy, avarice And fraud, those fiends that spoil even Paradise, Flew from the splendour of mine eyes, And so did hedges, ditches, limits, bounds, I dream’d not aught of those, But wander’d over all men’s grounds, And found repose. Proprieties themselves were mine, And hedges ornaments; Walls, boxes, coffers, and their rich contents Did not divide my joys, but all combine. Clothes, ribbons, jewels, laces, I esteem’d My joys by others worn: For me they all to wear them seem’d When I was born.

At dusk, on those evenings she does not go out, my mother potters around her house. Her daily helpers are gone, there is no one there, no one to tell what to do, she wanders, sometimes she talks to herself, fondly scolding, sometimes she suddenly throws out her arms and screams—high notes lying here and there on the carpets like bodies touched by a downed wire, she journeys, she quests, she marco-polos through the gilded gleamy loot-rooms, who is she. I feel, now, that I do not know her, and for all my staring, I have not seen her —like the song she sang, when we were small, I wonder as I wander, out under the sky, how Jesus, the Savior, was born for, to die, for poor lonely people, like you, and like I

Loaf after loaf, in several sizes, and never does it not look fresh, as though its insides weren’t moist or warm crust not the kind that spices a room with the plump aroma of toast. Found on the table; among shadows next to the kitchen phone; dispatched FedEx (without return address, though). Someone, possibly more than one person, loves me. Well then, who? Amazing that bread should be so weightless, down-light when handled, as a me dying to taste it takes a slice. Which lasts just long enough to reach my mouth, but then, at the first bite, Nothing! Nothing but air, thin air .... Oh. One more loaf of wonderbread, only a pun for bread, seductive visually, but you could starve. Get rid of it, throw it in the river— Beyond which, grain fields. Future food for the just and the unjust, those who love, and do not love.