to the passionate darkness,
you gaze out the window
at the light.
My love is the thing
that frees you
to follow your eyes,
as your love,
a sword made of moonlight
and blood,
and smelling of sex
and salt marshes,
frees me to gaze
with a calm inward
eye.
In all your frenzied searching
you never stood
calmly at the window.
But now the sea,
the city and the sky
are all seen
as if from a perch
at the edge of the cosmos,
where I sit behind you
gazing
at the fire.
The man who waits for my floating bare footThe man who is silent as dustballs riding the darknessThe man whose breath is the breathing of small white butterfliesThe man whose breathing I hear when I pick up the phoneThe man in the mirror whose breath blackens silverThe boneman in closets who rattles the mothballsThe man…
I who grew upgnawing on books,as some kidsgnawon bubble gum,who married disastrouslynot oncebut three times,yet have a lovely daughterI would not undofor all the dopein California.Fear was my element,fear my contagion.I swam in ittill I becameimmune.The plane takes off& I laugh aloud.Call me courageous.I am still alive.
the eagerstudents gather.They ask mewhat you needto be a writer& I, feeling flippant,jaunty(becauseI am wearingan 18th centurydress& thinkmyself in loveagain),answer:‘Mazel,dete rmination,talent, & truegrit.’I evenbelieve it-lookingas I dolike anadvertisementfor easysuccess-designer dress,sly smileon my lips& silver bootsfromOz.Supposethey saw memy eyesswollenlike sponges,my handshakingwith betrayal,my fearrampantin the dark?Suppose they sawthe fearof neverwriting,the fearof beingalone,the money fear,the fear fear,the fearof…
with its lemony tang, its tart sweetness& your whole body stings with singingso that your toes sing to your mouth& your navel whistles to your breasts& your breasts wave to everyoneas you walk down the summer street?What will you dowhen nothing will dobut to throw your arms around trees& men& greet every woman as sister&…
For centuries, the air was full of witchesWhistling up chimneyson their spiky broomscackling or singing more sweetly than Circe,as they flew over rooftopsblessing & cursing theirkind.We banished & burned themmaking them smoke in the throat of god;we declared ourselves‘enlightened.’‘The dark age of horrors is past,’said my mother to me in 1952,seven years after our people…
We learned the decorum of fire,the flame’s curious symmetry,the blue heat at the center of the thighs,the flickering red of the hips,& the tallow gold of the breastslit from withinby the lantern in the ribs.You tear yourself out of melike a branch that longs to be graftedonto a fruit tree,peach & pearcrossed with each other,fig…
