Read My Mother's Body Online

Authors: Marge Piercy

Tags: #American, #Poetry, #General

My Mother's Body (8 page)

The Listmaker

I am a compiler of lists: 1 bag

fine cracked corn, 1 sunflower seeds.

Thin tomato seedlings in hotbed;

check dahlias for sprouting.

Write Kathy. Call Lou. Pay

oil bill. Decide about Montana.

I find withered lists in pockets

of raincoats, reminders to buy birthday

presents for lovers who wear those warm

sweaters now in other lives. And what

did I decide about Montana? To believe

or disbelieve in its existence?

To rise at five some morning and fly there?

A buried assent or denial rots beneath.

I confess too that sometimes when I am listing

what I must do on a Monday, I will put on

tasks already completed for the neat pleasure

of striking them out, checking them off.

What do these lists mean? That I mistrust my memory,

that my attention, a huge hungry crow

settling to carrion even on the highway

hates to rise and flap off, wants to continue

feasting on what it has let down upon

folding the tent of its broad dusty wings.

That I like to conquer chaos one square

at a time like a board game.

That I fear the sins of omission more

than commission. That the whining saw

of the mill of time shrieks always in my ears

as I am borne with all the other logs

forward to be dismantled and rebuilt

into chairs, into frogs, into running water.

All lists start where they halt, in intention.

Only the love that is work completes them.

Going into town in the storm

The sky is white and the earth is white

and the white wind is blowing in arabesques

through us. The world wizens in the cold

to a circle that stops beyond my mittens

outstretched on which the white froth

still dissolves. Up, north, left—

all are obliterated in the swirl.

The only color that exists clings to

your face, your coat, your scarf.

We ride the feathered back of a white goose

that flies miles high over the Himalayas.

Where yesterday houses stood of neighbors,

summer people, scandals still smouldering—

heaps of old tires that burn for days—

today all is whited out, a mistake

on a typed page. My blood fizzes in my cheeks

like a shaken soda waiting to explode.

Into any haven we reach we will carry

a dizziness, a blindness that will melt

slowly, a sense of how uneasily we inhabit

this earth, how a rise or drop of a few degrees,

a little more water or a trifle less, renders

us strange as brontosaurus in our homeland.

We are fitted for a short winter and then spring.

We stagger out of the belly of the snow

plucked of words naked and steaming.

The clumsy season

I keep cutting off bits of my fingers or banging

my knee hard. I am offering pain and blood

like a down payment on myself withheld.

Don't leave me because I am wasting words,

pissing them out like bad wine swallowed

that leaves the skull echoing and scraped.

Don't let the words rise up and leave me

like a flight of dissatisfied geese.

I am waters waiting to be troubled again.

I am coming back and I will enter quiet

like a cave and crouch with my knees drawn up

till you birth me into squabbling bliss.

I promise to relearn stillness like a spider.

I will apprentice myself to pine trees.

I will study the heron waiting on one foot.

Only do not leave me empty as the skin

the snake has cast on the path, ghostly

colors fading and the sinuous hunter gone.

Fill me roaring with your necessary music.

Loose upon me your stories screaming for life,

ravenous as gulls over a fishing boat.

Or send the little dreams like gnats into my hair.

Tease me with almost vision, flashes, scents

that dangle barbs into the dark currents

of memory. Use me however you will but

use me. These little accidents are offerings

to that Coming never accidental.

Silk confetti

Apple blossom petals lay on asphalt

fallen from the tree at the road's turn

white as the flesh of the apple

will be, flushed pink

with the same blush

tender and curved as cheeks;

soft on hard; soon

to be bruised to vague stains.

Our best impulses often drop so

and vanish under traffic. We will

not know for months

if they bore fruit.

And whose creature am I?

At times characters from my novels swarm through me,

children of my mind, and possess me as dybbuks.

My own shabby memories they have plucked and eaten

till sometimes I cannot remember my own sorrows.

In all that I value there is a core of mystery,

in the seed that wriggles its new roots into the soil

and whose pale head bursts the surface,

in the dance where our bodies merge and reassemble,

in the starving baby whose huge glazing eyes

burned into my bones, in the look that passes

between predator and prey before the death blow.

I know of what rags and bones and clippings

from frothing newsprint and poisonous glue

my structures are built. Yet these creatures

I have improvised like golem walk off and thrive.

Between one and two thirds of our lives we spend

in darkness, and the little lights we turn on

make little holes in that great thick rich void.

We are never done with knowing or with gnawing,

but under the saying is whispering, touching

and silence. Out of a given set of atoms

we cast and recast the holy patterns new.

In praise of gazebos

Trellises bear the weight of roses,

pole beans, grape vines, wisteria,

yet a stake or posts with wires

strung between gives as good support.

They are expressions of pleasure,

garden jewelry, gestures

of proportion in the winter,

cascades of avid tangled greenery

in the full clamor of summer.

Benches under trees, cedar chairs

that overlook the tomatoes or the marsh

gradually ripening from green to sand

to bronze, a settee and table

on the grass, why do these furnishings

seem Victorian? We go out to play,

fiercely and with bats, with balls,

with rackets. We go out to bash our flesh

on the rough granite boulder of our will.

To sit among the shrubs and contemplate,

not for a tan, not for the body's

honing, oiling or toning, but just

to feed the eyes and scalded ears,

to let a gentle light into the brain,

to quiet the media babble, without radio,

Walkman, blast box, to let cool

the open hearth furnaces of ambition,

is to shape a space left open for calm

as if that harmony could shine down

like sunlight on the scalp. Perhaps

you say these little structures which contain

no real furniture, work or tools

are secret traps for catching silence.

Let outside and inside blur in the light season.

Build us pergolas, follies, arbors, terraces.

Let us make our gardens half artful

and half wild, to match our love.

The Faithless

Sleep, you jade smooth liar,

you promised to come

to me, come to me

waiting here like a cut

open melon ripe as summer.

Sleep, you black velvet

tomcat, where are you prowling?

I set a trap of sheets

clean and fresh as daisies,

pillows like cloudy sighs.

Sleep, you soft-bellied

angel with feathered thighs,

you tease my cheek with the brush

of your wings. I reach

for you but clutch air.

Sleep, you fur-bottomed tramp,

when I want you, you're in

everybody's bed but my own.

Take you for granted and you stalk

me from the low point of every hour.

Sleep, omnivorous billy goat,

you gobble the kittens, the crows,

the cop on duty, the fast horse,

but me you leave on the plate

like a cold shore dinner.

Is this divorce permanent?

Runneled with hope I lie down

nightly longing to pass

again under the fresh blessing

of your weight and broad wings.

If I had been called Sabrina or Ann, she said

I'm the only poet with the name.

Can you imagine a prima ballerina named

Marge? Marge Curie, Nobel Prize winner.

Empress Marge. My lady Marge? Rhymes with

large/charge/barge. Workingclass?

Definitely. Any attempt to doll it up

(Mar-gee? Mar-gette? Margelina?

Margarine?) makes it worse. Name

like an oilcan, like a bedroom

slipper, like a box of baking soda,

useful, plain; impossible for foreigners,

from French to Japanese, to pronounce.

My own grandmother called me what

could only be rendered in English

as Mousie. O my parents, what

you did unto me, forever. Even

my tombstone will look like a cartoon.

The night the moon got drunk

Up over the white shoulder of the dune

the sand that scorched our soles

now caresses our bare feet with cool compliance.

The foundry of the sun is shut down.

Where are the shallow caverns of shadow

carved into the blinding desert light?

Bowls of mist, pennons, traveling

ghosts. Finally the moon floats belly

up like a dead goldfish over the dune.

Tonight it could not get free

of the ocean wave but trails spume,

White as salt, it seems to be dissolving.

But it leers oddly. A tipsy moon

wobbling, wavering over the sand

as if it can't find the way up.

O drunken moon, you see too much

peering down: mugging, stabbing, rape,

the weak slipping into death,

the abandoned raking the ceiling

with the sharp claws of hunger.

You watch lovers in every hamlet,

in beds, in cars, in hammocks.

You cross the cranky Atlantic

and stuck up in the sky and lonely

what do you see first but couples

coupling on the Great Beach, among

the shiny poison ivy leaves

of the gentle slopes and sand tracks.

No wonder you drink yourself tipsy

on salt wine and go staggering now

faded and crooked, still lecherous.

Sweet ambush

We all await the blackberries,

stealthy as foxes, stopping by

in August disguised as

joggers, tourists, birdwatchers.

They begin hard and green,

baby hand-grenades. Slowly

they blush. The red

empurples like aging wine.

The day they first glint

with jet-bead shininess

somebody pounces. Losers

pick only the moldy and green.

Blackberrying: the tiger

hunting of scavenging.

Tonight even before I take

the pie from the oven,

its crisp lattice steaming,

my neighbor accuses, waving

her fork like a weapon,

You got blackberries today.

My arms are scored

as if by a lover too much

in a hurry to bother

with zippers and gentle tugs.

Smug after a successful

raid, I hold out arms

etched with hieroglyphs.

My mouth is purple inside.

Blueberries are gentle.

We squat among the bushes,

picking, picking, picking.

Only tedium limits our haul.

With each berry in its season

We wait to catch the very day

its flavor petal by petal

opens fully at last like a rose.

The high arch of summer

Light sharpens on the leaves

of cotoneaster, just as it sparks

off running water, shards of glitter

ticking the eyes glad. As I go down,

go down from the house, till it sinks

setting behind the hill, even in pine

woods the sun is hot to the bare sole

on the white sand path. Resin

thickens the air, invisible smoke.

Here I am at peace eating handfuls

of tart blueberries touched with bloom

as the morning was coated with fog

and huckleberries shiny and black

as the last moonless night. Here I laze

feeling the sun ripening my blood

sweet as the tomatoes near the house

in air that smells like air,

by water that tastes of water.

What we fail to notice

The crimson and fragrant musk roses,

the sweetest juicy blackberries,

rake the arms with their brambles,

slash the calves, but the small thorn

that slides into the skin covertly

unmarked by a bubble of blood

causes the real trouble

as the skin closes over

and its thin red line of infection

steals toward the heart.

Tashlich

Go to the ocean and throw the crumbs in,

all that remains of seven years.

When you wept, didn't I taste your tears

on my cheek, give you bread for salt?

Here where I sing at full pitch

and volume uncensored, I was attacked.

The pale sister nibbled like a mouse

in the closets with sharp pointy teeth.

She let herself in with her own key.

My trust garlanded her round. Indeed

it was convenient to trust her

while she wasted paper thin with envy.

Here she coveted. Here she crept.

Here her cold fluttering hands lingered

on secrets and dipped into the honey.

Her shadow fell on the contents of every drawer.

Alone in the house she made love

to herself in the mirror wearing

stolen gowns; then she carried them home

for their magic to color her life.

Little losses spread like tooth decay.

Furtive betrayals festered, cysts

hidden in flesh. Her greed swelled

in the dark, its hunger always roaring.

No number of gifts could silence

those cries of resentful hunger,

not for the baubles, the scarves,

the blouses she stole, but to be twenty

and pretty again, not to have to work

to live but merely to be blond and thin

and let men happen like rain in the night

and never to wake alone.

On the new year my grandmother Hannah

told me to carry crumbs to the water

and cast them out. We are tossing

away the trust that was too convenient

and we are throwing evil from the house

the rancid taint of envy spoiling the food

the pricing fingers of envy rumpling the cloth

the secret ill-wisher chewing from inside

the heart's red apple to rot it out.

I cast away my anger like spoiled milk.

Let the salty wind air the house and cleanse

the stain of betrayal from the new year.

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