Transpassional, by Brenda Shaughnessy

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

Perfection is the campsite for those who have stopped halfway,
I've melted my silver for you.

Belonging is invisible: this can be seen at the proper distance.
I've burned my blue curtains

and spent myself on an intricate openwork of razor wire, to cut
skylights for the honeybees in webs.

I'm living alone in a kind of cube which is barely electric, the hot
plate blows the tiny fuse

but I have noodles and wine and a nice singing voice. If you
came back I could make you

a necklace. The small planets drop by every few months, slivered;
the big ones never and never

do I feel abandoned. Belonging is invisible: I, on the other hand,
am merely shielding.

Richard Brautigan

[ian-gazarek.livejournal.com]

"I've Never Had it Done So Gently Before"

The sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
I've never had it done so gently before.
You have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.

(no subject)

[agata.livejournal.com]

What I've Been Meaning to Say--Seven Years On by Carolyn Smart
From: Stoning the Moon. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1986.

I don't remember driving to the hospital that night,
I guess Larry must have picked us up in his black car
and we drove down Mount Pleasant under the sign
that says Cancer Can Be Beaten at that time of the year,
I remember other things like the forms I signed
and the room we sat waiting in, I don't know what
we were waiting for and then someone said Do you want
to view the body and though I'd never thought about it,
perhaps that's what I did, I said Yes, yes,
they asked me did I know what I was doing, I said Yes,
I tried to shrug them off me, it felt like
they wanted to hold me back from the rest of my life,
I walked through the ICU with the blood beating
in my throat and in my fingers, my friend walked with me
though I never asked him to be there, somehow I never
wanted anyone there, and we walked into the room,
I could see her face before we walked in, she was covered
by a sheet up to her nose, I knew she was dead yes but
I didn't know it would be like that, like she'd never
been in her body, like whoever she'd been all the years
that made up her life it had all gone somewhere else,
I thought this is what afterlife means, even the skin
was breakable, the hair was dry, I put out my hand
and touched her forehead and the sheet fell away,
her mouth was open and her teeth, her bottom teeth,
which were just like mine looked like an animal's teeth,
they were misshapen and yellow, even her teeth looked old
and she wasn't old she was 58 lying there, I'd never seen
death before but this was it I knew it, it all smelled
like death, I wanted to know what it was like when she
died, I wanted to know where she'd gone, I wanted to ask
questions like where is she, I still ask them seven years
later as I put up her photograph for the first time,
feeling like I'm leaving that room behind at last,
opening the door and walking out into fresh air.

(no subject)

[rachigurl5.livejournal.com]

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

(no subject)

[agata.livejournal.com]

PABLO NERUDA POETRY

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

(no subject)

[agata.livejournal.com]

For the young who want to

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms


is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

-Marge Piercy

Copyright 1980, Middlemarsh, Inc.
from THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE
Alfred A. Knopf, New York