Slinky Malinki, by Lynley Dodd

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Slinky Malinki

Slinky Malinki
was blacker than black
a stalking and lurking
adventurous cat.
He had bright yellow eyes,
a warbling wail
and a kink at the end
of his very long tail.

He was cheeky and cheerful,
friendly and fun,
he'd chase after leaves
and he'd roll in the sun.

But at night he was wicked
and fiendish and sly.
Through moonlight and shadow
he'd prowl and he'd pry.

He crept along fences,
he leaped over walls,
he poked into corners
and sneaked into halls.
What was he up to?
At night, to be brief,
Slinky Malinki
turned into a
THIEF.

All over town,
from basket and bowl,
he pilfered and pillaged,
he snitched and he stole.
Slippers and sausages,
biscuits, balloons,
brushes and bandages,
pencils and spoons.

He pulled them,
he dragged them,
he HEAVED them until ...
he'd carried them home
to his house on the hill.

( One rascally night... )

Ghazal: One Summer // Barbara Cooker

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

It was nineteen sixty-eight, The Summer of Love;
patchouli and marijuana hung in the air, a murmur of love.

We came to San Francisco in a Volkswagen Bug,
rust-red, my heart, back-beat drummer of love.

I wore a peasant dress, my hair hung down my back;
you'd let yours grow into an Afro, sideburns, latecomer to love.

I thought "forever" meant it, that we were only tourists
at the Be-In, didn't see your eyes rove. A bummer, this love.

We became a statistic, cliche, another marriage gone bad.
I raised our daughter; you had a number of lovers.

My life, a rainbow fish hauled up on hooks and barbs, dulled
and dimmed. Cast-off old tie-dye, could I have been dumber, in love?

Consorting with Angels (Anne Sexton)

[gryphonwing.livejournal.com]

I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the pots,
tired of my mouth and my breasts,
tired of the cosmetics and the silks.
There were still men who sat at my table,
circled around the bowl I offered up.
The bowl was filled with purple grapes
and the flies hovered in for the scent
and even my father came with his white bone.
But I was tired of the gender of things.

Last night I had a dream
and I said to it…
‘You are the answer.
You will outlive my husband and my father.’
In that dream there was a city made of chains
where Joan was put to death in man’s clothes
and the nature of the angels went unexplained,
no two made in the same species,
one with a nose, one with an ear in its hand,
one chewing a star and recording its orbit,
each one like a poem obeying itself,
performing God’s functions,
a people apart.

'You are the answer, '
I said, and entered,
lying down on the gates of the city.
Then the chains were fastened around me
and I lost my common gender and my final aspect.
Adam was on the left of me
and Eve was on the right of me,
both thoroughly inconsistent with the world of reason.
We wove our arms together
and rode under the sun.
I was not a woman anymore,
not one thing or the other.

O daughters of Jerusalem,
the king has brought me into his chamber.
I am black and I am beautiful.
I’ve been opened and undressed.
I have no arms or legs.
I’m all one skin like a fish.
I’m no more a woman
than Christ was a man.