Joan Aleshire, 'The Dead'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

The Dead

In poems I read, "the dead" always appear
as collective noun: gray mass without feature,
to be feared or made fun of, and so to be
erased, as if we hadn't once loved or fought
with them, as if we won't end the same.

What was left of you sprawled--shapeless
mass of ash, such a dark gray--in the plastic bag
we came to bury, Pete cutting a neat square
in the turf old graveyard grass becomes--moss,
ferns, even violets blanketing the mounds--
next to your father's headstone, closer to him
in death than you'd wanted all your life to be.

Mother, brother, brothers-in-law, sisters,
nephews, nieces, and I who had known you
best in faltering and urgencies, the slow
steady heat of your engine heart, the rank innocence
of your workman's sweat: we came with mason jars
and each took a last remnant of you, even in this
never "the dead," not the gray feathers
of wood-ash, more like sand we might collect
from a rare beach we visited once,
always yourself: this dense powder
you have come to.

by Joan Aleshire

The Rules by Michele Roberts

[simone-remy.livejournal.com]

Hands must be washed
as soon as poets come in from the street.
Hands must be washed
before tasks such as cooking are commenced.
Slippers must be worn
inside the house at all times;
bare feet must never
make contact with the carpet.
Bare feet that make contact with the carpet
must immediately be washed.
Not more than three glasses of wine
may be taken in any one day.
Anger is not permitted on these premises.
All angry women entering these premises
must be immediately washed.
Desire is permitted to be exhibited on theses premises
once a week for a period of twenty minutes.
Before and after
the female genitals must be immediately washed.

(no subject)

[orange-fell.livejournal.com]

Grotesque

Amy Lowell

Why do the lilies goggle their tongues at me
When I pluck them;
And writhe and twist,
And strangle themselves against my fingers,
So that I can hardly weave the garland
For your hair?
Why do they shriek your name
And spit at me
When I would cluster them?
Must I kill them
To make them lie still,
And send you a wreathe of lolling corpses
To turn putrid and soft
On your forehead
While you dance?