Our new rose, our scrupulous ritual tetrahedrons.
In the face of so many blades to animosity.
Within the scratching receptacles.
I'd do it for the branch in which you preserve
for the honeysuckles of cashmire you've built.
A loaf of bread baked with lewd sincerity and salt.
The green car weaves in transforming your eyelids.
It showers like a flag outside the cathedral.
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow: You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand— How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep—while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ââ
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly call out their names.
The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness ââ
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness â blackness and silence
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place. Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky —— Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection At the end, they soberly call out their names.
The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape. The eyes lift after it and find the moon. The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. How I would like to believe in tenderness —— The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering Blue and mystical over the face of the stars Inside the church, the saints will all be blue, Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. And the message of the yew tree is blackness — blackness and silence
Written a year ago and read at my mother-in-law's memorial service by the author. My Grandmother's Garden by M. Bessac I am bunches of wildflowers with their roots ripped up I am the weeds your mother cannot get rid of And the stained red poppies, held in place with a cup I am the big willow tree, who watched you learn to love I am the California sweet peas, so stubborn as to only grow in the summer The orange tinted daffodils your father bought ...so long ago The mistletoe your little sister always takes down for Mummer I am the thorn-prone ivy that only grows in the snow I am everywhere, it is time you know For when it is my time to go I will be anywhere, everywhere in that lush green paseo
Written a year ago and read at my mother-in-law's memorial service by the author.
My Grandmother's Garden by M. Bessac
I am bunches of wildflowers with their roots ripped up
I am the weeds your mother cannot get rid of
And the stained red poppies, held in place with a cup
I am the big willow tree, who watched you learn to love
I am the California sweet peas, so stubborn as to only grow in the summer
The orange tinted daffodils your father bought ...so long ago
The mistletoe your little sister always takes down for Mummer
I am the thorn-prone ivy that only grows in the snow
I am everywhere, it is time you know
For when it is my time to go
I will be anywhere, everywhere in that lush green paseo
Written a year ago and read at my mother-in-law's memorial service by the author.
My Grandmother's Garden by M. Bessac
I am bunches of wildflowers with their roots ripped up
I am the weeds your mother cannot get rid of
And the stained red poppies, held in place with a cup
I am the big willow tree, who watched you learn to love
I am the California sweet peas, so stubborn as to only grow in the summer
The orange tinted daffodils your father bought ...so long ago
The mistletoe your little sister always takes down for Mummer
I am the thorn-prone ivy that only grows in the snow
I am everywhere, it is time you know
For when it is my time to go
I will be anywhere, everywhere in that lush green paseo
As soon as I sat down the seven year old girl offered me gum and showed me a postcard of the airplane we were in. She was writing her mother whom she had just left at the gate, smearing her love in blue magic marker. Then she pulled out a drawing she had made of the wind and one of a cloud and a man who had ladders for legs and eight arms extending eight hands. After the heavy body of the plane lifted off the ground, she held my hand and talked about her flute teacher's birds and the eels she had bought in a bait store and let loose on the beach, each one slithering into the dark of the green waves, returning to what she said she could not imagine.
The turkey vulture,
a shy bird ungainly on the ground
but massively graceful in flight,
responds to attack
uniquely.
Men have contempt for this scavenger
because he eats without killing.
When an enemy attacks,
the turkey vulture vomits:
the shock and disgust of the predator
are usually sufficient
to effect his escape.
He loses only his dinner,
easily replaces.
All day I have been thinking
how to adapt
this method of resistance.
Sometimes only the stark
will to disgust
prevents our being consumed:
there are clearly times
when we must make a stink
to survive.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Jun 28, 2022 - 11:35am
Antigone wrote:
Marge Piercy: Right To Life
A woman is not a basket you place your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood hen you can slip duck eggs under. Not the purse holding the coins of your descendants till you spend them in wars. Not a bank where your genes gather interest and interesting mutations in the tainted rain, any more than you are.
You plant corn and you harvest it to eat or sell. You put the lamb in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to butcher for chops. You slice the mountain in two for a road and gouge the high plains for coal and the waters run muddy for miles and years. Fish die but you do not call them yours unless you wished to eat them.
Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman. You lay claim to her pastures for grazing, fields for growing babies like iceberg lettuce. You value children so dearly that none ever go hungry, none weep with no one to tend them when mothers work, none lack fresh fruit, none chew lead or cough to death and your orphanages are empty. Every noon the best restaurants serve poor children steaks. At this moment at nine o’clock a partera is performing a table top abortion on an unwed mother in Texas who can’t get Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die of tetanus and her little daughter will cry and be taken away. Next door a husband and wife are sticking pins in the son they did not want. They will explain for hours how wicked he is, how he wants discipline.
We are all born of woman, in the rose of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood and every baby born has a right to love like a seedling to sun. Every baby born unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come due in twenty years with interest, an anger that must find a target, a pain that will beget pain. A decade downstream a child screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched, a firing squad is summoned, a button is pushed and the world burns.
I will choose what enters me, what becomes of my flesh. Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking. You may not use me as your factory. Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind. This is my body. If I give it to you I want it back. My life is a non-negotiable demand.
A woman is not a basket you place your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood hen you can slip duck eggs under. Not the purse holding the coins of your descendants till you spend them in wars. Not a bank where your genes gather interest and interesting mutations in the tainted rain, any more than you are.
You plant corn and you harvest it to eat or sell. You put the lamb in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to butcher for chops. You slice the mountain in two for a road and gouge the high plains for coal and the waters run muddy for miles and years. Fish die but you do not call them yours unless you wished to eat them.
Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman. You lay claim to her pastures for grazing, fields for growing babies like iceberg lettuce. You value children so dearly that none ever go hungry, none weep with no one to tend them when mothers work, none lack fresh fruit, none chew lead or cough to death and your orphanages are empty. Every noon the best restaurants serve poor children steaks. At this moment at nine o’clock a partera is performing a table top abortion on an unwed mother in Texas who can’t get Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die of tetanus and her little daughter will cry and be taken away. Next door a husband and wife are sticking pins in the son they did not want. They will explain for hours how wicked he is, how he wants discipline.
We are all born of woman, in the rose of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood and every baby born has a right to love like a seedling to sun. Every baby born unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come due in twenty years with interest, an anger that must find a target, a pain that will beget pain. A decade downstream a child screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched, a firing squad is summoned, a button is pushed and the world burns.
I will choose what enters me, what becomes of my flesh. Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking. You may not use me as your factory. Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind. This is my body. If I give it to you I want it back. My life is a non-negotiable demand.
There is a country to cross you will find in the corner of your eye, in the quick slip of your foot—air far down, a snap that might have caught. And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing voice that finds its way by being afraid. That country is there, for us, carried as it is crossed. What you fear will not go away: it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That’s the world, and we all live there.
