The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010

Home > Fantasy > The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010 > Page 12
The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010 Page 12

by Marge Piercy


  hunger, always hungry

  a woman made of pain.

  A cat or dog approaches another,

  they sniff noses. They sniff behinds.

  They bristle or lick. They fall

  in love as often as we do,

  as passionately. But they fall

  in love or lust with furry flesh,

  not silicon breasts or push up bras

  rib removal or liposuction.

  It is not for male or female dogs

  that poodles are clipped

  to topiary hedges.

  If only we could like each other raw.

  If only we could love ourselves

  like healthy babies burbling in our arms.

  If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed

  to need what is sold us.

  Why should we want to live inside ads?

  Why should we want to scourge our softness,

  to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?

  Why should we punish each other with scorn

  as if to have a large ass

  were worse than being greedy or mean?

  When will women not be compelled

  to view their bodies as science projects,

  gardens to be weeded,

  dogs to be trained?

  When will a woman cease

  to be made of pain?

  Elegy in rock, for Audre Lorde

  A child, I cherished a polyhedron of salt

  my father brought up from under Detroit,

  the pure crystal from a deep mine.

  The miracle was it felt hard and clear

  as glass and yet the tongue said tears.

  My other treasure was a polished shard

  of anthracite that glittered on my palm,

  harder, fiercer than the soft coal

  we shoveled into the basement furnace.

  Coal halfway to a diamond?

  More than once we talked about rocks

  for which you had a passion, curiosity

  fired by adventure, reading the landscape

  with eye and pick, cliffs that confided

  in a lover’s whisper their history.

  Obsidian, the obvious: it can take

  an edge, can serve as a knife

  in ritual or in combat, as your fine

  dark deep voice could pour out love

  or take an edge like a machete.

  Carnelian lips, black and rose marble

  metamorphosed rock blasted into beauty:

  but what you are now that only the work

  remains is garnet, not a flashy

  jewel, native, smoldering, female.

  Garnet: the blackest red,

  color of the inner woman, of deep sex,

  color of the inside of the lid closed tight

  while the eye still searches

  for light in itself.

  Sand is the residue,

  the pulverized bones of mountains.

  Here on the great beach in summer

  the sea rolls over and bares

  slabs of tawny sand that glitter:

  little buffed worlds of garnet

  pool like the shadows of old blood

  under the sun’s yellow stare.

  On my palm they wink, this shading

  like rouge stippling the sand.

  You told me of a garnet big as a child’s

  head, you told me of garnets glowing

  like women’s stories pulled from the dust,

  garnets you freed into the sun,

  lying on your palm like summer nights.

  Rich darkness I praise, dark richness,

  the true color of a live pulsing heart,

  blackberries in strong sunlight,

  crow’s colors, black tulip chalices,

  the city sky glowering from the plain.

  Audre, Audre, your work shines on the night

  of the world, the blaze of your words

  but your own female power and beauty

  are gone, a garnet ground into powder

  and dissolved in wine the earth drinks.

  All systems are up

  You dial and a voice answers.

  After you have stammered a reply

  into dead air, you realize

  it cannot hear or know you.

  The preprogrammed voice of a thing

  addresses you as a retarded dog:

  Press 0 if you wish to be connected

  to emergency services. Press 1

  to order a product. Press 2

  to speak to an agent. Press 3

  if you need assistance.

  Have a nice day.

  I press 3. I need information.

  Another robot says, Press 1

  if you wish to order a product.

  Press 2 to speak to an agent

  —who bleeds? Press 3 if

  you need further assistance.

  I press 3. The voice says,

  You have pressed 3.

  That is not a valid number.

  Please press 4 and make

  another choice. I press 4.

  The canned voice speaks:

  Press 3 if you desire euthanasia.

  Press 2 if you wish to detonate.

  Press 1 never to have been born.

  Press 0 for universal Armageddon.

  Have a nice day.

  For two women shot to death in Brookline, Massachusetts

  How dare a woman choose?

  Choose to be pregnant

  choose to be childless

  choose to be lesbian

  choose to have two lovers or none

  choose to abort

  choose to live alone

  choose to walk alone

  at night

  choose to come and to go

  without permission

  without leave

  without a man.

  Consider a woman’s blood

  spilled on a desk,

  pooled on an office floor,

  an ordinary morning at work,

  an ordinary morning of helping

  other women choose

  to be or not to be

  pregnant.

  A woman young and smiling

  sitting at a desk

  trying to put other woman at ease

  now bleeds from five

  large wounds, bleeding

  from her organs

  bleeding out her life.

  A young man is angry at women

  women who say no

  women who say maybe and mean no

  women who won’t

  women who do and they shouldn’t.

  If they are pregnant they are bad

  because that proves

  they did it with someone,

  they did it

  and should die.

  A man gets angry with a woman who decides to leave him

  who decides to walk off

  who decides to walk

  who decides.

  Woman are not real to such men.

  They should behave as meat.

  Such men drag them into the woods

  and stab them

  climb in their windows and rape them

  such men shoot them in kitchens

  such men strangle them in bed

  such men lie in wait

  and ambush them in parking lots

  such men walk into a clinic

  and kill the first woman they see.

  In harm’s way:

  meaning in the way of a man

  who is tasting his anger

  like rare steak.

  A daily ordinary courage

  doing what has to be done

  every morning, every afternoon

  doing it over and over

  because it is needed

  put them in harm’s way.

  Two women dying

  because they did their job

  helping other women survive.

  Two women dead


  from the stupidity of an ex–altar boy

  who saw himself

  as a fetus

  who pumped his sullen fury

  automatically

  into the woman in front of him

  twice, and intended more.

  Stand up now and say No More.

  Stand up now and say We will not

  be ruled by crazies and killers,

  by shotguns and bombs and acid.

  We will not dwell in the caves of fear.

  We will make each other strong.

  We will make each other safe.

  There is no other monument.

  A day in the life

  She is wakened at 4 a.m.

  Of course she does not

  pick up, but listens

  through the answering machine

  to the male voice promising

  she will burn in hell.

  At seven she opens her door.

  A dead cat is hammered

  to her porch: brown tabby.

  Hit by a car, no collar.

  She hugs her own Duke of Orange.

  She cannot let him out.

  She has her car locked

  in a neighbor’s garage,

  safe from pipe bombs,

  but she must walk there.

  She drives to work

  a circuitous guesswork route.

  Outside the clinic three

  men walk in circles with photos

  of six-month fetuses.

  They surround her car.

  They are forbidden the parking

  lot but police don’t care.

  They bang on her hood.

  As she gets out, they bump

  and jostle her. One thrusts

  his sign into her face.

  She protects her eyes.

  Something hard strikes her back.

  Inside she sighs. Turns on

  the lights, the air

  conditioning, the coffee

  machine. The security system

  is always on. The funds

  for teenage contraception,

  gone into metal detectors.

  She answers the phone.

  “Is this where you kill babies?”

  The second call a woman

  is weeping. The day begins.

  A girl raped by her stepfather,

  a harried mother with too

  many children and diabetes,

  a terrified teenager who does

  not remember how it happened,

  a woman with an injunction

  against an abuser. All day

  she takes their calls,

  all day she checks them in,

  takes medical histories,

  holds hands, dries tears,

  hears secrets and lies and

  horrors, soothes, continues.

  Every time a new patient

  walks in, a tinny voice

  whispers, is this the one

  carrying a handgun, with

  an automatic weapon, with

  a knife? She sits exposed.

  She answers the phone,

  “I’m going to cut your throat,

  you murderer.” “Have

  a nice day.” A bomb threat

  is called in. She has

  to empty the clinic.

  The police finally come.

  There is no bomb. The

  doctor tells her how they

  are stalking his daughter.

  Then she goes home to Duke.

  Eats a late supper by the TV.

  Her mother calls. Her

  boyfriend comes over. She

  cries in his arms. He is,

  she can tell, getting tired

  of her tears. Next morning

  she rises and day falls

  on her like a truckload

  of wet cement. This is

  a true story, this is

  what I know of virtue,

  this is what I know

  of goodness in our time.

  The grey flannel sexual harassment suit

  The woman in the sexual harassment

  suit should be a virgin

  who attended church every Sunday,

  only ten thousand miles on her

  back and forth to the pew.

  Her immaculate house is

  bleached with chlorine tears.

  The woman in the sexual harassment

  suit should never have known

  a man other than her father

  who kissed her only

  on the cheek, and the minister

  who patted her head

  with his gloves on.

  The woman in the sexual harassment

  suit is visited by female

  angels only, has a platinum

  hymen protected by Brinks,

  is white of course as unpainted

  plaster, naturally blonde

  and speaks only English.

  The woman in the sexual harassment

  suit wears white cotton blouses

  buttoned to the throat, small

  pearl clip-on earrings,

  grey or blue suits and one

  inch heels with nylons.

  Her nails and lips are pink.

  If you are other than we have

  described above, please do

  not bother to complain.

  You are not a lady.

  We cannot help you.

  A woman like you simply

  cannot be harassed.

  On guard

  I want you for my bodyguard,

  to curl round each other like two socks

  matched and balled in a drawer.

  I want you to warm my backside,

  two S’s snaked curve to curve

  in the down burrow of the bed.

  I want you to tuck in my illness,

  coddle me with tea and chicken

  soup whose steam sweetens the house.

  I want you to watch my back

  as knives wink in the thin light

  and whips crack out from shelter.

  Guard my body against dust and disuse,

  warm me from the inside out,

  lie over me, under me, beside me

  in bed as the night’s creek

  rushes over our shining bones

  and we wake to the morning fresh

  and wet, a birch leaf just uncurling.

  Guard my body from disdain as age

  widens me like a river delta.

  Let us guard each other until death,

  with teeth, brain and galloping heart,

  each other’s rose red warrior.

  The thief

  Dina sent me a postcard,

  history at a glance,

  Sonka of the golden hand,

  the notorious thief

  being put in chains.

  She looks young still, dark hair,

  unsmiling—why would she?

  1915, surrounded by Russian men

  two blacksmiths preparing

  the chains and three soldiers

  to guard her, weaponless.

  A Jew from Odessa, she could

  move faster than water

  as quiet as a leaf growing

  more lightly than a shaft

  of sun tapping your arm.

  Like all young women

  she was full of desires

  little hot pomegranate seeds

  bursting in her womb,

  wishes crying from the dull

  mirror of poverty.

  Sonka heard the voices calling

  from inside the coins,

  take me, Sonka, take me

  turn me into something sweet

  turn me into something warm and soft

  a cashmere shawl, a silk mantilla

  a coat of fur like a bed of loving.

  Eat me, said the chicken.

  drink me, the brandy sang.

  Wear me, the blouse whispered.

  Sonka of the go
lden hands

  stands in the grim yard

  of the prison, with her quick

  hands bound in iron bracelets

  calling with her solemn eyes

  let me go, oh you who stare

  at me and jail me in your

  camera, now at last

  free me to dance again

  as I freed

  those captured coins.

  Belly good

  A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs

  but I’ve never seen wheat in a pile.

  Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots

  make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek

  as a seal hauled out in the winter sun.

  I can see you as a great goose egg

  or a single juicy and fully ripe peach.

  You swell like a natural grassy hill.

  You are symmetrical as a Hopewell mound,

  with the eye of the naval wide open,

  the eye of my apple, the pear’s port

  window. You’re not supposed to exist

  at all this decade. You’re to be flat

  as a kitchen table, so children with

  roller skates can speed over you

  like those sidewalks of my childhood

  that each gave a different roar under

  my wheels. You’re required to show

  muscle striations like the ocean

  sand at ebb tide, but brick hard.

  Clothing is not designed for women

  of whose warm and flagrant bodies

  you are a swelling part. Yet I confess

  I meditate with my hands folded on you,

  a maternal cushion radiating comfort.

  Even when I have been at my thinnest,

  you have never abandoned me but curled

  round as a sleeping cat under my skirt.

  When I spread out, so do you. You like

  to eat, drink and bang on another belly.

  In anxiety I clutch you with nervous fingers

  as if you were a purse full of calm.

  In my grandmother standing in the fierce sun

  I see your cauldron that held eleven children

 

‹ Prev