by Marge Piercy
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
wh
o 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 golden 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
shaped under the tent of her summer dress.
