The Hunger Moon

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The Hunger Moon Page 21

by Marge Piercy


  Choose a color

  Between red and dead, we lived frightened

  crouching, covering, signing loyalty oaths.

  The war they called cold froze our brains.

  The Russians were coming to burn

  our flags and steal our color TVs.

  Between green and machine, the ozone

  fades away scorching our flesh. Glaciers

  seep into the sea. Hurricanes come

  in quick posses. Drought or torrent.

  Polar bears drown swimming for land.

  Between blue and Prozac, who will

  you be? The brooks are grey with

  antibiotics, antidepressants, pain

  killers. The fish sleep upsidedown.

  This pill will make you inane.

  Between lavender and hellfire,

  preachers froth. Get saved again,

  again. Yet it still itches. In the

  dark, what you really want licks

  your thighs, burns hot in your brain.

  Between white and night, dark

  faces invade your entitlement.

  They are stealing your birthright

  to stomp and swell. Why can’t

  the world be peopled by only you?

  Pick a color, any color from zero

  to infinity, from blood to cancer,

  from war to Armageddon, from AIDS

  to bone, from here to no one

  on a very fast jet.

  Deadlocked wedlock

  Marriage is one man and one woman

  they say, one at a time, then another, another.

  You see the buffed faces of old men shining

  with money as they lead their young blonds

  and toddlers, second or third families,

  the shopworn wives donated to Goodwill.

  It has always been so, they say,

  one man and one woman in the Bible—

  like Jacob with Leah and Rachel

  and two bondmaidens dropping children,

  his four women competing to swell

  like a galaxy of moons.

  In Tibet women had various husbands at once.

  I had two myself for a few years.

  In earlier times and different cultures

  and tribes, men married men and women

  married women, and the sky never fell.

  People loved as they would and must

  and the rivers still ran clean and the grass

  grew a lot thicker and more abundantly

  than it does with us. What damage

  does love do in the soft grey evenings

  when the rain drifts like pigeon feathers

  across the sky and into the trees?

  Why, gentlemen, do you fear two women

  who walk holding hands with their child?

  Two fifty-year-old men exchange rings

  and kiss, and you catch mad cow disease?

  What do you hate when you watch

  lovers? What are you really missing?

  Money is one of those things

  Money is one of those things like health:

  when you have it you feel entitled.

  It’s part of you like your left elbow

  or your front teeth. But they can

  easily be pulled and so can your

  credit, your wage, all that money

  you squirreled away in stocks

  going up like rockets on the 4th.

  Money never belongs to us.

  It’s a paper fiction we believe

  like the first guy who says

  in the backseat he loves you.

  He’s already planning a move

  on a cheerleader, but his voice trembles

  a little and you’re too young to

  know it’s his hardon talking.

  Money comes on that way. You

  want that, it tells you, you got to have

  a new couch, a new car, a new nose.

  I’ll make you so happy, it croons,

  I’ll make you shine like a gas fire

  burning in a car that just rearended

  an SUV, and don’t you want one too?

  I love you, I’m yours forever

  money sings, you’re so important,

  unique, I’m your love slave.

  Just make a central place for me

  in your heart, your hearth. Right

  there where your brain used to be.

  Oh, it comes and it goes like a tide

  pulled by a titanium moon, and what

  it truly loves and obeys is power.

  In our name

  In your name, we have invaded

  come with planes, tanks and artillery

  into a country and wonder why

  they do not like us

  be proud

  In your name we have bombed villages

  and towns and left torn babies

  the bloated bellies of their mothers

  a little boy crying for his father

  who lies under his broken house

  the smashed arms of teenagers

  in the sunbaked streets

  every death creates a warrior

  be proud

  In our name we have taken men

  and women from their homes

  in the afternoon breaking down their doors

  in the night waking them to the rattle

  of weapons leaving their children

  weeping with fear

  be proud

  In your name we have taken those we suspect

  because they were in the wrong place

  or because someone who hated them gave their name

  or because a soldier didn’t like the way they stared at him

  put them in cells and strung them up like slaughtered cattle

  stripped their clothes and mocked them naked

  ran electricity through their tender parts

  set dogs to rip their flesh

  in your name

  be proud

  This is who we are becoming.

  There is none other but us sanctioning this.

  In our name young boys from Newark and Sandusky

  are shot at by people who live in the place

  they have been marched to.

  in our name a young woman from Detroit

  is disemboweled by a bomb.

  In our name the sons of out of work miners

  step on land mines.

  In our name their bodies are shipped home.

  In our name fathers return to their children

  maimed and blind, their brains sered.

  This is who we are in Athens or in Lima not Ohio

  when people glare at us in the street.

  This is the person my passport identifies,

  the one who allows the order to be given

  for blood to be mixed with sand

  for bones to be mixed with mud

  In our name is all this being carried out right now

  as we sit here, as we speak, as we sleep.

  Every day we do not act, we are permitting.

  Every day we do not say no, we all say yes

  be proud.

  Bashert*

  Remember when you invited me into

  your kitchen and cut a ripe mango:

  orange, deep scented, juicy on a green

  platter. I thought then, perhaps

  we will be lovers.

  Remember when you came up the gravel

  drive and I fed you my grandmother’s

  sour cherry soup, cold and touched

  with cream. You wondered

  then, could we be lovers?

  So many years worn away, smoothed

  in the swift waters of memory.

  Suppose you had not driven out

  that June day, suppose it had rained

  suppose I had accepted a former

  lover’s Iowa invitation. Suppose,

  a hundred forking divergent moments

  li
ke the intricate web of cracked

  pond ice. Or maybe the dividing

  paths of a myriad other choices

  would have joined back to the master

  trunk where we clasp each other

  murmuring love. I was the juicy

  mango you bit into that day, and you

  are my sweet and my sour

  my past and my future, my best

  hope and my worst fear, my friend

  and brother and sparring partner.

  Chance or fate, we grasped what

  was offered us and we hold on.

  * the destined one

  The lived in look

  My second mother-in-law had white carpeting

  white sofa with blue designer touches.

  Everything sparkled. Walking on the beach

  I got tar on bare feet. Footprints

  across that arctic expanse marred

  perfection. I have never eaten

  without dribbles and droplets exploding

  from me like wet sparks on tablecloth

  on my clothes, on the ceiling,

  miraculously appearing five blocks

  away as stigmata on statues. In short

  a certain limited chaos exudes from

  my pores. Everyone over fifty was born

  to a world where ideal housewives

  scrubbed floors to blinding gloss

  in pearls and taffeta dresses on TV.

  Women came with umbilical cords

  leading to vacuum cleaners. You

  plugged in a wife and she began

  a wash cycle while her eyes spun.

  Every three weeks we shovel out

  the kitchen and bath. Spanish moss

  of webs festoon our rafters. Cat hair

  is the decorating theme of our couches.

  Don’t apologize for walls children

  drew robots on, don’t blush for last

  month’s newspapers on the coffee

  table under cartons from Sunday’s takeout.

  This is the sweet imprint of your life

  and loves upon the rumpled sheets

  of your days. Relax. Breathe deeply.

  Mess will make us free.

  Mated

  You are shoveling snow in the long drive

  down to the road, tossing it. From

  my window you resemble a great

  downcoated bear shaking himself dry.

  You cannot make a good omelet;

  I cannot fence the tomato garden.

  You cannot balance a checkbook;

  I cannot pull out a rusted screw.

  I can make perfect pie dough; you

  can plow all the gardens by dusk.

  I can speak French and Spanish,

  learn languages enough to manage

  Czech, Greek, Norwegian, what

  ever travel requires; you can drive

  on the wrong side of roads, conquer

  roundabouts an hour out of Heathrow.

  I can read maps; you read spread-

  sheets, wiring diagrams. That’s

  what mating is, the inserting of

  parts that together make completion

  prick and cunt, word and answer

  all the antiphony of love.

  My grandmother’s song

  We were girls, said my grandmother.

  We went to the river with our laundry

  to beat it on the stones, washing

  it clean, and then we spread it

  on the wide grey boulders to dry.

  We were laughing, said my grandmother

  all of us girls together unmarried

  and mostly unafraid, although of course

  as Jews we were always a little on edge.

  You know how a sparrow pecks seeds

  always watching, listening for danger

  to pounce. We gossiped about bad

  girls over the river and boys and who

  had peeked at us as we passed.

  We took off our clothes, hung them

  on bushes and bathed in the cool

  rushing water, talking of Maidele

  who threw herself in the current

  to carry her big belly away, telling

  of ghosts and dybbuks, of promises.

  Then grandmother would sigh and dab

  a small tear, and I would wonder

  what she missed. I would rather

  bathe in a tub, I said, in warm water.

  The mikvah was warm, she said, and

  the river was cold, but we liked

  the river, young girls who did not

  guess what would happen to us, how

  our hopes would melt like candle wax

  how we would bear and bear children

  like apples falling from the tree

  so many, but a tree that bled

  and some would just rot in the grass.

  You never forget the ones who die

  she said even if you only held them

  two months or twelve, they come

  back in the night and circle like fish

  opening silent mouths and never

  do they grow older, but you do.

  Your hair hangs like strands

  of a worn-out mop, your flesh

  puffs up like bread from too much yeast

  or dwindles till your arms are brittle

  sticks and the frost never leaves you.

  I want to go down to the river

  again, I want to hear the singing

  and tell stories with friends we would

  never tell in front of our mothers.

  I want to go down to the river,

  wade in and let it wash my bones

  down to the hope that must surely

  still form their marrow, deep

  and rich in spite of the sights

  that have dimmed my eyes

  and tears that have pickled my heart.

  The birthday of the world

  On the birthday of the world

  I begin to contemplate

  what I have done and left

  undone, but this year

  not so much rebuilding

  of my perennially damaged

  psyche, shoring up eroding

  friendships, digging out

  stumps of old resentments

  that refuse to rot on their own.

  No, this year I want to call

  myself to task for what

  I have done and not done

  for peace. How much have

  I dared in opposition?

  How much have I put

  on the line for freedom?

  For mine and others?

  As these freedoms are pared,

  sliced and diced, where

  have I spoken out? Who

  have I tried to move? In

  this holy season, I stand

  self-convicted of sloth

  in a time when lies choke

  the mind and rhetoric

  bends reason to slithering

  choking pythons. Here

  I stand before the gates

  opening, the fire dazzling

  my eyes and as I approach

  what judges me, I judge

  myself. Give me weapons

  of minute destruction. Let

  my words turn into sparks.

  N’eilah

  The hinge of the year:

  the great gates opening

  and then slowly slowly

  closing on us.

  I always imagine those gates

  hanging over the ocean

  fiery over the stone grey

  waters of evening.

  We cast what we must

  change about ourselves

  onto the waters flowing

  to the sea. The sins,

  errors, bad habits, whatever

  you call them, dissolve.

  When I was little I cried

  out I! I! I! I want I want.

  Older, I f
eel less important,

  a worker bee in the hive

  of history, miles of hard

  labor to make my sweetness.

  The gates are closing

  The light is failing

  I kneel before what I love

  imploring that it may live.

  So much breaks, wears

  down, fails in us. We must

  forgive our broken promises—

  their sharp shards in our hands.

  In the sukkah

  Open to the sky

  as our lives truly are

  for down upon us can rain

  all that our world has to offer—

  sun and sleet, bombs and debris,

  bits of space junk, meteorites

  the red and yellow leaves

  just beginning to color

  and drift like open wings

  of butterflies spiraling down—

  we sit in our makeshift hut

  willfully transitory, dressed

  with the fruit of harvest

  pumpkins, apples and nuts.

  This is the feast where we

  are commanded to be glad,

  to rejoice in the bounty of earth

  fat or meager. We’re exposed.

  Seldom do we sit or sleep

  outside in this cooling time

  as the earth plunges

  toward darkness and ice.

  We hear owls, the surviving

  crickets, the rustling of fast

  small life in the underbrush,

  the padding of raccoons,

  coywolves howling at the full moon

  from down in the marsh.

  It is a kind of nakedness

  to strip off our houses

  like snails left unprotected

 

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