tuckova

I, being born a woman and distressed (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

 

Effort at Speech Between Two People, by Muriel Rukeyser

Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.
When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair:
a pink rabbit: it was my birthday, and a candle
burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.

Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open:
Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music,
like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me.
There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.

Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental,
fluid: and my widowed aunt played Chopin,
and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept.
I want now to be close to you. I would
link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days. 

I am not happy. I will be open.
I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
There has been fear in my life. Sometimes I speculate
On what a tragedy his life was, really.

Take my hand. Fist my mind in your hand. What are you now?
When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide,
and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death:
if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty,
if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt.
I am unhappy. I am lonely. Speak to me.
I will be open. I think he never loved me:
he loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam
that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls:
he said with a gay mouth: I love you. Grow to know me.

What are you now? If we could touch one another,
if these our separate entities could come to grips,
clenched like a chinese puzzle... yesterday
I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving... Take my hand. Speak to me.  

that one

Sits beside me and feels bad 
about taking up the space.
Wants desperately to be heard
and does not want to talk.
Rides alongside me everywhere I go, 
occupies a whole seat on the tram,
or sometimes sits in my purse
and wants to be read instead of a book.
Is insistent, is unbearable.
Says, "yes yes but now back to me!"
and it is not kidding.
Blossoms forth when it is least wanted,
racked with sobs in the night when sleep is needed,
is boring holes in the wall
is boring gaps in the conversation 
is boring, boring, boring.
Sees you on the street and bursts into tears.
Cannot shut up for a goddamn second.
needs to be medicated to sleep, to sleep.

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

hm.

A kiss can be a bite,
or a touch a scratch,
from caress to crush.
How some pain is good,
is more real. How it says,
Be here now.

The endless ride is quieted for a moment,
the loud rush turns
to sudden flush
blood beads to the surface
and everything else is trivial

Nails dragged across soft skin,
teeth to the jugular,
muscles stretched to snap.
How we can be animals,
instinct-driven. How we listen
to ourselves finally.

And then after, curled around ourselves
like cats, fully self-content,
licking away the memory,
purring, soft.

Exploded View (for J)

She thinks about how beautiful it is
in photographs or movies, so still. 
How everything separates for a moment- 
the bullet from the gun,
the wheel from the cog,
the threads untangled,
connections all finally revealed.
If it is a diagram it can be labeled.

Meanwhile in life what is still
even in an instant collapses.
In the absence of tension 
the gravity of things becomes apparent.
The bullet untargeted,
the wheel spun,
the thread recoiled.

She says what did you think would happen
when you started to take it apart?
She says what did you expect
from shattered, disassembled; the broken
exploded view?

travel

thus we came to the end of the 
road that we walked so long -- 
awestruck, gazing back at the wondrous
view and thinking of everything
even where we have arrived and what we have
left

Photos from Costa Rica are here.

withis

 On a floor in Japan 
I drew a circle around myself 
because it was the only way to sleep. 
I don't know what waited for me 
but I know I would not have 
survived the night without its protection.

Listen, I told him.
It's not like this gets easy.
It just gets less difficult.

This was just another circle, 
another symbol wrapped around myself, 
a warning sign, a way to keep safe.
Tied around a blood line 
to keep the pulse from being strong enough 
to pull anybody to it. 

The pulse that pulls, 
with a loop round it 
like a falcon's jesses.

It's only a circle, a ring,
a simple pretty thing that became a symbol,
and if I step outside it
slide out from it
in fact there is nothing now possible
I could not have done anyway.

Like any circle it keeps
bad things out and good things in.
Or the other way around, around.

There are so many things to escape,
handcuffs, tethers, the mortal coil.
At night in her sleep
she slides back into her restraint
and wakes for a moment feeling safe
and then remembers.

Imaginary Friend

Watches you while you work; says
all the things you need to hear:
you're good, the best.
Saw what you did there
and laughed with you.
How it feels to be seen
being entirely yourself.

Sees you walk in with
shit on your shoes,
wiping them on someone's
white carpet; says:
Nobody has walked a mile
in these shoes but you. And
forgives you.

Not that you aren't sometimes
a shit-coated asshole, not that
your selfish life is unseen:
that isn't on the table.
The table is heaped
with mystery, something else
feeding and being fed.

Perhaps you are a little lost,
and tucks the blankets 
around you; says
I have understood you,
loved you so much.
Takes the blame if it helps.
And kisses your forehead and is gone.

then

Because I remember what it was
to wake with your arm over me
your breath in my hair
and know that we had fallen asleep
whispering secrets into each others' eyes

Because I remember what it meant
to climb the narrow stairs
fingers linked for balance
and not need to look at you to know
how your face looked or why

Because I remember how it felt
when you touched me,
a lick of electricity
and for once I didn't ask if you felt that
and we never talked about it with words

Because I remember these things
I don't need to see you again
or even know if they really happened.
But because I remember I wish.