Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts

12/2/17

Do the Dead Know What Time It Is? - Kenneth Patchen

The old guy put down his beer.
Son, he said,
        (and a girl came over to the table where we were: 
        asked us by Jack Christ to buy her a drink.)
Son, I am going to tell you something
The like of which nobody ever was told.
         (and the girl said, I've got nothing on tonight;
        how about you and me going to your place?)
I am going to tell you the story of my mother's
Meeting with God.
         (and I whispered to the girl: I don't have a room,
        but, maybe . . .)
She walked up to where the top of the world is
And He came right up to her and said
So at last you've come home.
         (but maybe what?
        I thought I'd like to stay here and talk to you.)
My mother started to cry and God
Put His arms around her.
         (about what?
        Oh, just talk . . . we'll find something.)
She said it was like a fog coming over her face
And light was everywhere and a soft voice saying
You can stop crying now.
         (what can we talk about that will take all night?
        and I said that I didn't know.)
You can stop crying now.

2/7/16

Beauty - Warsan Shire

My older sister soaps between her legs, her hair
a prayer of curls. When she was my age, she stole
the neighbour's husband, burnt his name into her skin.
For weeks she smelt of cheap perfume and dying flesh.

It's 4 a.m. and she winks at me, bending over the sink,
her small breasts bruised from sucking.
She smiles, pops her gum before saying
boys are haram, don't ever forget that.

Some nights I hear her in her room screaming.
We play Surah Al-Baqarah to drown her out.
Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex.
Our mother has banned her from saying God's name.

12/31/15

A Simple Story - Gwen Harwood

A visiting conductor
     when I was seventeen,
took me back to his hotel room
     to cover the music scene.

I'd written a composition.
     Would wonders never cease –
here was a real musician
     prepared to hold my piece.

He spread my score on the counterpane
     with classic casualness,
and put one hand on the manuscript
     and the other down my dress.

It was hot as hell in The Windsor.
     I said I'd like a drink.
We talked across gin and grapefruit,
     and I heard the ice go clink

as I gazed at the lofty forehead
     of one who led the band,
and guessed at the hoarded sorrows
     no wife could understand.

I dreamed of a soaring passion
     as an egg might dream of flight,
while he read my crude sonata.
     If he'd said, ‘That bar's not right,’

or, ‘Have you thought of a coda?’
     or, ‘Watch that first repeat,’
or, ‘Modulate to the dominant’
     he'd have had me at his feet.

But he shuffled it all together,
     and said, ‘That's lovely, dear,’
as he put it down on the washstand
     in a way that made it clear

that I was no composer.
     And being young and vain,
removed my lovely body
     from one who'd scorned my brain.

I swept off like Miss Virtue
     down dusty Roma Street,
and heard the goods trains whistle
     WHO? WHOOOOOO? in aching heat.