# data[].attributes.body
A Curse Against Elegies

Oh, love, why do we argue like this?
I am tired of all your pious talk.
Also, I am tired of all the dead.
They refuse to listen,
so leave them alone.
Take your foot out of the graveyard,
they are busy being dead.

Everyone was always to blame:
the last empty fifth of booze,
the rusty nails and chicken feathers
that stuck in the mud on the back doorstep,
the worms that lived under the cat’s ear
and the thin-lipped preacher
who refused to call
except once on a flea-ridden day
when he came scuffing in through the yard
looking for a scapegoat.
I hid in the kitchen under the ragbag.

I refuse to remember the dead.
And the dead are bored with the whole thing.
But you — you go ahead,
go on, go on back down
into the graveyard,
lie down where you think their faces are;
talk back to your old bad dreams.

# data[].attributes.body
Menstruation at Forty

I was thinking of a son.
The womb is not a clock
nor a bell tolling,
but in the eleventh month of its life
I feel the November
of the body as well as of the calendar.
In two days it will be my birthday
and as always the earth is done with its harvest.
This time I hunt for death,
the night I lean toward,
the night I want.
Well then–
It was in the womb all along.|

I was thinking of a son ...
You! The never acquired,
the never seeded or unfastened,
you of the genitals I feared,
the stalk and the puppy’s breath.
Will I give you my eyes or his?
Will you be the David or the Susan?
(Those two names I picked and listened for.)
Can you be the man your fathers are—
the leg muscles from Michelangelo,
hands from Yugoslavia
somewhere the peasant, Slavic and determined,
somewhere the survivor bulging with life—
and could it still be possible,
all this with Susan’s eyes?

All this without you—
two days gone in blood.
I myself will die without baptism,
a third daughter they didn’t bother.
My death will come on my name day.
What’s wrong with the name day?
It’s only an angel of the sun.
Woman,
weaving a web over your own,
a thin and tangled poison.
Scorpio,
bad spider—
die!

My death from the wrists,
two name tags,
blood worn like a corsage
to bloom
one on the left and one on the right—
It’s a warm room,
the place of the blood.
Leave the door open on its hinges!

Two days for your death
and two days until mine.

Love! That red disease—
year after year, David, you would make me wild!
David! Susan! David! David!
full and disheveled, hissing into the night,
never growing old,
waiting always for you on the porch ...
year after year,
my carrot, my cabbage,
I would have possessed you before all women,
calling your name,
calling you mine.

# data[].attributes.body
More Than Myself

Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me . . .
I tapped my own head;
it was glass, an inverted bowl.
It’s small thing
to rage inside your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself.

# data[].attributes.body
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

# data[].attributes.body
Don’t smile, sweet child.
The rays of sunshine floating
In the happiness of your eyes
Might provoke someone.

Don’t move.
The childish stumble of your feet
The gestures of your hands
The playfulness playing across
Your body.
You do not yet know what else.
Might provoke someone.

No place, no home, no school
Neither high Gods nor Godmen alike
Could descend to your aid
Rather, who would?
Dear, I am afraid
No place is safe
For a sweet slumber
Except the place they cannot see.
The warmth of the ocean
They have forgotten
Has cradled you like it cradled them once
God, forsake!

I seek no forgiveness for blinding her still
The last throb of her life
Pounding against my hands,
And her skin.
Just once this pain.
Bid adieu.
Alive is dead, either ways.

# data[].attributes.body
What I deem fitting
Most of the time, it be huge
But not near huge as your-

# data[].attributes.body
crumbling, the cursed
Shamble and sham to death and
Foul kind of weather

# data[].attributes.body
Slept, the brothers twain.
One’s had held a folly blade,
Jest over fool’s gold.

# data[].attributes.body
I feel no regret
as I cradled his body
Dear son, you’re now free…

# data[].attributes.body
Sour breath of rose
Petals plucked and crushed under
but bleed you with thorns

# data[].attributes.body
Reflection in mind
Broken shards, order is lost
I, no longer whole

# data[].attributes.body
Yes, things come and go,
As freely as they please (please).
But not till they angst.

# data[].attributes.body
The lava flows, dense.
(No, I’m not that obvious, tsk.)
The fork splices through.

# data[].attributes.body
Blood carrot. stomach
Squeezed, cabbage and tears erupt
get out of my ass child

# data[].attributes.body
You have only bliss
In the kingdom of heaven
I cannot follow

# data[].attributes.body
Pity gift of life
To be misused and misplaced
Till crow's cries ring bleak

# data[].attributes.body
Everybody will die
Everything will be your fault
Don't you dare try

# data[].attributes.body
As I sit on wood,
I bleed as I should(n’t). Bleed,
Into the wine glasses.

# data[].attributes.body
Leave the dead to rest
I tire of religion
People’s sacrilege

# data[].attributes.body
There are no limits,
it is only out of love
Best you leave now, child

# data[].attributes.body
Let them rest down there,
Hush, and be quiet, alright?
Don't let them hear you

# data[].attributes.body
Every month I bloom
Red flowers on the mattress
Death to all these eggs.

Death to womb, barren,
Death to child I cannot bear.
Husband looks away.

Still the night is young
and I'm not. I sleep facing
the moon, him the dark.

# data[].attributes.body
Skin becomes perfect
Death renews my appearance
Faces helmed by me

# data[].attributes.body
flowers and gardens,
my mind grew them from seedlings,
that was my longing,
but my mind was nothing more,
than barren deserts with dead trees.

inside the cerebral cortex of my brain,
was a cracked mirror,
bleeding voices that I battled against,
or never knew existed.

I tried to walk through the narrow passageway,
whispers and whispers growing louder and louder,
screams becoming more and more intolerable,
i tried to scream it out, but didnt realise,
that like poles never attract.

With desperation on my toes, I walked till i saw a door,
and I opened it, only to reveal,
death that was waiting for me on the other side.
My cerebral cortex closed, and all that was left,
was the remnants of a cracked mirror and the blissful tunes of death.

Slowly but surely, it started engulfing me,
and I waited in its embrace,
it got tighter and tighter,
I did not wiggle nor struggle,
for I knew,
like poles never attract.

# data[].attributes.body
unfortunately

people die when they are killed

don’t think about it

# data[].attributes.body
i thought it was naught,
but fun with slippers and socks;
sadly though it was not.

# data[].attributes.body
Scream, cry, throw up, die
Yearn for death and live a lie
Why am I like this

# data[].attributes.body
what do we do with
those who have been left behind
their tears water us

# data[].attributes.body
Dying is easy.
Today I will kill something.
Where should I begin?

# data[].attributes.body
Beautiful or not,
Letting thy mind damn the self
Makes it meaningless

# data[].attributes.body
Another one, lost.
Watching the red, another dream crushed
Conceiving is hard