| |
Marge Piercy
USA
Marge Piercy is the author of sixteen collections of poetry
among
them, What are Big Girls Made Of? and The Art of Blessing
the Day: Poems with a Jewish theme, and most recently Colors
Passing Through Us, all published by Alfred A. Knopf, who will
be bringing out a new collection in October, The Crooked
Inheritance. She has written sixteen novels, most recently
Sex
Wars from Morrow/Harper Collins, who also published her memoir,
Sleeping with Cats. A CD of her political poetry LOUDER,
WE CAN'T HEAR YOU YET is just out from Leapfrog Press, which
also published her early poems Early Grrrl and co-authored
with Ira Wood, So You Want To Write: How to Master the Craft of
Fiction and Personal Narrative, now in its 2nd enlarged edition.
Marge Piercy was born March 31, 1936 in Detroit and grew up in a
small house in a working-class neighborhood. |
The crooked inheritance
A short neck like my mother
long legs like my father
my grandmother's cataract of hair
and my grandmother's cataracts
my father's glaucoma
my mother's stout heart
my father's quick temper
my mother's curiosity
my father's rationality
my mother's fulsome breasts
my father's narrow feet
Yet only my grandmother saw in me
a remembrance of children past
You have a good quick mind like Moishe.
Your grandfather zecher l'vrocho
had a gift for languages too.
Rivka also had weak eyes
and a delicate stomach.
You can run as fast as Feygeleh.
You know that means little bird?
I was a nest of fledglings chirping
hunger and a future of flight
to her, but to my parents,
the misshapen duckling
who failed to make flesh
their dreams of belonging:
a miraculous blond angel
who would do everything
right they had failed.
Instead they got a black
haired poet who ran away.
Copyright 2006 Marge Piercy
Box 1473
Wellfleet MA 02667
Antiseptic
How easy it is to move chess
pieces across a board, to plan
the movement of armies, battle
ships, bombers and transports.
The room is warm and brightly
lit, the gentlemen are clean,
well dressed, well fed. They
know each other comfortably.
We will attack them there.
Them is an abstraction.
Equations leave out colla-
teral damage. Most people
who die in wars are not
combatants but little girls,
old men, wives. They aren't
counted in the war rooms.
The men congratulate each
other's brilliance. As they
are moved on the board,
the pieces bleed.
Copyright 2006 Marge Piercy
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 take out.
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.
Copyright 2004 Marge Piercy, published in the CAPE COD VOICE
Wet July on the Cape
The cabbages are pregnant with the rain
each day bigger, rounder, darker maroon.
The tomatoes tangle where paths were --
a jungle of rough foliage: keep out.
This is not beach nor sailing weather.
The tourists sulk in their motel rooms
yelling at their kids. They drive up
and down the highway looking for fun
which must be sold somewhere
among the plastic whales and whirligigs.
Green is a fecund tide of pines, of oaks
and locusts, green of wild grasses
usually lion colored in the marshes
by now. Every leaf is fat with water.
In a landscape not usually lush,
rabbits, beetles, goldfinches, slugs
butterflies, orioles, weasels and I
dance the slow shuffle of joy
in water, water, water filling us
to the brim, washed, satiated, growing.
Copyright 2004 Marge Piercy
Originally published in CAPRICE.
The Hollywood haircut
I pay $35 to have my hair cut.
Last night I saw on television
from Hollywood a $400 haircut.
If I had a $400 haircut
would traffic part for me on the highway
like the Red Sea?
Would men one third my age
follow me panting in the street
and old men faint as I passed?
If I had a $400 haircut
would the rain stop
lest it dampen my perfect do?
If I had a $400 haircut
would my books become best
sellers and all my bills be written paid?
If I had a $400 haircut
would I have more orgasms
louder ones; would my eyelashes curl?
If I had a $400 hair cut
would people buy calendars
just me on every month grinning.
If I had a $400 hair cut
would everyone love me and
would you volunteer
to come clean my house
iron my never ironed shirts
and weed my jungle garden?
No? I thought so.
I'll stick to Sarah
and my $35 trim.
Copyright 2004 Marge Piercy
Originally published in the RED ROCK REVIEW
© All Copyright, Marge Piercy.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By
Permission.
|