Marge Piercy (March 31, 1936 -) What can they doto you? Whatever they want.They can set you up, they canbust you, they can breakyour fingers, they canburn your brain with electricity,blur you with drugs till youcan't walk, can't remember, they cantake your child, wall upyour lover. They can do anythingyou can't stop themfrom doing. How …
Letitia Elizabeth Landon – Home
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (August 14, 1802 – October 15, 1838) Aye, here, dear love, is just a home, Like what our home should be;A home of peace—a home of love— As made for thee and me. A cottage with its roof of thatch, Its porch of the red rose,Its white walls hidden by the wreath …
Marge Piercy – Limited But Fertile Possibilities
Marge Piercy (March 31, 1936 -) We cannot have monogrammed towelsor matches with our names on. We cannothave children. We cannot share jointtax returns. We don’t have a past.Our future is a striped unicorn, fragile,shy, the first of a newspecies born without kindto hostile kin. We can work togethersnarling and giggling and grunting.Every few years …
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Alejandro Escudé – Bed Sheets (Moving Out After Separation)
Alejandro Escudé I wanted my soul out of the house, too.So, I took all my diaries—twenty or so,from the past twenty years. And I slipped theminto the recycling bin. I took all my photos,baby, childhood, adolescence, college years,and trashed those, too. I took my blood pressure reader,and I took the white carnival mask I bought …
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Stephen Dunn – Tenderness
Stephen Dunn (June 24, 1939 -) Back then when so much was clearand I hadn't learnedyoung men learn from women what it feels like to feel just right,I was twenty-three,she thirty-four, two children, a husband in prison for breaking someone's head.Yelled at, slappedaround, all she knew of tenderness was how much she wanted it, and …
Grace Paley – Here
Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) Here I am in the garden laughingan old woman with sagging breastsand a nicely mapped face how did this happenwell that’s who I wanted to be a last a womanin the old style sittingstout thighs apart undera big skirt …
Audre Lorde – The Bees
Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) In the street outside a schoolwhat the children learnpossesses them.Little boys yell as they stone a flock of beestrying to swarmbetween the lunchroom window and an iron grate.The boys sling furious rockssmashing the windows.The bees, buzzing their anger,are slow to attack.Then one boy is stunginto quicker …
Glyn Maxwell – The Ledge
Glyn Maxwell (1962 - ) Woken again by nothing, with this linealready in my wake, I thought of youat twenty, as you are—which passed somehowwhile I was staring—thought how yesterdayyou said you wanted to be young again,which left me with this nothing left to saythat’s woken me. You are, you are—what elsedoes father wail to …
David St. John – Without Mercy, The Rains Continued
David St. John (July 24, 1949 -) There had beenA microphone hiddenBeneath the bedOf course I didn’t realize itAt the time & in factDidn’t know for yearsUntil one day a standardKhaki book mailerArrived & within itAn oldStained cassette tapeSimply labelled in black marker“Him / Me / September, 1975”& as I listened I knew somethingHad been …
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