I cannot condescend to it –
The parties I would have thrown.
The dinners I would have cooked.
The beets cannot illuminate anything
In their pink broth. There would
Be so many things that I have
To remember. I would have left
The feasts of nature to other brides
To decayed leaves of all things
I would have counted my chickens
Before they hatched. Only a virginal
Girl could be so terrified of the art
Of lovemaking not the victim of sex abuse.
The beets are still cooking while I am
Writing this poem for the world.
While I am standing on the edge of
Whirls of totems in nature. I have to produce
Something. If I cannot produce progeny
Then what other alternative do I have?
But to write and to write and to write.
Because writing is healing, therapeutic.
I will have no need for psychologists.
Why didn’t you love me mum?
Why did you give me up to the world
That has this infatuation with drowned
Things and the paper tiger empresses
Journaling romantic ghost stories. Clever
Experiments every one of them telling me
That there is something ancestral about a leaf.
The throne upon which it sits reminding
Us all that we are only guests
And that this world has our guts
For breakfast while women cook steak
For their husbands and bring life into
This world, watching their parents cross
Over into the eternity of the hereafter
And so I am left with the stems,
Flowers, with that great melancholy
Of the lonely mind. The hours
Are in my blood. The stain of humanity
That I am so obsessed with. Its canvas.
Its caves. There is the useful light
Tunneling away into the system.
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