First Grief

First Grief

Last night, my daughter—
Mine by right of love and law,
But not by birth—
Cried for her "other mother."

Accountable
And duly baptized she may be,
But eight is young . . .
For grown-up grief,
The first I cannot mend
With Bandaids,
Easy words,
Or promises.

I cannot tell her yet
How often I have also cried
Sometimes at night
To one whose memory
My birth erased;
Who let me go
To other parents
Who could train and shape the soul
She had prepared,
Then hid her face from me.

-Margaret Munk
(found here)

"Their Voices Bounce Off Mirrors"

Their voices
Bounce off mirrors
Sachet through shearings
Leap to lightning rods and
Spiral there like gymnasts
Exuberant and free.

Their chant is to him

Robed, they perform their
Rituals at basins and mirrors
Chattering holiness like ancient
Priestesses in temples at rivertide
Touched and touched
Cleansed and guided
Touched and touched
They become beautified.

Their chant is of him

And should a child enter there
She is accepted as a holy thing. Mooring her innocence
Among the mirrors, They reach to her
As a Princess reached
For a babe in the Nile

Their chant is by him

And when they conclude their observance
They depart from the sanctum of ease
And return to him
To whom they are wed
By whom they are led
Through whom they are said
Beloved and Beloved

In his image they are created.

- Kristine Barrett


"The author of this poem, Kristine Barrett, was shocked to find that I thought
the poem was about temple rites. I was shocked to discover that she had, in
fact, written the poem after a visit to a beauty salon. Reading through the
poem again, I saw the similarities—that the rites of becoming beautiful,
inside or out, were directed toward the approval of a beloved lord, human or
divine. Most jarring in that haunting imagery of women's voices and hands,
the basins and mirrors, is that the final reflected image is male."
- Linda Sillitoe
(from here)

Sturdy as Home Grown Tomatoes

The Candy Palace

She came to the throne because she thought
it was time. The exact hour before the alarm.
Born to the Kingdom, she had all the trimmings,
certificates bounded in lace, exact replicas
of how it was done. Of course he held
his scepter of having passed through, and knowing
he should (or could) he promised to make her his
Queen-for-a, well, forever. She, as the manuals suggest,
fell in love with his promise. No one could anything
but not see how there was no end
to the rings he began to leave in the tub.
The thing was he had to hurry to get back to
the pumpkin that was waiting to turn and never
did. Still, she attended his table and served
appreciative rolls. She kept the throne
sturdy as home grown tomatoes. This was good.
The base of the throne, however, had a predisposition
to lean. He could not sit squarely and she had lost
her fixings. Night sickness, she began to think,
could account for her yearning for nutmeg
and flour not out of the mill, this longing
for something more common, a touch perhaps.
She remembered in Primary playing Persephone
not wanting to hold the wet hand of Pluto, even to march
for the crowd. In the end of course, it was a renunciation
for air, air.

- Emma Lou Thayne
(found here)

You Gave the Wrong Answer

Myth

Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the
roads.  He smelled a familiar smell.  It was
the Sphinx.  Oedipus said, "I want to ask one quetsion.
Why didn't I recognize my mother?"  "You gave the
wrong answer," said the Sphinx.  "But that was what
made everything possible," said Oedipus.  "No," she said.
"When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning,
two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered,
Man.  You didn't say anything about women."
"When you say Man," said Oedipus, "you include women
too.  Everyone knows that."  She said, "That's what
you think."

- Muriel Rukeyser
(found in this article)

10 Honest Thoughts on Being Loved by a Skinny Boy

(warning - language)

An Ancient Gesture

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where, for years,
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture - a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope…
Penelope, who really cried.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay