uterus poem

we were comforted in the knowledge that it was an extreme breast that killed you.

Dear Donna, I know what you mean now when you said that women

wait their entire lives for something. Then they rest in grasses still waiting

to be reassembled later with their ZEN and their oaths

by the anthropologist. In those jars that the children couldn't open two years

removed from the canning, how many act in conformity with what is

morally right.? "Girl, if I were you i'de let me have some!

let him put his jeans, his oversized shirts in your closet". I will place

after the ruthless struggle of the endometrioses stained on the sliding stick:

the luminous, spheroidal yellowness. the kinky dreams of delineated,

primrose carambola. the starflower, contravene of spiritual guidance.

The ruthless leaps that the old maids flake off like dead skin in that dark tipped

tuff of sadness. Every uterus is a structure drug from beneath the iron house.

When the teenage girls get wind of it, they twitch it around then burn the ointment

of it's cosmetics off the lake.

It's a hobo camp. A sleeveless, white blouse. An unsprayed upon bottle of

Channel no. 5. It is jazz and jump and Lee Morgan and his wavy hair. It is Boo

and the Jazz Messengers in 68. It is the land of the fathers saw from eating

rice from a trough. it is juju victoriousness; the intense will of birds when the

warm winds turn northwards...Because a uterus knows the trumpet of a womans death,

the exact moment when a man is lynched, when the ovum

swings shut the spermatozoon in it's swan road,

when the son gets 35 to life, when the town is electrocuted,

when the ogle is unmasked. When others don't, it applauds

the kenosis because at it's root are those divine human attributes

that rock the sphagnum moss beds to sleep thru the night. Then

from its interminable wood,

carves its flesh self, into a calf.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

reminds me of a plath poem..."a cow in calf"
women take the brunt of punishment...their bodies are punished having children, they are most chastised
even for things guys easily get away with...
but in the end, yes, they will reassemble...
and be victorious...and the men will hang..and be spurned---for how they destroyed the uterus...
we always talk about our forefathers...but what about our foremothers?

deep stuff here, dana.
j.

[h d e rushin]

I still remember the day I found Plath's "Crossing the Water" in the base library in Jacksonville, Florida..I ran back to the ship, found a quiet place and read each and every word. Her later poems were so focused and pigmented..while the "Colossus" was just a painful exercise in assonance..I really didn't get much of it...But she was just constantly pressuring poetry the way Frank Wright was pressuring architecture/ She's still one of the seven wonders of the world.
thanks for your kind words my friend...dana

[W.k.kortas]

I think the wise erin-cliberto has struck the right chord; men, so it is said, must die for something, while women die for everything. I think you have found that, mined that, and struck gold.

[h d e rushin]

thank you my friend for stopping by.....dana

[Ken Simm.]

I think the word here is involved. This is the top of top rate writing. It is not only structured very carefully and intricately it is also suberbly written from the heart to other hearts.
It also shows a sensitivity way beyond anything I have read in a long long time.
Our sons get the praise. Our daughters get the grief in so many heartbreaking ways.
I cannot say I enjoyed this I'm afraid dana, because it is obviously not that kind of poem but it hits me in so many other ways. I would say to the gut, (for personal reasons) but that too would be selling it far too short. It hits my brain, my emotions, my memories. An amazing piece of writing.

[h d e rushin]

thank you dearest Ken for your continued insight.....as it concerns all things magical and mystical....dana

[Emily B]

perfection, I stopped by John's facebook page today, the world is still not the same without him

[h d e rushin]

and the world will never be the same again. I just wish I could have talked to him before he died..i don't know if it would havemade any real difference...but he was just fabulous....thank you ms Emily.....I will never forget him..

[Emily B]

we are all pretty fabulous, we forget sometimes