Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch

over the plain houses, light by light:

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.

I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.

I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,

learning the last bright routes, survivor

where your flames still bite my thigh

and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.

A woman like that is not ashamed to die.

I have been her kind.

The Operation.

1.

After the sweet promise,

the summer’s mild retreat

from mother’s cancer, the winter months of her death,

I come to this white office, its sterile sheet,

its hard tablet, its stirrups, to hold my breath

while I, who must, allow the glove its oily rape,

to hear the almost mighty doctor over me equate

my ills with hers

and decide to operate.

It grew in her

as simply as a child would grow,

as simply as she housed me once, fat and female.

Always my most gentle house before that embryo

of evil spread in her shelter and she grew frail.

Frail, we say, remembering fear, that face we wear

in the room of the special smells of dying, fear

where the snoring mouth gapes

and is not dear.

There was snow everywhere.

Each day I grueled through

its sloppy peak, its blue-struck days, my boots

slapping into the hospital halls, past the retinue

of nurses at the desk, to murmur in cahoots

with hers outside her door, to enter with the outside

air stuck on my skin, to enter smelling her pride,

her upkeep, and to lie

as all who love have lied.

No reason to be afraid,

my almost mighty doctor reasons.

I nod, thinking that woman’s dying

must come in seasons,

thinking that living is worth buying.

I walk out, scuffing a raw leaf,

kicking the clumps of dead straw

that were this summer’s lawn.

Automatically I get in my car,

knowing the historic thief

is loose in my house

and must be set upon.

2.

Clean of the body’s hair,

I lie smooth from breast to leg.

All that was special, all that was rare

is common here. Fact: death too is in the egg.

Fact: the body is dumb, the body is meat.

And tomorrow the O.R. Only the summer was sweet.

The rooms down the hall are calling

all night long, while the night outside

sucks at the trees. I hear limbs falling

and see yellow eyes flick in the rain. Wide eyed

and still whole I turn in my bin like a shorn lamb.

A nurse’s flashlight blinds me to see who I am.

The walls color in a wash

of daylight until the room takes its objects

into itself again. I smoke furtively and squash

the butt and hide it with my watch and other effects.

The halls bustle with legs. I smile at the nurse

who smiles for the morning shift. Day is worse.

Scheduled late, I cannot drink

or eat, except for yellow pills

and a jigger of water. I wait and think

until she brings two mysterious needles: the skills

she knows she knows, promising, soon you’ll be out.

But nothing is sure. No one. I wait in doubt.

I wait like a kennel of dogs

jumping against their fence. At ten

she returns, laughs and catalogues

my resistance to drugs. On the stretcher, citizen

and boss of my own body still, I glide down the halls

and rise in the iron cage toward science and pitfalls.

The great green people stand

over me; I roll on the table

under a terrible sun, following their command

to curl, head touching knee if I am able.

Next, I am hung up like a saddle and they begin.

Pale as an angel I float out over my own skin.

I soar in hostile air

over the pure women in labor,

over the crowning heads of babies being born.

I plunge down the backstair

calling mother at the dying door,

to rush back to my own skin, tied where it was torn.

Its nerves pull like wires

snapping from the leg to the rib.

Strangers, their faces rolling lilke hoops, require

my arm. I am lifted into my aluminum crib.

3.

Skull flat, here in my harness,

thick with shock, I call mother

to help myself, call toe to frog,

that woolly bat, that tongue of dog;

call God help and all the rest.

The soul that swam the furious water

sinks now in flies and the brain

flops like a docked fish and the eyes

are flat boat decks riding out the pain.

My nurses, those starchy ghosts,

hover over me for my lame hours

and my lame days. The mechanics

of the body pump for their tricks.

I rest on their needles, am dosed

and snoring amid the orange flowers

and the eyes of visitors. I wear,

like some senile woman, a scarlet

candy package ribbon in my hair.

Four days from home I lurk on my

mechanical parapet with two pillows

at my elbows, as soft as praying cushions.

My knees work with the bed that runs

on power. I grumble to forget the lie

I ought to hear, but don't. God knows

I thought I’d die—but here I am,

recalling mother, the sound of her

good morning, the odor of orange and jam.

All’s well, they say. They say I’m better.

I lounge in frills or, picturesque,

I wear bunny pink slippers in the hall.

I read a new book and shuffle past the desk

to mail the author my first fan letter.

Time now to pack this humpty-dumpty

back the frightened way she came

and run along, Anne, and run along now,

my stomach laced like a football

for the game.

45 Mercy Street

In my dream,

drilling into the marrow

of my entire bone,

my real dream,

I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill

searching for a street sign -

namely MERCY STREET.

Not there.

I try the Back Bay.

Not there.

Not there.

And yet I know the number.

45 Mercy Street.

I know the stained-glass window

of the foyer,

the three flights of the house

with its parquet floors.

I know the furniture and

mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,

the servants.

I know the cupboard of Spode

the boat of ice, solid silver,

where the butter sits in neat squares

like strange giant's teeth

on the big mahogany table.

I know it well.

Not there.

Where did you go?

45 Mercy Street,

with great-grandmother

kneeling in her whale-bone corset

and praying gently but fiercely

to the wash basin,

at five A.M.

at noon

dozing in her wiggy rocker,

grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,

grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,

and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower

on her forehead to cover the curl

of when she was good and when she was...

And where she was begat

and in a generation

the third she will beget,

me,

with the stranger's seed blooming

into the flower called Horrid.

I walk in a yellow dress

and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,

enough pills, my wallet, my keys,

and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?

I walk. I walk.

I hold matches at street signs

for it is dark,

as dark as the leathery dead

and I have lost my green Ford,

my house in the suburbs,

two little kids

sucked up like pollen by the bee in me

and a husband

who has wiped off his eyes

in order not to see my inside out

and I am walking and looking

and this is no dream

just my oily life

where the people are alibis

and the street is unfindable for an

entire lifetime.

Pull the shades down -

I don't care!

Bolt the door, mercy,

erase the number,

rip down the street sign,

what can it matter,

what can it matter to this cheapskate

who wants to own the past

that went out on a dead ship

and left me only with paper?

Not there.

I open my pocketbook,

as women do,

and fish swim back and forth

between the dollars and the lipstick.

I pick them out,

one by one

and throw them at the street signs,

and shoot my pocketbook

into the Charles River.

Next I pull the dream off

and slam into the cement wall

of the clumsy calendar

I live in,

my life,

and its hauled up

notebooks.

Baby Picture

It's in the heart of the grape

where that smile lies.

It's in the good-bye-bow in the hair

where that smile lies.

It's in the clerical collar of the dress

where that smile lies.

What smile?

The smile of my seventh year,

caught here in the painted photograph.

It's peeling now, age has got it,

a kind of cancer of the background

and also in the assorted features.

It's like a rotten flag

or a vegetable from the refrigerator,

pocked with mold.

I am aging without sound,

into darkness, darkness.

Anne,

who were you?

I open the vein

and my blood rings like roller skates.

I open the mouth

and my teeth are an angry army.

I open the eyes

and they go sick like dogs

with what they have seen.

I open the hair

and it falls apart like dust balls.

I open the dress

and I see a child bent on a toilet seat.

I crouch there, sitting dumbly

pushing the enemas out like ice cream,

letting the whole brown world

turn into sweets.

Anne,

who were you?

Merely a kid keeping alive.

After Auschwitz

Anger,

as black as a hook,

overtakes me.

Each day,

each Nazi

took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby

and sauteed him for breakfast

in his frying pan.

And death looks on with a casual eye

and picks at the dirt under his fingernail.

Man is evil,

I say aloud.

Man is a flower

that should be burnt,

I say aloud.

Man

is a bird full of mud,

I say aloud.

And death looks on with a casual eye

and scratches his anus.

Man with his small pink toes,

with his miraculous fingers

is not a temple

but an outhouse,

I say aloud.

Let man never again raise his teacup.

Let man never again write a book.

Let man never again put on his shoe.

Let man never again raise his eyes,

on a soft July night.

Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.

I say those things aloud.

Hurry Up Please It's Time

What is death, I ask.

What is life, you ask.

I give them both my buttocks,

my two wheels rolling off toward Nirvana.

They are neat as a wallet,

opening and closing on their coins,

the quarters, the nickels,

straight into the crapper.

Why shouldn't I pull down my pants

and moon the executioner

as well as paste raisins on my breasts?

Why shouldn't I pull down my pants

and show my little cunny to Tom

and Albert? They wee-wee funny.

I wee-wee like a squaw.

I have ink but no pen, still

I dream that I can piss in God's eye.

I dream I'm a boy with a zipper.

It's so practical, la de dah.

The trouble with being a woman, Skeezix,

is being a little girl in the first place.

Not all the books of the world will change that.

I have swallowed an orange, being woman.

You have swallowed a ruler, being man.

Yet waiting to die we are the same thing.

Jehovah pleasures himself with his axe

before we are both overthrown.

Skeezix, you are me. La de dah.

You grow a beard but our drool is identical.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

Today is November 14th, 1972.

I live in Weston, Mass., Middlesex County,

U.S.A., and it rains steadily

in the pond like white puppy eyes.

The pond is waiting for its skin.

the pond is waiting for its leather.

The pond is waiting for December and its Novocain.

It begins:

Interrogator:

What can you say of your last seven days?

Anne:

They were tired.

Interrogator:

One day is enough to perfect a man.

Anne:

I watered and fed the plant.

*

My undertaker waits for me.

he is probably twenty-three now,

learning his trade.

He'll stitch up the gren,

he'll fasten the bones down

lest they fly away.

I am flying today.

I am not tired today.

I am a motor.

I am cramming in the sugar.

I am running up the hallways.

I am squeezing out the milk.

I am dissecting the dictionary.

I am God, la de dah.

Peanut butter is the American food.

We all eat it, being patriotic.

Ms. Dog is out fighting the dollars,

rolling in a field of bucks.

You've got it made if you take the wafer,

take some wine,

take some bucks,

the green papery song of the office.

What a jello she could make with it,

the fives, the tens, the twenties,

all in a goo to feed the baby.

Andrew Jackson as an hors d'oeuvre,

la de dah.

I wish I were the U.S. Mint,

turning it all out,

turtle green

and monk black.

Who's that at the podium

in black and white,

blurting into the mike?

Ms. Dog.

Is she spilling her guts?

You bet.

Otherwise they cough...

The day is slipping away, why am I

out here, what do they want?

I am sorrowful in November...

(no they don't want that,

they want bee stings).

Toot, toot, tootsy don't cry.

Toot, toot, tootsy good-bye.

If you don't get a letter then

you'll know I'm in jail...

Remember that, Skeezix,

our first song?

Who's thinking those things?

Ms. Dog! She's out fighting the dollars.

Milk is the American drink.

Oh queens of sorrows,

oh water lady,

place me in your cup

and pull over the clouds

so no one can see.

She don't want no dollars.

She done want a mama.

The white of the white.

Anne says:

This is the rainy season.

I am sorrowful in November.

The kettle is whistling.

I must butter the toast.

And give it jam too.

My kitchen is a heart.

I must feed it oxygen once in a while

and mother the mother.

*

Say the woman is forty-four.

Say she is five seven-and-a-half.

Say her hair is stick color.

Say her eyes are chameleon.

Would you put her in a sack and bury her,

suck her down into the dumb dirt?

Some would.

If not, time will.

Ms. Dog, how much time you got left?

Ms. Dog, when you gonna feel that cold nose?

You better get straight with the Maker

cuz it's coming, it's a coming!

The cup of coffee is growing and growing

and they're gonna stick your little doll's head

into it and your lungs a gonna get paid

and your clothes a gonna melt.

Hear that, Ms. Dog!

You of the songs,

you of the classroom,

you of the pocketa-pocketa,

you hungry mother,

you spleen baby!

Them angels gonna be cut down like wheat.

Them songs gonna be sliced with a razor.

Them kitchens gonna get a boulder in the belly.

Them phones gonna be torn out at the root.

There's power in the Lord, baby,

and he's gonna turn off the moon.

He's gonna nail you up in a closet

and there'll be no more Atlantic,

no more dreams, no more seeds.

One noon as you walk out to the mailbox

He'll snatch you up --

a wopman beside the road like a red mitten.

There's a sack over my head.

I can't see. I'm blind.

The sea collapses.

The sun is a bone.

Hi-ho the derry-o,

we all fall down.

If I were a fisherman I could comprehend.

They fish right through the door

and pull eyes from the fire.

They rock upon the daybreak

and amputate the waters.

They are beating the sea,

they are hurting it,

delving down into the inscrutable salt.

*

When mother left the room

and left me in the big black

and sent away my kitty

to be fried in the camps

and took away my blanket

to wash the me out of it

I lay in the soiled cold and prayed.

It was a little jail in which

I was never slapped with kisses.

I was the engine that couldn't.

Cold wigs blew on the trees outside

and car lights flew like roosters

on the ceiling.

Cradle, you are a grave place.

Interrogator:

What color is the devil?

Anne:

Black and blue.

Interrogator:

What goes up the chimney?

Anne:

Fat Lazarus in his red suit.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

Ms. Dog prefers to sunbathe nude.

Let the indifferent sky look on.

So what!

Let Mrs. Sewal pull the curtain back,

from her second story.

So what!

Let United Parcel Service see my parcel.

La de dah.

Sun, you hammer of yellow,

you hat on fire,

you honeysuckle mama,

pour your blonde on me!

Let me laugh for an entire hour

at your supreme being, your Cadillac stuff,

because I've come a long way

from Brussels sprouts.

I've come a long way to peel off my clothes

and lay me down in the grass.

Once only my palms showed.

Once I hung around in my woolly tank suit,

drying my hair in those little meatball curls.

Now I am clothed in gold air with

one dozen halos glistening on my skin.

I am a fortunate lady.

I've gotten out of my pouch

and my teeth are glad

and my heart, that witness,

beats well at the thought.

Oh body, be glad.

You are good goods.

*

Middle-class lady,

you make me smile.

You dig a hole

and come out with a sunburn.

If someone hands you a glass of water

you start constructing a sailboat.

If someone hands you a candy wrapper,

you take it to the book binder.

Pocketa-pocketa.

Once upon a time Ms. Dog was sixty-six.

She had white hair and wrinkles deep as splinters.

her portrait was nailed up like Christ

and she said of it:

That's when I was forty-two,

down in Rockport with a hat on for the sun,

and Barbara drew a line drawing.

We were, at that moment, drinking vodka

and ginger beer and there was a chill in the air,

although it was July, and she gave me her sweater

to bundle up in. The next summer Skeezix tied

strings in that hat when we were fishing in Maine.

(It had gone into the lake twice.)

Of such moments is happiness made.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

Once upon a time we were all born,

popped out like jelly rolls

forgetting our fishdom,

the pleasuring seas,

the country of comfort,

spanked into the oxygens of death,

Good morning life, we say when we wake,

hail mary coffee toast

and we Americans take juice,

a liquid sun going down.

Good morning life.

To wake up is to be born.

To brush your teeth is to be alive.

To make a bowel movement is also desireable.

La de dah,

it's all routine.

Often there are wars

yet the shops keep open

and sausages are still fried.

People rub someone.

People copulate

entering each other's blood,

tying each other's tendons in knots,

transplanting their lives into the bed.

It doesn't matter if there are wars,

the business of life continues

unless you're the one that gets it.

Mama, they say, as their intestines

leak out. Even without wars

life is dangerous.

Boats spring leaks.

Cigarettes explode.

The snow could be radioactive.

Cancer could ooze out of the radio.

Who knows?

Ms. Dog stands on the shore

and the sea keeps rocking in

and she wants to talk to God.

Interrogator:

Why talk to God?

Anne:

It's better than playing bridge.

*

Learning to talk is a complex business.

My daughter's first word was utta,

meaning button.

Before there are words

do you dream?

In utero

do you dream?

Who taught you to suck?

And how come?

You don't need to be taught to cry.

The soul presses a button.

Is the cry saying something?

Does it mean help?

Or hello?

The cry of a gull is beautiful

and the cry of a crow is ugly

but what I want to know

is whether they mean the same thing.

Somewhere a man sits with indigestion

and he doesn't care.

A woman is buying bracelets

and earrings and she doesn't care.

La de dah.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

There are stars and faces.

There is ketchup and guitars.

There is the hand of a small child

when you're crossing the street.

There is the old man's last words:

More light! More light!

Ms. Dog wouldn't give them her buttocks.

She wouldn't moon at them.

Just at the killers of the dream.

The bus boys of the soul.

Or at death

who wants to make her a mummy.

And you too!

Wants to stuf her in a cold shoe

and then amputate the foot.

And you too!

La de dah.

What's the point of fighting the dollars

when all you need is a warm bed?

When the dog barks you let him in.

All we need is someone to let us in.

And one other thing:

to consider the lilies in the field.

Of course earth is a stranger, we pull at its

arms and still it won't speak.

The sea is worse.

It comes in, falling to its knees

but we can't translate the language.

It is only known that they are here to worship,

to worship the terror of the rain,

the mud and all its people,

the body itself,

working like a city,

the night and its slow blood

the autumn sky, mary blue.

but more than that,

to worship the question itself,

though the buildings burn

and the big people topple over in a faint.

Bring a flashlight, Ms. Dog,

and look in every corner of the brain

and ask and ask and ask

until the kingdom,

however queer,

will come.