National Poetry Month - Day 7
Getting away from the sex today. My apologies to those who stop by here just for the smut. Today we get a bit of Sharon Olds, perhaps my favorite poet writing today.
Forty Years Later
When I felt the rubber band that was looped around my wrist,
I tore it off and threw it. It landed
on the bentwood chair. I looked at the chair, its
curved strut as small around
as a child's bone. I held my wrist
down along it,
I thought of the crossing of a human with a deer,
the matching of their forelimbs. I wrapped the rubber band
around the strut, and then, with my left
hand, I bound my right wrist
to the chair. I felt calm as I had not felt
for foty years, since the day my folks
sashed me to a chair--dead calm
and at home. There was nothing I should be doing,
nothing I could be doing. It was reassuring,
as if I were being touched, deeply, as
who I am. I rested my forehead
on the chair-back, and almost fell asleep
standing there. But when I lifted my free
hand, and started to free myself,
I could not do it fast enough, I
threw the band away from me
and it writhed on the floor a moment, as if
a cast skin were the true skin,
as if a condom ful of living
seed could swim on its own. Though I was
alone in the apartment, I glanced to both sides to see if
anyone had seen me. I thought of my parents, whose
bodies had seemed sacrosanct--radius, femur,
tibia, fibula, an angel's bushy
sextuple wings. Whatever ugliness
was in that house, whatever meanness,
it could not be fit in them, they could not contain it.
--Sharon Olds, The Unswept Room (2003)
And my contribution for today:
Boarding School
Boarding school would have killed me.
But then, that was the whole point.
Wasn't it?
A convenient way to be rid of a kid you didn't want.
The kid ten years too old to be aborted.
Wasn't I?
Yeah. Boarding school would have killed me.
Faster and easier than the poison you planted in my head.
Wouldn't it?
But mercy was never your style, so I got to stay.
It was years later that I would wish you'd won.
Wouldn't I?
Because the knife never killed me.
Neither did the guns or pills or crazy impulsive behavior.
Did it?
No. Instead, I've been stuck for twenty years.
On that trans-Atlantic flight to boarding school.
Forty Years Later
When I felt the rubber band that was looped around my wrist,
I tore it off and threw it. It landed
on the bentwood chair. I looked at the chair, its
curved strut as small around
as a child's bone. I held my wrist
down along it,
I thought of the crossing of a human with a deer,
the matching of their forelimbs. I wrapped the rubber band
around the strut, and then, with my left
hand, I bound my right wrist
to the chair. I felt calm as I had not felt
for foty years, since the day my folks
sashed me to a chair--dead calm
and at home. There was nothing I should be doing,
nothing I could be doing. It was reassuring,
as if I were being touched, deeply, as
who I am. I rested my forehead
on the chair-back, and almost fell asleep
standing there. But when I lifted my free
hand, and started to free myself,
I could not do it fast enough, I
threw the band away from me
and it writhed on the floor a moment, as if
a cast skin were the true skin,
as if a condom ful of living
seed could swim on its own. Though I was
alone in the apartment, I glanced to both sides to see if
anyone had seen me. I thought of my parents, whose
bodies had seemed sacrosanct--radius, femur,
tibia, fibula, an angel's bushy
sextuple wings. Whatever ugliness
was in that house, whatever meanness,
it could not be fit in them, they could not contain it.
--Sharon Olds, The Unswept Room (2003)
And my contribution for today:
Boarding School
Boarding school would have killed me.
But then, that was the whole point.
Wasn't it?
A convenient way to be rid of a kid you didn't want.
The kid ten years too old to be aborted.
Wasn't I?
Yeah. Boarding school would have killed me.
Faster and easier than the poison you planted in my head.
Wouldn't it?
But mercy was never your style, so I got to stay.
It was years later that I would wish you'd won.
Wouldn't I?
Because the knife never killed me.
Neither did the guns or pills or crazy impulsive behavior.
Did it?
No. Instead, I've been stuck for twenty years.
On that trans-Atlantic flight to boarding school.