I’m not a girl
I’m a hatchet
I’m not a hole
I’m a whole mountain
I’m not a fool
I’m a survivor
I’m not a pearl
I’m the Atlantic Ocean
I’m not a good lay
I’m a straight razor
look at me as if you had never seen a woman before
I have red, red hands and much bitterness

- Judy Grahn from Edward the Dyke and Other Poems

Spring is like a perhaps hand ( Read more... )

We regard each other ( Read more... )

Ah, Love, you smell of petroleum
and overwork
with grease on your fingernails,
paint in your hair
there is a pained look in your eye
from no appreciation
you speak to me of the lilacs
and appleblossoms we ought to have
the banquets we should be serving,
afterwards rubbing each other for hours
with tenderness and genuine
olive oil
someday.  Meantime here ( Read more... )

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun, 
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet 
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

Denise Levertov

This entry was originally posted ( Read more... )

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.
If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.
And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?
*
I wanted the past to ( Read more... )

 

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Lyrics

And who by fire?
Who by water?
Who in the sunshine?
Who in the night time?
Who by high ordeal?
Who by common trial?
Who in your merry merry month of May?
Who by very slow decay?
And who shall I say is calling?
(Who shall I say is calling?)

And who in her lonely slip?
Who by barbiturate?
Who in these realms of love?
Who by something blunt?
Who by ( Read more... )

When setting out upon your way to Ithaca,
wish always that your course be long,
full of adventure, full of lore.
Of the Laestrygones and of the Cyclopes,
of an irate Poseidon never be afraid;
such things along your way you will not find,
if lofty is your thinking, if fine sentiment
in spirit and in body touches you.
Neither Laestrygones nor Cyclopes,
nor ( Read more... )

My head is wet
My head is wet

Something
Something
I forget

I did not want to wash my hair

Something terrible
unbearable
or maybe not

Sometimes babies are born dead

It doesn't matter
in the water
what I wanted or forgot

Sinister little poem from Le Guin which I saw posted on greatpoets lj.

This entry was originally posted at Read more... )

Leader of a woman's climbing team, all of whom died in a storm on Lenin Peak, August 1974. Later, Shatayev's husband found and buried the bodies.

The cold felt cold until our blood
grew colder then the wind 
died down and we slept

If in this sleep I speak
it's with a voice no longer personal
(I want to say with voices)
When the wind tore our breath ( Read more... )