The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sat 7/22/06)

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Sat Jul-22-06 09:35 AM
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The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sat 7/22/06)

Let Go

Unfasten your belt. Let your stomach out.
Let it lower. Let it grow. Unbraid the braid.
Shake your hair out. Blow your nose. Spit.
The pantyhose-off, pantygirdle-off, panties-off.
Cut the straps of your bra with a jackknife.
Say blah and blech and break plates.
Break them into the basement.
Throw out the old food. Precious jellies and jams,
precious watermelon pickle- flush them.
Razor blade the snake bite and let the poison out.
Say dah and duh and don't.
Pour the crap out of the vacuum cleaner bag.
Scatter the manure over the weeds and pull up
the rose bushes by the roots.
Burst the seedpods of milkweeds, unhinge
the snapdragons from their stems. Clip
the hedges down to the bone and burn
the new growth and the old growth together
on a bonfire. Throw your animal skin underwear
in there, too, the ones you wore in high school
before you had a soul. The elbow-high gloves,
the pumps dyed apricot to match the trim of the dress,
the crown, the dried corsage. Bible-pressed and sad,
burn them, burn them and yelp. Say yah. Say uh.
The old and new tampons, the old blue boxes of Kotex,
the hieroglyphic mattress pads, the family photographs
and the baby hair flattened in envelopes, butterfly collections,
the precious wings of the luna moth, and the pins, all the pins,
straight and safety and bobby and hat, the patterns,
the corduroy and velvet and unused bridesmaids' dresses,
the newspapers claiming victory and the newspapers claiming defeat,
the headless Venus and the armless Buddha
and the Pieta made of plaster and beads, the death masks of Egyptians
and the fingerbones of saints, the surgical staples and scars,
the umbilical cords saved in jars, fetal chickens and cow hearts
from old science projects, diaphragms, rubbers, old moans and new groans,
glances, romances, beauty and guilt, regret,
remorse, rebates and rejuvenations, east, west, south and north,
break through the cobwebs with a broom,
cut through the weaving-in-progress on the hand-made loom,
unfeather the loon and the voice of the loon,
dismember the stories, the sternness of fact, the howlings of dogs,
the screaming of cats, let the trains clack till they fall
in the sea, dismember the dandelion, unhoney the bee,
spit the seeds high of the apple and pear,
uncover the caskets, throw the bones in the air
throw the bones in the air
throw the bones in the air
and cut off your hair.

Diane Seuss

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Diane Seuss is Writer in Residence at Kalamazoo College. Her collection of poems, It Blows You Hollow, was published by New Issues Press in 1998. Her poems have been anthologized in Boomer Girls and Are You Experienced? (University of Iowa Press), New Poems From the Third Coast (Wayne State University Press), September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (Etruscan Press) and A Loving Testimony: Remembering Loved Ones Lost to Aids (Crossing Press).

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RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul