The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poem Thread, 8/11/07

[BlueIris]

"Menses"

This fullness in my breasts and belly will ache until it goes away
breaking down like sludge running through the rushing gutters,
this tenderness impossible to bear, like a love for everything that never was.
Outside my window, even the trees look incredulous
as if they had just remembered their cyclical forgetting,
and all week apart from you, the snow falls heavily mixed with inconstant dirty rain.

I wait, and watch a single robin step among the paper plates that lie
face down where the fraternity boys have left them, smeared with ketchup,
mustard, bits of soggy roll, and wonder how one seed erupts into a hungry
vine spitting morning glories. This afternoon, I'll cook eggs
for lunch until they are white and solid and dead enough to eat.

What is permitted me is only a sure dull sorrow, and a sense of skittering on the very
edge of things, about to fall again, sadly deliberate as rain.
You call from the farm to tell me three lambs are born, black and bleating
in their stall. The ram that will not breed will be sold for meat, only the ewes
will be kept, and nurtured, and named. I cry for no reason and plead with you,
name them Mercy, Patience.

—Marie Howe

[RetroLounge]

1. Wow...

:applause:

this tenderness impossible to bear, like a love for everything that never was.

:hi:

RL

[BlueIris]

2. Yeah, Marie Howe is a god.

I don't have her new book yet, and it's killing me.

[I Have A Dream]

3. Thanks, BI! n/t

[BlueIris]

4. Kick.

[BlueIris]

5. Aw, people keep recommending my poems. That is so nice of them.

[BlueIris]

6. Kick.

[fizzgig]

7. oh wow

that is amazing...heavy and amazing

[BlueIris]

9. We're doing "heavy" today and tomorrow, actually. nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. My dear BlueIris...

This is so damn evocative...

I can feel the ache that I haven't felt in years...

Very nice...

Thank you...:hug:

[BlueIris]

10. Yeah, few poets do evocative like Marie Howe does evocative.