The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sun 3/2/2008)

[RetroLounge]

Ars Poetica

Why do we think we have any control
at all? My breasts are soggy cartons.
The baby is greedy. He grabs
my skin in his fists, twists my hair.
He seems to know everything
already, the checkbook, balanced wrong,
the ignorance I'm not supposed
to confess—my friend says Giotto
and I hear Choteau, tiny town not far
from here. Clearly, I can imagine
no farther. The valley's a funnel,

skyline blurred by charcoal clouds,
the valley's a tornado and I'm
the eye—doodlebug, doodlebug
your house is on fire—
the room spins and spins
until the floor drops away
and I'm dizzy, frescoed to the wall,
Madonna Defying Gravity.
You can't tell it yet,
but I'm slipping, scratching the days
in my skin with a dull blade,
too afraid to just cut clean
and deep. This is how prisoners do it,

one scratch for each day
on the wall that holds them in,
one for each day I've lost
in half-sleep, the baby curled
like a snail on my chest, my hand patting,
patting, stomach bulging
over the top of my pants—

what is restrained in one place
escapes in another—

Henrietta Goodman

*****************************



Henrietta Goodman grew up in the Piedmont region of North Carolina and earned an MFA from the University of Montana. She received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Montana Arts Council in 2001, and in 2002 was awarded the Marjorie Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Her poems have appeared in Mid-American Review, Willow Springs, RUNES: A Review of Poetry, Northwest Review, and other journals. She currently teaches in the University of Montana’s Writing Center.

*****************************

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear Retro!

Wow, how well this one states new motherhood!

And other conditions of life...

She has captured the essence of all of it!

Especially these last lines:

...what is restrained in one place
escapes in another—

Thank you!

:hug:

[BlueIris]

2. Kick.