Four Poems
For National Poetry Month, may I present a collection of poems?
Poems that make me want to weep, and shout, and laugh, but tend to make me sit, and think, and feel. Powerful words that galvanize all sorts of sentiment I didn’t think could be put into words.
Four poems by women that manage to make words mean something more.
Matisse, Cut Outs 1954. Inexplicably vectorized and posted with no attribution to “Kisscc0.com”
Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity
by Sandra Cisneros
If
you came back
I’d treat you
like a lost Matisse
couch you like a Pasha
dance a Sevillana
leap and backflip like a Taiwanese diva
bang cymbals like a Chinese opera
roar like a Fellini soundtrack
and laugh like the little dog that
watched the cow jump over the moon
I’d be your clown
I’d tell you funny stories and
paint clouds on the walls of my house
dress the bed in its best linen
And while you slept
I’d hold my breath and watch
you move like a sunflower
How beautiful you are
like the color inside an ear
like a conch shell
like a Modigliani nude
I’ll cut a bit of your hair this time
so that you’ll never leave me
Ah, the softest hair
Ah, the softest
If
you came back
I’d give you parrot tulips and papayas
laugh at your stories
Or I wouldn’t say a word which,
as you know, is hard for me
I know when you grew tired
off you’d go to Patagonia
Cairo Istanbul
Katmandu
Laredo
Meanwhile
I’ll have savored you like an oyster
memorized you
held you under my tongue
learned you by heart
So that when you leave
I’ll write poems
***
The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife
by Morgan Parker
Good morning how may I
offend you on this cracked
open Sabbath Dear God
I promise to prop you up
Of course I exist
I have every small name
Metaphorically draped in linen
I am often used to describe
the invisible how it carries
I answer your phone and pack
your lunches for it is written
A woman must
A man shall receive
Scrolling through profile pics I am
ashamed I disappear into
mysterious pastures
O unproven halo
Have I ever lived
I must be a joke
written in seething
sweat after the passage
of eternal lives
snapped broomsticks
To dusting I return singing
Jesus loves me yes
Yes and my body
My steepled temple
O God your flesh is a word
My flesh by the grace of you
I believe in everything
Brown bodies in a salty river
Your praises in their swollen cheeks
I must be the B-side
clipped to the editing floor
A gold road paved with me
And Jesus said medium rare
And I bowed quietly eternally
Cleaned his cup on my apron
and poured him his blood
In this parable I am the goblet
Crater of birth and service
I leave no trace
I become the smallest book
Smooth vellum pages
Anciently flaking
With these thorns I thee stroke
And lie down under questions
Jesus what can you offer me
Will you return from your journey
across skin-colored sands
to wash the feet of other women
and touch my head with truth
I will be waiting in a doorframe until harvest
Until the sky is so clear I see
my lipstick reflecting in the olive trees
Take the fever out of me
Come in and rise again and again
***
The Hypno-Domme Speaks, and Speaks and Speaks
by Patricia Lockwood
I was born as a woman, I talk you to death,
or else your ear off,
or else you to sleep. What do I have, all the time
in the world, and a voice that swings brass back
and forth, you can hear it, and a focal point where
my face should be. What do I have, I have absolute
power, and what I want is your money, your drool,
and your mind, and the sense of myself as a snake,
and a garter in the grass. Every bone in the snake
is the hipbone, every part of the snake is the hips.
The first sound I make is silence, then sssssshhh,
the first word I say is listen. Sheep shearers
and accountants hypnotize the hardest,
and lookout sailors who watch the sea, and the boys
who cut and cut and cut and cut and cut the grass.
The writers who write page-turners, and the writers
who repeat themselves. The diamond-cutter kneels
down before me and asks me to hypnotize him, and
I glisten at him and glisten hard, and listen to me and
listen, I tell him. Count your age backward, I tell him.
Become aware of your breathing, and aware of mine
which will go on longer. Believe you
are a baby till I tell you otherwise, then believe
you're a man till I tell you you're dirt. When a gunshot
rings out you'll lie down like you're dead. When you
hear, "He is breathing," you'll stand up again.
The best dog of the language is Yes and protects you.
The best black-and-white dog of the language is Yes
and goes wherever you go, and you go where I say,
you go anywhere. Why do I do it is easy, I am working
my way through school. Give me the money
for Modernism, and give me the money
for what comes next. When you wake to the fact that you
have a body, you will wake to the fact that not for long.
When you wake you will come when you read the word
hard, or hard to understand me, or impenetrable poetry.
When you put down the book you will come when you
hear the words put down the book,
you will come when you hear.
***
BOYS. BLACK. A Preachment
by Gwendolyn Brooks