Baby Witch
Baby-witch,
my daughter,
my worship of the Goddess
alone
condemns you to the fire. . .
I blow upon
your least fingernail
& it flares cyclamen & rose.
I suck flames from your ears.
I touch your perfect nostrils
& they, too, flame gently
like that pale rose
called 'sweetheart'.
Your eyelids are tender purple
like the base of the flame
before it blues.
O child of fire,
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poem by Erica Jong
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Mute Marriages
Mute marriages:
the ten-ton block of ice
obstructing the throat, the heart,
the red filter of the liver,
the clogged life.
It is a glacier
in which frozen children swim
ground round with boulders,
pebbles, bits of stone
from other ice ages.
Here a lapis glitters,
here a shard of bottle glass-
valuables & junk:
the history of a house
told in its garbage cans,
the history of a life
in its nightmares.
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poem by Erica Jong
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People Who Live
People who live by the sea
understand eternity.
They copy the curves of the waves,
their hearts beat with the tides,
& the saltiness of their blood
corresponds with the sea.
They know that the house of flesh
is only a sandcastle
built on the shore,
that skin breaks
under the waves
like sand under the soles
of the first walker on the beach
when the tide recedes.
Each of us walks there once,
watching the bubbles
rise up through the sand
like ascending souls,
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poem by Erica Jong
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Student Revolution
After the teach-in
we smeared the walls with
our solidarity,
looked left, & saw
Marx among the angels,
singing the blues.
The students march,
I (spectator)
follow.
Here (as everywhere)
the Polizei
are clean, are clean.
In Frankfurt,
the whores lean out
their windows, screaming:
'Get a job - you dirty
hippies!' Or words
(auf Deutsch) to that effect.
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poem by Erica Jong
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The Cover of the Book
The cover of the book
is astral violet,
& within it
are poems,
most of them
earthbound,
but for one
to the poet's
daughter
which soars
into
the empyrean
on umbilical wings.
Oh we poets
are so afraid
of making babies-
& yet
of all
the fleshly chains
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poem by Erica Jong
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She Leaps
She leaps into the alien heart
of the passerby, the drunk,
the girl who spouts Freudian talk
over Szechuan food.
She is part herself,
part everyone.
'Thank you for writing the story of my life,'
her mash notes read.
& 'Can you tell me how to leave my husband?'
& 'Can you tell me how to find a husband?'
& 'Can you tell me how to write,
or how to feel,
or how to save my life?'
She knows nothing
but how to leap.
She has no answers for herself
or anyone.
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poem by Erica Jong
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The Central Passion
What is the central passion
of a life?
To please mummy & daddy?
To find a home for their furniture?
To found a family of one's own,
possibly a dynasty?
To fill the world with more books
that have no readers
or books that have too many
& kill
too many trees?
What is the passion
that drives us
as the wind drives
a winged seed?
To reproduce ourselves,
then die?
To meet God once
if only in a dream?
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poem by Erica Jong
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A Question Mark
There is a hinge
of bone
where your chin joins
your cheek.
I like to stroke it
in the flicker
of a local movie;
I like to take
your laborer;s hand
when you are
cautiously-
(O proof of love!)-
driving my car.
You bring me gifts
of food;
I write you
poems of blood.
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poem by Erica Jong
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You Whom I Hoped to Reach by Writing
You whom I hoped to reach by writing,
you beyond the multicolored tangle
of telephone wires,
you with your white paper soul
trampled in transit,
you with kaleidoscope stamps
& black cancellations,
you who put your finger on my heart as I slept,
you whom I jostle in elevators,
you whom I stare at in subways,
you shopping for love in department stores. . .
I write to you
& someone else answers:
the man who hates his wife
& wants to meet me,
the girl who mistakes me for mother. . .
My strange vocation
is to be paid for my nightmares.
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poem by Erica Jong
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Going to School in Bed
If it is impossible to promise
absolute fidelity,
this is because
we learn so much geography
from the shifting of one body
on another.
If it is impossible to promise
absolute fidelity,
this is because
we learn so much history
from the lying of one body
on another.
If it is impossible to promise
absolute fidelity,
this is because
we learn so much psychology
from the dreaming of one body
of another.
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