Paper Chains
The first snow of the year
& you lying between my breasts
in my husband's house
& the snow gently rising in my throat
like guilt,
& the windows frosted over
as if etched by acid.
You have come from the desert
& have left a little sand
between my legs
where it rubs & rubs
& secretes a milky fluid,
finally a poem
or a pearl.
I am your oyster shell,
your mother of pearl
gleaming like oil on water
for two hours on a snowy day.
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poem by Erica Jong
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How to Name Your Familiar
When the devil brings him,
like a Christmas puppy,
examine his downy fur & smell
his small paws for the scent
of sulphur.
Is he a child of hell?
O clearly those soft brown eyes
speak volumes
of deviltry.
O surely those small pink teats
could suckle witches.
O those floppy ears
hear only the devil's hissing.
O that small pink tongue
will lick & lick at your heart
until only Satan may
slip in.
A fuzzy white dog?
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poem by Erica Jong
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Smoke
Smoke, it is all smoke
in the throat of eternity. . . .
For centuries, the air was full of witches
Whistling up chimneys
on their spiky brooms
cackling or singing more sweetly than Circe,
as they flew over rooftops
blessing & cursing their
kind.
We banished & burned them
making them smoke in the throat of god;
we declared ourselves
"enlightened."
"The dark age of horrors is past,"
said my mother to me in 1952,
seven years after our people went up in smoke,
leaving a few teeth, a pile of bones.
The smoke curls and beckons.
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poem by Erica Jong
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On Reading a Vast Anthology
Love, death, sleeping
with somebody else's husband
or wife-this
is what poetry is
about-Eskimo, Aztec,
or even Italian
Rinascimento,
or even the high falutin Greeks
or noble Roman-O's.
O the constant turmoil
of the human species-
beds, graves, Spring with its
familiar rosebuds, the wrong beds,
the wrong graves, wars
unremembered & boundaries gained
only to be lost & lost
again
& lost roses whose lost
petals
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poem by Erica Jong
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The Color Of Snow
For David Karetsky (April 14, 1940-March 12, 1991) , killed in an avalanche
Putting the skis down
in the white snow,
the wind singing,
the blizzard of time
going past your eyes,
it is a little
like being snowed in
in the Connecticut house
on a day when the world
goes away
and only the white dog
follows you out
to make fresh tracks
in the long blue shadow
of the mountain.
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poem by Erica Jong
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The Sheets
We used to meet
on this corner
in the same wind.
It fought us up the hill
to your house,
blew us in the door.
The elevator rose
on guests of stale air
fed on ancient dinners.
Your room smelled
of roach spray and roses.
In those days
we went to bed with Marvell.
The wind ruffled sheets and pages,
spoke to us through walls.
For hours I used to lie
with my ear to your bare chest,
listening for the sea.
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The End of the World
Here, at the end of the world,
the flowers bleed
as if they were hearts,
the hearts ooze a darkness
like india ink,
& poets dip their pens in
& they write.
"Here, at the end of the world,"
they write,
not knowing what it means.
"Here, where the sky nurses on black milk,
where the smokestack feed the sky,
where the trees tremble in terror
& people come to resemble them. . . . "
Here, at the end of the world,
the poets are bleeding.
Writing & bleeding
are thought to be the same;
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poem by Erica Jong
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At The Edge Of The Body
At the edge of the body
there is said to be
a flaming halo-
yellow, red, blue
or pure white,
taking its color
from the state
of the soul.
Cynics scoff.
Scientists make graphs
to refute it.
Editorial writers,
journalists, & even
certain poets,
claim it is only mirage,
trumped-up finery,
illusory feathers,
spiritual shenanigans,
humbug.
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Fracture
This constant ache
is my leg's message to me.
'Hello. Hello. Hello.
You're getting there,' it says,
'step by step.'
Legs aren't stars
which sputter out
& go on gleaming anyway.
I've lived, of course,
with phantom limbs
but this fracture
doesn't point to
amputation. No.
It hisses at something
much more final.
Skin lantern,
necklace of teeth,
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Statue
Cement up to the neck
& my head packed
with unsaid words.
A gullet full of pebbles,
a mouth
of cast concrete-
I am stuck
in a lovelessness so thick,
it seems my natural element.
My mouth closes
on stones.
Hand frozen to my chin,
my back a question mark,
my heart soldered
to its arteries,
my feet planted
in grass that cannot grow,
The Thinker ponders
ten more years of this:
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