bridging

by marge piercy from to be of use

being together is knowing
even if what we know
is that we cannot really be together
caught in the teeth of the machinery
of the wrong moments of our lives.

a clear umbilicus
goes out invisibly between,
thread we spin fluid and finer than hair
but strong enough to hang a bridge on.

that bridge will be there
a blacklight rainbow arching out of your skull
whenever you need
whenever you can open your eyes and want
to walk upon it.

nobody can live on a bridge
or plant potatoes
but it is fine for comings and goings,
meetings, partings and long views
and a real connection to someplace else
where you may
in the crazy weathers of struggle
now and again want to be.

doing it differently

by marge piercy, from to be of use

1.
trying to enter each other,
trying to interpenetrate and let go.
trying not to lie down in the same old rutted bed
part rack, part cocoon.
we are bagged in habit
like clothes back from the cleaners.
the map of your veins has been studied,
your thighs have been read and reported,
a leaded mistrust of the rhetoric of tenderness
thickens your tongue.
at the worst you see old movies in my eyes.
how can i persuade you that every day we choose
to give birth, to murder or feed our friends, to die a little.

2.
you are an opening in me.
smoke thick as pitch blows in,
a wind bearing ribbons of sweet rain,
and the sun as field of dandelions, as rusty razor blade.
scent colors the air with tear gas, with lemon lilies.

most of the time you are not here.
most of the time we were different faces.
mostly i do not touch you.
mostly i am talking to someone else.

i crawl into you, a bee furry with greed
into the deep trumpeting throat of a crimson lily
speckled like a newly hatched robin.
i roll, heavy with nectar.
later i will turn this afternoon into honey
and live on it, frugally.
it will sweeten my tea.

3.
in the pit of the night our bodies merge,
dark clouds passing through each other in lightning,
the joining of rivers far underground in the stone.
i feel thick but hollow, a polyp floating on currents.
my nerves have opened wide mouths
to drink you in and sing O O on the dark
till i cannot fix boundaries where you start and i stop.
then you are most vulnerable.
in me that nakedness does not close by day.
my quick, wound, door, my opening,
my lidless eye.

don't you think it takes trust,
your strength, your temper always
in the room with us like a doberman unleashed.
i fear being manipulated
by that touch point between us.

touch is the primal sense -
for in the womb we swam lapped and tingling.
fainting, practicing death, we lose
sight first, then hearing, the mouth and nose deaden
but still till the end we can touch.

. . .

5.
beds that are mirrors,
beds that are rotisseries where i am the barbecue,
beds that are athletic fields for the olympic trials,
beds that are dartboards, beds that are dentist's chairs,
beds that are consolation prizes floating on chicken soup,
beds were lobotomies are haphazardly performed,
beds of wet spaghetti, beds
that ride glittering through lies like a ferris wheel. . .

you do not want to say that word
yet that small commitment floating on a sea of spilled blood
has meaning if we inflict it.
otherwise we fail into dry accommodation.
if we do not build a new loving out of our rubble
we will fall into a bamboo-staked trap on a lush trail.
you will secrete love out of old semen and gum and dreams.
what we do not remake
plays nostalgic songs on the jukebox of our guts,
and leads us into the old comfortable temptation.

6.
you lay in bed depressed, passive as butter.
i brought you a rose i had grown. . .
you talked of fucking the rose. then you grew awkward;
we would never be free of roles, dominance and submission,
we slam through the maze of that pinball machine forever. . .

7.
the state owns my womb and hangs a man's name on me
like the tags hung on dogs, my name is, property of. . .
the language betrays us and rots in the mouth
with its aftertaste of monastic sewers on the palate.
even the pronouns tear my tongue with their metal plates.

you could strangle me: my hands
can't even encircle your neck.
because i open my mouth wide and stand up roaring
i am the outlawed enemy of men.
a party means what a bullfight does to the bull.
the street is a gauntlet.

i open my mail with tongs.
all the images of strength in you, fathers and prophets and heroes,
pull against me, till what feels right to you
wrongs me, and there is no rest from struggle.

we are equal if we make ourselves so, every day, every night
constantly renewing what the street destroys.
we are equal only if you open too on your heavy hinges
and let your love come freely, freely, where it will never be safe,
where you can never possess.

8.
for part of each month regularly as my period
i crave you.
when we mesh badly, with scraping and squeaking,
remember that every son had a mother
whose beloved son he was,
and every woman had a mother
whose beloved son she wasn't.
what feels natural and easy, is soft murder
of each other and that mutant future
striving to break into bloom
bloody and red as the real rose.

periodic, earthy, of a violent tenderness
it is the nature of this joining
to remain partial and episodic
yet feel total: a mountain that opens like a door
and then closes
like a mountain.

two from marge piercy

armed combat in a cafe

how easy for us to argue
shoving the ugly counters
of jargon across the table,
mah-jong tiles slapping,
the bang of ego on ego
feminist versus marxist cant.

to feel alienated
is easy, to use words
to hold the self free,
clean from the taffy
of loving, from the wet
sticky hands of need.

we use our politics
as french papas put broken
bottles, jagged glass on top
of the walls of suburban
villas, so no prowler
can climb over.

what closeness remains
is that of samurai
in ritual sword dance
combat, each hoping to
behead the other and,
invulnerable and armored, escape.

**************************************************************************
apologies

moments
when i care about nothing
except an apple:
red as a maple tree
satin and speckled
tart and winy.

moments
when body is all:
fast as an elevator
pulsing out waves of darkness
hot as the inner earth
molten and greedy.

moments
when sky fills my head:
bluer than thought
cleaner than number
with a wind
fresh and sour
cold from the mouth of the sea.

moments
of sinking my teeth
into now like a hungry fox:
never otherwise
am i so cruel;
never otherwise
so happy.

hand games by marge piercy

Intent gets blocked by noise.
How often what we spoke
in the bathtub, weeping
water to water, what we framed
lying flat in bed to the spiked
night is not the letter that arrives,
the letter we thought we sent. We drive
toward each other on expressways
without exit. The telephone
turns our voices into codes,
then decodes the words falsely,
terms of an equation
that never balances, a scale
forever awry with its foot
stuck up lamely like a scream.

Drinking red wine from a sieve,
trying to catch love in words,
its strong brown river in flood
pours through our weak bones.
A kitten will chase the beam of a flash
light over the floor. We learn
some precious and powerful forces
can not be touched, and what
we touch plump and sweet
as a peach from the tree, a tomato
from the vine, sheds the name
as if we tried to write in pencil
on its warm and fragrant skin.

Mostly the television is on
and the washer is running and the kettle
shrieks it's boiling while the telephone
rings. Mostly we are worrying about
the fuel bill and how to pay the taxes
and whether the diet is working
when the moment of vulnerability
lights on the nose like a blue moth
and flitters away through clouds of mosquitoes
and the humid night. In the leaking
sieve of our bodies we carry
the blood of love.

for the young who want to

for the young who want to
by marge piercy

talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed.  beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems.  earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

the reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

the real writer is one
who really writes.  talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
work is its own cure.  you have to
like it better than being loved.

will we work together?

will we work together?
by marge piercy

you wake in the early grey
morning in bed alone and curse
me, that i am only
sometimes there.  but when
i am with you, i light
up the corners, i am bright
as a fireplace roaring
with love, every bone in my back
and my fingers is singing
like a tea kettle on the boil.
my heart wags me, a big dog
with a bigger tail.  i am
a new coin printed with
your face.  my body wears
sore before i can express
on yours the smallest part
of what moves me.  words
shred and splinter.
i want to make with you
some bold new thing
to stand in the marketplace,
the statue of a goddess
laughing, armed and wearing
flowers and feathers.  like sheep
of whose hair is made
blankets and coats, i want
to force from this fierce sturdy
rampant love some useful thing.

the low road by marge piercy

the low road

what can they do
to you?  whatever they want.
they can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can't walk, can't remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover.  they can do anything
you can't stop them
from doing.  how can you stop
them?  alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they will roll over you.

but two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge.  with four
you can play bridge and start
an organization.  with six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
a dozen make a demonstration.
a hundred fill a hall.
a thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

it goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say we
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

The Friend by Marge Piercy

The Friend

We sat across the table.

he said, cut off your hands.

they are always poking at things.

they might touch me.

I said yes.

Food grew cold on the table.

he said, burn your body.

it is not clean and smells like sex.

it rubs my mind sore.

I said yes.

I love you, I said.

That’s very nice, he said

I like to be loved,

that makes me happy.

Have you cut off your hands yet?