Poems by Alicia Ostriker

Click here to Read: “Poems Making  Poems: A Program of Poetry and Psychoanalysis,” an article on reprinted from The American Psychoanalyst on the blog: Hear, Hear, Occasional Posts on Poetry and Psychoanalysis

aliciacropweb1.jpgAs promised, we are beginning National Poetry Month with the first of our Monday poetry pages. Today it’s our honor and privilege to offer three poems by world-renowned poet and critic Alicia Ostriker. Twice nominated for the National Book Award and winner of many other prestigious awards, Ostriker is the author of eleven volumes of poetry, the latest of which is No Heaven. Her critical works include, most

Alicia Ostriker 

notably, Writing Like a Woman and Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. She has also written a number of books on the Bible, most recent of which is For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book.

Alicia Ostriker’s gracious response to our invitation brings us the first publication of a new poem, “To Persephone,” as well as two previously published ones she has personally selected for the interest of our readers.

Irene Willis
Poetry Editor

TO PERSEPHONE

I watched you walking up out of that hole

It was raining
In that field in Southern Italy

Rain beating down making puddles in the mud
Hissing down on rocks from a sky enraged

I waited and was patient
Finally you emerged and were immediately soaked

You stared at me without love in your large eyes
That were filled with black sex and white powder

But this is what I expected and when I embraced you
Your firm little breasts against my amplitude

Get in the car I said
And then it was spring

*
MASTECTOMY

for Alison Estabrook

I shook your hand before I went.
Your nod was brief, your manner confident,
A ship’s captain, and there I lay, a chart
Of the bay, no reefs, no shoals.
While I admired your boyish freckles,
Your soft green cotton gown with the oval neck,
The drug sent me away, like the unemployed.
I swam and supped with the fish, while you
Cut carefully in, I mean
I assume you were careful.
They say it took an hour or so.

I liked your freckled face, your honesty
That first visit, when I said
What’s my odds on this biopsy
And you didn’t mince words,
One out of four it’s cancer.
The degree on your wall shrugged slightly.
Your cold window onto Amsterdam
Had seen everything, bums and operas.
A breast surgeon minces something other
Than language.
That’s why I picked you to cut me.

Was I succulent? Was I juicy?
Flesh is grass, yet I dreamed you displayed me
In pleated paper like a candied fruit,
I thought you sliced me like green honeydew
Or like a pomegranate full of seeds
Tart as Persephone’s those electric dots
That kept that girl in hell,
Those jelly pips that made her queen of death.
Doctor, you knifed, chopped and divided it
Like a watermelon’s ruby flesh
Flushed a little, serious
About your line of work
Scooped up the risk in the ducts
Scooped up the ducts
Dug out the blubber,
Spooned if off and away, nipple and all.
Eliminated the odds, nipped out
Those almost insignificant cells that might
Or might not have lain dormant forever.

From The Crack in Everything (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996)

MATISSE, TOO

Matisse, too, when the fingers ceased to work,
Worked larger and bolder, his primary colors celebrating
The weddings of innocence and glory, innocence and glory

Monet when the cataracts blanketed his eyes
Painted swirls of rage, and when his sight recovered
Painted water lilies, Picasso claimed
I do not seek, I find, and stuck to that story

About himself, and made that story stick.
Damn the fathers. We are talking about defiance.

from Poetry, Dec. 2006