She Takes Manhattan

The 700-room women’s hotel
sign-in sheets, curfews, no males
beyond the genteel lobby, Persian rugs
potted ferns and sweeping staircase
to the indoor swimming pool, library
white table cloths and hushed waiters
the screech din of girls’ voices
on their way up, up, up
to wealthy husbands or careers
not both, never both

and she attends the daily teas
eats finger foods, a bowl of caviar
crab salad that sends her to bed
on dates with suave young men
at rooftop parties, daiquiris in hand
dazzled by a skyful of bright lights
unreachable as the New Yorkers
who laugh at her appetite
the black trees of her mind
the superficial banality required
for serious consideration, a failure

she takes home sadness
to the chaste suburbs, thick green
lawn up to her neck in think
think and the deep desire
to crawl in a dark hole
and die young.

Until Spring

Sometimes it is always winter
in our minds as we plod down
ice-crisp walkways to our goals
hot spill of sunshine, lime green buds
on trees bleak, blackened, half-dead
in the pall of seasonal dissolution.

Sometimes it is almost spring
on a date with a nice new man
promising a comfortable bed
a trap, dead end, suffocation
under a down pillow of acquiescence
without the pulsating blood drive
the independent blood-flush
of creative activity, selfhood
shuffled aside by love affairs
childcare and breastfeeding
the smog of small kitchens
dirty dishes and diapers
of unfulfilled promise.

Sometimes the wild sea froth
salty brine air, jagged rocks
slippery and sequined, moonlit
on those beach walks alone
are enough of a promise
that shifting seasons will lift us
above the sharp blue steel
of a freshly-whetted knife
lusting for blood conquest
before the snow melts away.

Nihilism and Neptune Girdles

Man being the arrow
woman being the place
the arrow flies from
the rift begins to widen
the mooring loosens
and she’s out to sea
floating, blank minded.

The moon goes up
the moon goes down
and still she’s saying oh
mother, the world,
it’s so rotten, let’s die
together.

At the hospital for the well-
heeled, white gloved, Kennedys
in private pastel rooms
awaiting lobotomies
bone-breaking electroshock
she wonders what terrible
thing she has done.

The sun set and rose the day
she choked down fifty pills
in a crawlspace in the family
the world at large crazed
searching for her in the forest
in a sweet whirling blackness
she awoke to strobe lights
strange voices, long needles
and mother oh no
the sordid, meaningless
the rotten existence
she’d tried to leave behind.

The redbrick Victorian city
on its own cloudless hill
tennis and golf courses, billiards
a bowling alley on bucolic acres
majestic oaks, maples, fireplaces
overstuffed chairs, fresh flowers
oil paintings, pianos—none of which
can bring her back to the girl
she once thought she was.

Diagnosis

Her problem was she wanted
to be herself
the rococo queen bee
in the cool glass hotel
master of flamingo nouns
beholden to no man
or social expectations
free to uncoil the snake
deep in a wildrun mind
to be the scraping wind
and shriek, shriek
to unloose a panther heart
on the rest of us.

Her problem was diagnosed
her problem was drugged
her problem was suffocated
her problem was bathed in ice
her problem was wrapped in wet sheets
her problem was hard jolted
and shot up and prodded
discussed and analyzed
written about and studied
gossiped about and feared
lyricized and revered
made into flesh and poetry
married, beaten
baked in an oven
served cold

and it is our problem now.