Introduction

Introduction

(Woman Poet, ???? - ????)

I have turned

to pages xi - xii

in 100

different volumes

only to find

the same 6

shrugging

goddamn

words:

Little

is known

about

her

life

How Do You Poop in the Galapagos Islands?

Darwin’s research transformed the Galapagos Islands into an object of scientific and cultural fascination, as well as a bucket-list destination. In 1978, UNESCO honored the archipelago and its living treasures by naming it the first-ever World Heritage site. 97% of the islands’ area was designated a national park; the remaining 3% was set aside for human habitation. The parklands and their inhabitants are truly wild, offering no shelter, no Internet access, and no bathrooms.

So...How do you poop in the Galapagos Islands?

Click here to read the article on mental_floss.


(excruciatingly cute sea lion pup photo by dagspeak)

After Corrag

for you, who are tangled,
berry-stained; for you, seaweed-eyed
and skittish in a market; for you,
water baby, moon child, razor-
tongued witch woman--for you, a gift:
i am one too.

sisters then, may the grass
be sweet, crushed underfoot.
may the scattershot stars
become a blanket we, alone, can share.
may we find peace in what enwilds us.
may what was lonely grow
to make the full use of our hearts.



art by Melissa Peck
Read more about Corrag in Susan Fletcher's incredible book Witch Light.

Meeting Salvador

galagalagalagalagalagalagala
At first I thought
it was cicadas calling my name.
The song rose and fell neatly
with the rest of the summer's ruckus.

galagalagalagalagalagalagala--
Not cicadas. The sound sped ceaselessly
from a second-story window.
From my plastic perch in the garden
I saw the pacing shadow
of the shy noisemaker.

He wrung his hands, released
the moan, which, escaping, crashed
and beat its fists against
the hot fence of my name:
Gala. Gala. Gala.






"Salvador Dali's love for Gala, a woman 10 years older than he and the wife of his friend Paul Eluard, exploded when they met; he realized numerous extravagancies to capture her attention, such as waxing his armpit and dying it blue, applying goat excrement to his skin and wearing a red geranium on his head. His emotion was such that, every time he tried to talk to her, he suffered uncontrollable laughing attacks."

When the Witch Ball Breaks

When the ball breaks a fox
finds your best layer and the baby cries
with shining splinters you can't find.

When the ball breaks your shoes
are dusted with powdered glass.
Every step is a challenge
to the feet you have toughened all summer.

When the ball breaks
the window has broken with it.
One wall is gone.
You sleep at the neighbors'.




photograph by Ian Mackenzie
more about witch balls here

Lady Suo's Clavicle: A Corollary

after Lady Suo (11th-12th cent.)

That early fall night
When I woke to find
Your sleeping cheek (warm weight
On my shoulder) may never
Have happened,
But the dream is nearly enough.





photograph by Ani Eleuterio

To the Wizard of Menlo Park

You should know it doesn’t count
If you cheated, and you should know
We know you did. Who but a time traveler
Would sweat until the filament formed;
Who but the one who has known silver dawn
Would bother to burgle one trip
To the moon? There is no sport
To this brilliance. Your fizzing chariot
Awaits in the alley:
Be gone, and leave us our fire.





more on alleged intellectual poacher Thomas Alva Edison here
watch "Le Voyage dans la Lune" here

The House of Spirits

after Sarah Winchester, 1839-1922

When I was born this town was young;
The street lamps had yet to be hung,
The infant dust lay in the street
And slept upon work-hardened feet
In coarse boots in the sun.

Great rooms will not bring back my son
Or husband; living has become
One endless staircase, incomplete.
(When I was born this town was young.)

I sought domestic refuge from
The spirits, every single one
A victim of my husband's heat,
His enterprise, his greatest feat,
the way the West was won--
When I was born, this town was young.





Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company fortune, believed that her family was cursed after she lost both her husband and her son. She sought the guidance of a medium, who told her to move west and build a house for all the spirits--the ghosts of all those poor souls killed with Winchester rifles--and that should Mrs. Winchester ever cease construction on the house, she would surely die. Mrs. Winchester did as she was told, and moved to San Jose, California, where she began building what came to be known as the Winchester Mystery House. Construction did not stop until the heiress died at the age of 83; years of useless additions turned the house into a labyrinth of doors that led nowhere, staircases to the ceiling, and everywhere windows, steps, ladder rungs, in multiples of thirteen. You can learn more about the Winchester Mystery House here.

photograph by Shawn McClung

May in Coventry

after Leofric, Earl of Mercia, husband to Lady Godiva

When your armored ears know only
the clash of spear and shield, when
you are unaccustomed to the sight
of verdant fields, when success
is measured in remaining limbs and eyes,
her voice sounds far away, and you cannot
be bothered to listen.

A battlefield wager, a joke tossed away
over a fur-trimmed shoulder. You will not
hear her leave the room, best dress trailing
in a wake like a twig on the water.

But clear as day now, the clop
of your best stallion on the cobbles
of the town square. Birdsong is stilled,
the market shuttered. With one cheek
to the window you can nearly discern
the wind lifting her hair.



more about Lady Godiva here.
painting by John Collier

The Letter She Left on the Table

after Bonnie Parker (1910-1934)

"You think I'm still good-looking, honey?
But no, I am faded and spent,
Even Helen of Troy would look seedy,
If she followed the pace that I went."

-from "The Street Girl"



So Mama, I'm going, I'm sorry;
We won't be returning this year.
I'll try and send you more money
With someone who passes through here.

He's not a bad man at all, Mama
but life shaped him wild and lean.
He says that someday we'll be married--
I think we both know what that means.

So Mama, I'm going, I'm sorry;
but tonight the stars all say yes.
Don't forget my love in a hurry;
Love alone will survive this mess.

Glass: A Love Story

We used to think, in our high-chair years,
in hand-worked gowns and miters,
that windows slid like rain because
their very souls were water.

Now we use the cosmic word,
shapeless itself: amorphous.
If you were in that eleven a.m. classroom
and the test said to define it, you,
sixteen, would know with rock-solid
certainty that amor-phous means "full of love."

Tomorrow we will tip the cup
that holds this estate's mirrors,
and silver and gold and perfect curls
will mingle in the goblet,
the ever-unchanging vessel.





Man-made glass has been around since the at least Bronze Age, and yet chemists and physicists are still at odds over whether it's a liquid or a solid. Some have settled on "amorphous solid." I just love this, this not knowing in the face of millennia of familiarity.

photograph of a shattered Saint Cecilia by Michael Krueger

Last Month on Angel Island

after Quok Shee

My mother in Nom Moon knows nothing of this.
She said, "He is your husband."

In the dark hold of a ship far too small
I close my eyes and see bamboo.

Every hour is danger here, when no one hears
the metal moonlight sounds of the cellblock.

He left me with these tall blind men,
never told me of his childhood.

"You will go," they say, "I won't," say I,
I say, "He is my husband."

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Her people loved her--not all her people, for the revolutionary, the impatient, hated her heartily and she hated them. But the peasants and the small-town people revered her. Decades after she was dead I came upon villages in the inlands of China where the people thought she still lived and were frightened when they heard she was dead. "Who will care for us now?" they cried.

This, perhaps, is the final judgment of a ruler.

Pearl S. Buck on Empress Dowager Cixi






photograph by Tanya

Watson and the Shark

after John Singleton Copley

This is a magical year.
I am Creation's Adam: the beast
is a shark because I call it thusly.

A god takes on the bosun's duties,
and in the well-behaved water
our Grecian hero swoons, short one leg
and gentle as a lamb.

His polite blood stays where we cannot see it.
Men have become much older men.
I have given up hiding my forefathers.



Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley

Saint Anthony's Fire

The fields are full of demons, child.
You must know the new color
of this old madness: it is red. Do
as I say. Take both my hands.

The angel descends. My body
is his flaming sword:
we will all be consumed. This
is our only salvation.






read more about Saint Anthony's Fire* here.
photograph by flickr user tworm


*not to be confused with Saint Elmo's Fire.

Preface à 'Mystères de la main,' or, The Inventor's Daughter

after Adrien Adolphe Desbarolles (1801-1886)

She held Hyde Park
in the palm of her hand;
She offered London to me--
Gold lashes lined two forest pools
that would have drowned me outright,
had she offered those
as well.






Glove Map of London (1851) by George Shove
Inspired by Persephone's shove

After the Inauguration

The office is snow-fall silent.
As I pass rows of desks, fingers
are gentler on the keys, tissues meet
the corners of quickly drying eyes.
No one speaks. A girl puts
her sandwich into the toaster oven,
closing the little door
as though a baby slept inside.

On screen the crowd dispersed
in easy, graceful rows, breaking off
like plates of ice above a thawing stream.



Photograph by Susan Walsh - AP

A Reading from the Letter of Joan of Arc to the Adolescents

for Sunshine

God knows it isn't easy
being fourteen. Breasts alone
are strange enough; don't get me started
on the tinny chorus of expectations,
the fire in your dreams. It has taken me
more than a little time to get it
but trust me, when you feel your heart thrum
strong and sure in your chest you will know
what breasts are for. When the king plants
an iris in the swollen dark earth, when your mother
lays your armor to sleep deep in the ground,
you will see how your brave bright love
was never the wrong choice.



photograph by Charlotte Miceli

The Execution of Mata Hari

from the lost diary of Captain Jean Lautrec

As the Times tells it she died
in a crisp white suit as the sun rose.
In the questions that came after, we were not asked
what became of it, whether we cast lots for her blouse
at the feet of her corpse. We were not asked
if we sold it to well-endowed eccentrics,
or if the new light in her flashing eyes
led us to fold it in a pocket.
And when the shift ended, did we transfer it
(still warm) to a box of letters
and money and perfumed handkerchiefs? Nobody asked.

I Swear I Love You Only

after Sei Shonagon

I swear I love you only
in my dreams, in these
sweet silver tunnels where so often
I have found you.
I would do no thing so untoward
as to love you
in plain sight—

And yet, having risen,
I find your star still guides me,
and feel the pangs of the closed door
as sharp as if you had left.

I wonder now, drinking
in the light of your eyes,
if those nights
were all mine, if somewhere perhaps
your sleep-tight fingers
did not uncurl
for me too.