Margaret Atwood
You Take My Hand
You take my hand and I’m suddenly in a bad movie, It goes on and on and Why am I fascinated We waltz in slow motion Through an air stale with aphrodisms We meet
This Is A Photograph Of Me
It was taken some time ago. At first it seems to be A smeared Print: blurred lines and grey flecks Blended with the paper; Then, as you scan It, you see in the left-hand
Spelling
My daughter plays on the floor With plastic letters, Red, blue & hard yellow, Learning how to spell, Spelling, How to make spells. * I wonder how many women Denied themselves daughters, Closed themselves
Habitation
Marriage is not A house or even a tent It is before that, and colder: The edge of the forest, the edge Of the desert the unpainted stairs At the back where we squat
Variation On The Word Sleep
I would like to watch you sleeping, Which may not happen. I would like to watch you, Sleeping. I would like to sleep With you, to enter Your sleep as its smooth dark wave
More and More
More and more frequently the edges Of me dissolve and I become A wish to assimilate the world, including You, if possible through the skin Like a cool plant’s tricks with oxygen And live
Morning in the Burned House
In the burned house I am eating breakfast. You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast, Yet here I am. The spoon which was melted scrapes against The bowl which was melted
Postcards
I’m thinking about you. What else can I say? The palm trees on the reverse Are a delusion; so is the pink sand. What we have are the usual Fractured coke bottles and the
Backdropp Addresses Cowboy
Starspangled cowboy Sauntering out of the almost- Silly West, on your face A porcelain grin, Tugging a papier-mache cactus On wheels behind you with a string, You are innocent as a bathtub Full of
Sekhmet, the Lion-headed Goddess of War
He was the sort of man Who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Many flies are now alive While he is not. He was not my patron. He preferred full granaries, I battle. My roar meant
Provisions
What should we have taken With us? We never could decide On that; or what to wear, Or at what time of Year we should make the journey So here we are in thin
The Rest
The rest of us watch from beyond the fence As the woman moves with her jagged stride Into her pain as if into a slow race. We see her body in motion But hear
Is/Not
Love is not a profession Genteel or otherwise Sex is not dentistry The slick filling of aches and cavities You are not my doctor You are not my cure, Nobody has that Power, you
Night Poem
There is nothing to be afraid of, It is only the wind Changing to the east, it is only Your father the thunder Your mother the rain In this country of water With its
Bored
All those times I was bored Out of my mind. Holding the log While he sawed it. Holding The string while he measured, boards, Distances between things, or pounded Stakes into the ground for