Sharon Olds
The Clasp
She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds, We had been in the apartment two weeks straight, I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his Face,
Sex Without Love
How do they do it, the ones who make love Without love? Beautiful as dancers, Gliding over each other like ice-skaters Over the ice, fingers hooked Inside each other’s bodies, faces Red as steak,
The Mortal One
Three months after he lies dead, that Long yellow narrow body, Not like Christ but like one of his saints, The naked ones in the paintings whose bodies are Done in gilt, all knees
The Sash
The first ones were attached to my dress At the waist, one on either side, Right at the point where hands could clasp you and Pick you up, as if you were a hot
The Space Heater
On the then-below-zero day, it was on, Near the patients’ chair, the old heater Kept by the analyst’s couch, at the end, Like the infant’s headstone that was added near the foot Of my
A Week Later
A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t Think I could ever write about it. Maybe in a year I could write something. There is something in me maybe someday To be
The Pact
We played dolls in that house where Father staggered with the Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her one ounce of Cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to Kill herself. We
The Unborn
Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads, Like gnats around a streetlight in summer, The children we could have, The glimmer of them. Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing In some antechamber –
The Arrivals
I pull the bed slowly open, I Open the lips of the bed, get The stack of fresh underpants Out of the suitcase-peach, white, Cherry, quince, pussy willow, I Choose a color and put
Crab
When I eat crab, slide the rosy Rubbery claw across my tongue I think of my mother. She’d drive down To the edge of the Bay, tiny woman in a Huge car, she’d ask
The Daughter Goes To Camp
In the taxi alone, home from the airport, I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept Creeping over the smooth plastic To find your strong meaty little hand and Squeeze it, find
The End
We decided to have the abortion, became Killers together. The period that came Changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple Who had been for life. As we talked of it in bed, the
Primitive
I have heard about the civilized, The marriages run on talk, elegant and honest, rational. But you and I are Savages. You come in with a bag, Hold it out to me in silence.
The Borders
To say that she came into me, From another world, is not true. Nothing comes into the universe And nothing leaves it. My mother-I mean my daughter did not Enter me. She began to
One Year
When I got to his marker, I sat on it, Like sitting on the edge of someone’s bed And I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite. I took some tears from my jaw and neck
Topography
After we flew across the country we Got in bed, laid our bodies Delicately together, like maps laid Face to face, East to West, my San Francisco against your New York, your Fire Island
1954
Then dirt scared me, because of the dirt He had put on her face. And her training bra Scared me-the newspapers, morning and evening, Kept saying it, training bra, As if the cups of