swimming further and further back
in this dream, hearing
the breathing of the trees,
the chorus of your ancestors,
memory walking in the dark,
that sudden tonnage—
the current circling out in rings—
the vastness of all that has been lost.
Hold your heart like a flower,
give over wholly to magic,
a golden key looking for what it will open:
the mercy of rain
in a wet, green field,
the scent of an unlocked gate.
Love the full weight of yourself,
a map of wild intention,
the time of your radiance,
that moment of stretching up, up,
unhinged and singing, releasing a tide.
Here is what you hunger for:
the blue bowl of
sweet, secret abundance.
We are all here together
running into our own beginning—
what is beyond words—
a thirst, a flood.
Let the overflow catch and keep,
a seed growing.
~ Cento poem, including the title, from lines/ phrases of W.S. Merwin’s poetry collection Garden Time, Lia Purpura’s poetry collection Stone Sky Lifting, and Anne Sexton’s poetry collection Transformations
Today’s poem, inspired by an interview with Elizabeth Comen.
Warning, uses anatomic terms.
Pudenda (definition): External genitalia, especially female Pudendum/Pudenda (etymology): Thing(s) to be ashamed of (from Latin)
Pudenda reveals an agenda
Pudendum Femininum
The female shame part
Shame part
Part to be ashamed of
Woman, that which is unlike man
Atypical, other, inferior
Woman is man deformed
So said Aristotle, who postulated a world of opposites
Woman, curving, dark, secret, unstable, secret, dark,
Curved, leaky, unbounded
Man, straight, light, open, stable, self-contained, firmly bounded
Man the norm, woman only the appendage
From a rib formed, forbidden fruit eater
Temptress, seductress, bringer of evil
Non pudendum I declare
No longer schamlippen
I honor all that makes me she and
Glory in all my bits and parts
No longer afraid to say
Vagina
Labia
Mons
Pubis
Clitoris
No longer afraid to experience pleasure
Openly, joyfully, loudly
I am woman, watch me soar
-For Marlee.
In first grade,
my family began attending a new church
in the town to which we would eventually move.
Out of all of the combined first and second grade class,
I told my mom about three people I met that first week.
Two boys named Jonathan
(the nice one and the bald one)
and you.
The girl who smiled at me in the hallway.
In second grade,
I didn’t see you much.
You were sick that year,
almost died.
Meanwhile, my family moved into town
for the long haul.
In sixth grade,
my dad embarrassed me
by recruiting you to play on the all girls soccer team he was starting
so that my team, which he coached,
wouldn’t have to include the four girls who signed up for Recreational Mixed U12.
I knew you were too good. You were fast
and played on your older sister’s select team
even though you were younger than all of them.
You declined.
My Recreational Mixed U12 team played several games with only 10 players
because not enough boys showed up.
In eighth grade,
I found you crying in the closet
where the chairs and tables were kept at church.
You felt worthless, you said.
God loves you, I said.
In the months to follow I wrote you countless notes,
each undelivered,
attempting to tell you that I cared.
In ninth grade,
I played really hard at ultimate frisbee
at church retreat
because I knew you were watching.
In tenth grade,
we attended our denominational youth conference
in Colorado.
A boy from Kansas seemed to be your friend,
so I stuck to playing frisbee really hard
and learning the cup song from Pitch Perfect from you.
On the drive home,
you borrowed my sweatshirt.
Realizing that it smelled like you,
I didn’t wash it
and fell asleep holding it for three weeks.
The boy from Kansas stalked you for two years
and is currently in jail for statutory rape.
In eleventh grade,
I put a cicada shell in your hair at summer camp
and we attended prom alternative
with different people.
In twelfth grade,
or the summer after,
I broke up with my girlfriend after a week spent as a camp counselor
alongside you.
When I had my wisdom teeth out,
still high on nitrous,
I wrote you three pages,
ending with “ur pretty”
before passing out on the couch.
Two days later,
I went to a pizza party for young adults,
ignoring medical advice,
because you offered to drive me there and home.
The day after I moved into my college dorm,
I asked you out
in the garden outside the president’s house
at the University of Kentucky.
It was a Monday.
We scheduled for Thursday,
but on Wednesday after church,
went to the hill behind the baseball field
and watched the sunset.
Upon returning to my dorm,
I told my roommate that I was going to marry you.
3 months later,
I bought a diamond ring.
The jeweler seemed to think I was a bit young,
but I knew.
One year after that,
on a cold December night,
I took you back to the garden
outside the president’s house
at the University of Kentucky,
got on one knee,
and asked you to marry me.
I didn’t have a speech,
just shaking hands,
A diamond ring,
and a future in mind.
But if I had prepared one, this is what I would have said.
I’ve known since the day I met you,
since you smiled at me,
since I saw how fast you are,
since I tried to write you a note and failed,
since I showed off for you,
since I smelled you,
since I put a cicada shell in your hair,
since I succeeded in writing you a note, high as hell,
since I sat on the hill behind the baseball field and watched the sunset with you.
You are the one who makes me smile,
and I want to spend the rest of my life smiling with you.
Before the willow,
the fence,
the coffins waiting in rows,
she stitched a flower
to witness the names she kept
in the center,
rooted in the space
between sorrow and resolve.
Some griefs are too deep to piece.
At the cemetery’s gates
she placed
her signature in red,
spilling out in revision,
bordering the path:
a roseberry repeating
on calico cut from school clothes,
from scraps worn soft
by boys buried in Ohio.
Each bud a word,
each leaf a memory pressed
between thimble and threadscript —
for remembrance,
not forever.
You’re speaking,
and I’m missing words.
Every third, I reckon,
slipping through the gap in
the window’s sill, or
the door I left ajar.
Wherever lost words go,
your’s have gone and left me
trying to fill in the gaps
with wadded pages torn from
a faded student copy
of Webster’s Dictionary —
yellowed, dog earred, I used
as a door stop.
