Daniela Gioseffi: Eggs in the Lake

foreword by John Logan

I. Beyond the East Gate 

Reality invents me, 
I am its legend! 
			- Jorge Guillen 

I saw them despoil themselves, sobbing and singing, for a hen's egg...
			- Frederico Garcia Lorca 



BEYOND THE EAST GATE 

I listen to the voice of the cricket, 
loud in the quiet night, 
warning me 
not to mistake a hill for a mountain. 
I need to be alone, 
in a private house with doors that open only outward, 
safe from strangers who smell of death, 
where I can draft a universe under my eyelids 
and let nothing invade it. 

I want to sing a fugue 
sounding like the genius of flowers 
talking to leaves on their stems, 
to have more concrete meaning 
than even the dance of a child in my uterus. 
I'm a lost and primitive priestess 
wandering in a walled city of the wrong century. 
I need to spend thirty years in the desert 
before I will understand the sun, 
thirty years at sea 
to gather the blessing of salt and water. 

In the back room of my skull 
a secret dice game determines 
the rites of my hands 
before they touch flesh again. 
I want to reach a peace I've never known, 
to be an old woman who is very young, 
a child who is a sage 
come down from the mountain.

 
TALKING TO MY PHILODENDRON 

Green passion on the horizon of my waking, 
Leaves, whose green yawn matches mine with 
	morning, 
whose breath is always sweet, 
pristine peace and super-human silence, 
whose beauty is never coveted by men nor envied 
by women, whose constancy depends on waters 
of my memory, hear me; feel me loving you, 
playing Mozart concertos for you. 

I test your soil for moisture, feel 
of you adoringly, 
sense you answer me, 
in the dark tube of your stem, 
speak to me in the veins of your heart. 
Lift the fingery hands on the wrists of your stems 
and wave at me; 
tell me you hear me, feel 
dreams flow through me into yours, 
my senses, your perception through long nights; 
seep through me as water in your cells. 

Leaves, understand the peace 
I sigh into you. Let me know I long 
to be with you, my body 
melting to earth caressed by roots, 
gentle open palms against my red eyes, 
green hands of the Goddess 
on the heart of my vegetal sleep, 
on the breast, leaves, of my animal dreams. 



WEARING BREASTS 

I sit back in the city 
and admire the octopus, 
wise old mollusk. 

I myself am an ancient fish 
wearing new plastic shoes. 
My lungs have been through many changes -- 
breathing water, then ooze, then air. 
A tree-climbing fish evolved me, 
giving me delicate names: 
Ivy, Heather, Rose, Lily, 
and a cave of sleep within my body, 
a child's room 
with a closed flower to guard the entrance. 

Out of the estuaries 
where rivers come to the sea, 
I am born of my mother's waters 
and can't find my paternal parent 
or give wifely comfort 
among creatures that stare from green mud. 



FOR PRINCE MYSHKIN 

When I ride the adventures of my legs through your 
	heart, 
or complain of bathroom spiders crawling up my ankles 
as I wash blood from my thighs, 
when I call to you from nightmares, 
want you to be a wave pulling me out to sea, 
or beg you to assure my voice is etched on glass 
	eardrums, 
when I go leaving behind a sink full of winter, 
I need to swallow my agony, 
be told, "You are, you are a child again!" 

I poke at your petals like a child, 
twisting your stem until you break 
and your pollen falls around you. 
I gather and examine it in trembling hands. 
I know that you are pure, the ideal idiot, 
but I am trying to understand you 
through a periscope. 
I'm a lonely submarine of ripe flesh 
swimming with the blind, 
crusted creatures of the deep. 



EGGS 
		-for Francis Ponge 

Eggs that come from chickens, 
squeezing oblong from their feathered bottoms. 
Tapered ovals opaque with white 
filled with albumen. Delicate thickness! 
I've eaten them raw, sucking them from a pin-hole 
carefully made in the shell. 
I've pressed my lips to the hole and sucked 
until the white carried the yolk out in one mass onto 
	my tongue. 
I've beaten them and butter-fried them into spongy 
	yellow chunks. 
I've left their sunny sides up 
until the whites were glazed like plastic, 
and then pricked the orange yolk with the sharp 
	point of a fork 
and watched it slowly spread and ooze over the plate. 
Then, I've sopped it up with toast 
until the toast was soggy and limp 
and dripped when lifted to the mouth. 
I've boiled them and listened 
to the click of shells 
as they wobbled in the bubbling water. 
Small sounds of thunder; shell against metal. 
I've cracked them and peeled them, 
pulling the residue of skin-like membrane from them, 
then sliced or bit into their shine of rubbery white 
with its yellow paste center. 
I've lathered them into my hair with shampoo, 
mixed them with cheeses and mushrooms and onions. 

Today I've bought one hundred dozen of them -- 
farm-fresh, Grade A, large white eggs in 
spongy, grey, cardboard cartons. 
I've arranged them around 
the bathroom, their cartons opened, exposing 
rows of gleaming white lumps. 
One thousand two hundred of them! 
Delicate shells threaten to burst and spray yolk over 
	tile. 
I choose the first, tap it lightly on the porcelain tub. 
A thin line shatters the cool shell. 
I violate the crack, thumb-nail first, slowly 
separate the shell, tearing 
the inside membrane with a small sound of skin, and 
plop it into the tub. 
Its nucleus of yellow pops on the hard surface below. 
Slowly, from the ragged half-shell 
a clear string of mucus, a long thin globule, follows 
after it. I take the next 
and the next, crack 
each on the tub edge, plop 
it to the hard surface, see 
the yellow yolks break, ooze, and splatter. 
I keep on with my work 
till the tub fills enough for me to watch 
the yolks bounce into the thick 
liquid, sink a little, then buoy to the surface. 
When I drop, at last, the-one-thousand-two-hundreth, 
the tub is full; the mucoid surface 
is cobbled with yolks. Slowly, 
I put one bare leg into the tub, letting the viscous 
mass climb up my body as I slide 
down in up to my chin. I lie 
perfectly still, listening 
to the silent squish of the mass that surrounds me. 
I smear the fluid into my hair and over my skin, 
I move and thrash my limbs about 
until the mixture of yolk and white 
is thoroughly blended.

 
AT THE BANK OF A LAKE 

Black sedans the mayor ordered 
from the city 
invade rows of trees, 
arrive at the bank of a lake 
where water polishes stones. 

Wheels hum, engines purr, 
cool water laps and ripples. 
Fish leap, 
birds dive 
with watery sounds 
into the lake. 

Keys turn; engines die. 
The sun sinks into the horizon, 
gleams in the fenders of each sleek sedan. 
Behind sheer glass windows 
old men's faces stare, somber with grey 
beards, long noses, tight mouths. 

Each eye 
of each old man's face 
reflects 
the pin-point image 
of a naked moonlit woman 
asleep beside a lake.



SUSANNAH TO THE ELDER 

Eyes that pierced my nakedness, 
invading the privacy of my bath, 
did not harm me. 
They were as innocent as nipples 
chilled erect by cold water. 

When I see your naked body, 
your limp genitals lying in your lap, 
even though I am far younger, 
I feel a mother to you, 
what the earth is to a tree. 

Don't be afraid. 
Your aging body has its own beauty 
and I would give my youth to you 
if my innocence did not frighten you, 
or if you would take my kisses like grapes 
to quench your thirst. 

But your eyes are frightened, 
staring at the purple fruit, 
bubbled with the cool sweat of washing, 
cupped in the hands I hold out to you. 

You see a tiny fetus, 
glistening red, 
curled inside of each transparent grape skin. 
You cringe, cover yourself with guilt, 
as the white teeth in my small red mouth 
crush the juice from one. 



THE LILY PAD 

			Morning: 

She pulls a French horn from the bodice of her dress, 
tries to play it. 
No sound comes out. 
She begins to weep 
but the cries she makes 
sound like a horn played 
far off in the distance. 

			Noon: 

She puts the French horn back into the bodice of her 
	dress, 
runs to the river, 
leaps in, 
the weight of the horn 
carries her to the bottom. 
The same water fills her ears 
that flows through the horn. 
She hears its sound 
sighing in her head. 

			Night: 

She swims to the surface dragging the French horn 
	with her. 
Her hair has turned white. 
She drowns with the horn clutched to her shrivelling 
	lips. 
Her white hair floats out all around her: 
Now she is a lily pad 
with a frog 
singing on her breast. 



II. Vacancy 

Psychology which explains everything explains 
nothing, 
and we are still in doubt. 
			- Marianne Moore 

The immediate beauty of a rag in the wind... 
The immense stone statue of a grain of sea salt 
The joy of every day and the uncertainty of dying 
  and the iron of love in the wound of a smile... 
			- Jacques Prevert 



SOME SLIPPERY AFTERNOON 

A silver watch you've worn for years 
is suddenly gone 
leaving a pale white stripe 
blazing on your wrist. 

A calendar marked with all 
the appointments you meant to keep 
disappears 
leaving a faded spot on the wall 
where it hung. 
You search the house, yard, trash cans i 
for weeks 
but never find it. 

One night the glass in your windows 
vanishes 
leaving you sitting in a gust of wind. 

You think how a leg is suddenly lost 
beneath a subway train 
or a taxi wheel 
some slippery afternoon. 

The child you've raised for years, 
combing each lock, 
tailoring each smile, each tear, 
each valuable thought, 
suddenly changes to a harlequin, 
joins the circus passing in the street, 
never to be seen again. 

One morning you wash your face, 
look into the mirror, 
find the water has eroded your features, 
worn them smooth as a rock in a brook. 
A blank oval peers back at you 
too mouthless to cry out. 



THE ORIGINS OF MILK 

Mushrooms grow in my thighs 
to spite the frenzy I've offered as love. 
Faces explode my albums 
with sighs that shatter gravestones. 
Torn up for confetti, I'm showered 
on the celebration winding in the streets below. 
Another man is elected to rule the flow of milk. 
I look for my mother copulating among sheep 
in a dream field. A haze floats in over my head, 
a long cold shore of sand. 
I ask a genie waiting to be born 
in blue smoke from my navel if 
she has heard my magic words and knows 
I, too, wish to see beyond the lamp. 

All the telephone booths are out of order 
in the soup of the city. Strange voices, 
shells from unknown seas sound in my ears. 
Stray dogs wander in gutters, nipping 
at my toes. Abandoned children sit on curbs. 
Panhandlers replace clowns on every corner. 
They do not smile or dance, but simply ask 
for money to be dropped in empty cups. 
I ponder coins, weather maps, rubber stamps, 
	newsprint, 
white bread, false hair, plutonium. 
Stranded in a society of abstracted men, 
I am made of primal customs practiced in varied 
	tongues. 
I gather water, try to chat with you amidst flower- 
	boxes. 
Fumes clog my throat; machines follow me down the 
	street, 
grinding gears against flesh. Grey dials turn. I try 
to call you whom I met by the accuracy of chance. 
The telephone receiver is gone. 
It's stuck to my mouth. My eyes 
are dimes caught in my hair. 

Blood I left on your sheets 
came from moons of change hidden in my belly. 
When we part, are you still there, are we 
lovers as we were? 
Curdling time gives us up to decisions. 
Kettles whistle for morning coffee 
and we mourn our dreams. I want 
to bottle wind, drink it for cola. Instead, 
I lose you among strange hands, open mouths, 
wiggling buttocks, umbrellas. 
I would have been what you were searching for 
with sheer will, if you could decide 
what sleeper you resemble and which of your dreams 
struggles behind your eyelids. 

I hardly bear the hollow music of a tubular life. 
Birds in my inner ear batter wings to get out. 
I have no names to call them to open windows. 
The artful lover lacks artless feeling. 
I knew when you touched me where your thoughts 
	were. 
I can't be fooled into orgasm, but I can pretend. 
Into my chest, I follow birds, trying to sing 
proper notes to the moon, mirroring the sun, 
to the darkness in me, nothing without your light. 
Perhaps the finest language is silence in its glory. 
I long to be an apple tree standing in your garden. 



QUANTUM POEM 

I feel like a gingerbread man 

			running from my destiny 

meeting a hungry fox 

			by the boiling sea 

an oyster 

			gone walking with a walrus 

in either instance 

			I keep disappearing 



A WOMAN WITH TONGUE SCULPTED IN CHEEK 

There are no rules for sadness -- 
so much despair rising from the sink drains of evening. 
The chairs are empty, 
curtains full of wind, 
the room silent as a lantern. 
Who couldn't go on 
spilling pages of wordy histories, 
cracking thoughts as shells 
from nutmeats of philosophies, 
spinning threads from fish eyes. 

I lift my breasts waiting for the ceiling 
to sprout fingers. 
Men do not let women live in their dreams 
but dream of women in their lives 
as if we could be as good as trees, 
as calm as photosynthesis in all our fornication. 

Guilty since Eve, I will not be responsible for 
	temptation, 
I pull the trap door shut, dose my legs against 
	eternity, 
build a moat around my uterus, 
use my ovaries for amulets, 
cease rattling my bracelets, 
cut off my nails 
and close my lips tight against kisses, new mournings. 

My hair was not my own idea; 
it grew from his rays and he commanded 
that I brush it till it shone as moonbeams 
because he was the sun, 
he was 
everyone: 
He was Dr. Kildare, Emmett Kelly, Christ; 
Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur; 
Charlemagne, Napoleon, Mozart, and Shakespeare; 
Mailer, Ginsberg, Plato, and Buddha; 
Lincoln, Rembrandt, Donato Gioseffi, and Richard 
	Kearney. 

Father, husband, whom I've worshipped all my years. 
I've let you commit crimes in my name, 
place me on a pedestal of halos, 
hide my clitoris as my hips grew wider 
and a child squeezed out of my heart, 
grew big as a mountain, 
swallowed me for dinner, 
held me in a sucking grip until I crooned lullabies. 

I've washed a thousand bathtubs 
and watered a million geraniums 
with the fallings of my dreams, 
and the knight, 
the Knight, 
the night, 
never comes riding never comes riding 
never comes 
riding 
except to admonish me 
for vanity he creates in me 
or to drape a heavy blue robe around my shoulders 
and rest his crucified body 
in my soft and tired lap. 



WARM KEYS 

A lost love leaps from the fire of my brow. 
I zipper him away. 
I can't feed bears to angels. 
Angels are not there. 
Goodbye, my friends, 
you've all turned into keyholes. 
I'm no different than a camel or a tiger. 
My ears bark at candles. 
I try to burn all of Keats in the ashtrays. 

Though I remember only the rhythm of his speech, 
I carve a pear from memory 
trying to bite his face into it. 
Somewhere sand curves down into the pampering sea. 
I think of all the rain 
falling backwards toward the birth of money. 

Chopin's Nocturnes bind my chest with wires. 
A true lover that doesn't exist 
tiptoes toward me, a thousand genitalia protrude 
or gape from it. 
It raises its head. 
Its eyes are mirrors 
arranged to reflect mirrors in me. 
It opens its mouth, 
revealing glass tongues coated with silver. 

I feed it spittle from my mouth 
and it sings an ancient lullaby 
audible only to the trees. 



VACANCY 

Faceless, I chase you 
frantically through the museum 
begging you to paint eyes on my face. 
You slip away 
disgusted by my whining need of you. 

I ask the guard who looks like my father 
the way to the powder room. 
He pulls out his shining tube, 
smears a lipstick mouth on my blank face 
and says: "Speak!" 
I try, but my red mouth slips down my chin, 
staining my collar. 

I rush into the street. 
The crowds stare in horror 
at the naked oval of my head. 
I attempt to unscrew it from my neck 
and stuff it in the first litter basket I meet. 

Waking far outside myself, 
I find I lie beside you. 
You do not stir in your sleep 
or feel the darts, questions I fire 
at your numbed head. 

	"Am I all right this way, headless without a face?" 
I say. "Shall I be plump or thin, intelligent, dumb, 
bold, demure, famous, obscure, sister, wife, mother, 
thief, giver, jealous, indifferent, poet, madman 
or lover, or just work in the Five and Dime 
and cook your supper?" 

You tell me, father, husband, 
I can be anything I will myself to be. 
I spend all my time 
willing, 
willing to be 
what always 
I am about to become. 



SEQUEL 

Each day ends, a record left turning. 
I lift the needle, 
place it back in its cradle, 
not to end sound, but 
to end silence with silence. 
When prayer-plants fold their leaves 
together like hands at dusk, 
a smiling corpse rules twilight, 
smuggles the sun beneath his cloak. 

At sunset, I talk to myself 
as if to God, 
hoping for an answer. 
I watch bees swarm, and 
view the city from rooftops, 
see points of light, ideas set afire, 
dot the skyline. 
The copper sun dips into the harbor 
to bathe itself, 
then sinks beyond the curve. 

In the middle of the night 
I wake, listen to silence, 
and think there must be someone there 
waiting 
who listens to me here in the dark 
and thinks there must be someone there 
waiting in the silence. 



III. The Vases of Wombs 

"Physical or `real' birth is really rebirth, 
a repitition of an archetypal birth of the 
cosmos from the cosmic egg." 
			- Norman O. Brown 
				Love's Body 

"I understand the tree, it does not 
reason....Fawns you have had your 
day: the poet now wants to talk to the 
tree.: 
			- Jules Renard 

"The Woman-Soul leadeth us...on!" 
			- Johann von Goethe 



THE LONELINESS OF THE PREGNANT WOMAN 

A kick at her inner walls, 
a thud rising in her throat, 
half wakes her in the dark. Her hand 
slides beneath cloth over smooth 
stretched skin. Another kick, flesh 
against flesh, tingles her palm. 
She pushes back blankets, 
feels a mound of earth 
rising from her 
womb. She dreams 
trees push limbs up 
through her belly; her body 
is an oven baking bread, a moon 
presses from between her lips, 
floats, a loaf of sun in winter light. 

In mourning, she buys red apples 
in place of roses 
for her mother's grave. She carries 
them like eggs through marching throngs, 
gliding carefully between man- 
made objects, bringing apples to the cemetery. 
Knives and guns sticking, poking out 
from windows, doors, alleyways, 
might burst 
the delicate dirigible, her hope 
singing earthy songs in her. 



THE VASES OF WOMBS 
			- for The Venus of Willendorf 

For a long time, 
I've thought about this body of mine 
with agony, with curiosity, and dreams 
of caressing lovers and children. 

I've thought about these arms 
as if they belonged to an Etruscan priestess 
raising them over her head to pray or protect hunters, 
or were handles on the hips of an ancient Greek vase 
pedestaled in the still light of a museum. 
I've listened to the blood flowing through them 
or crossed them over my breasts to imagine rest. 
I've thought about these buttocks, 
how they've held me to the earth while others fly 
and inhabit the high shelves of libraries. 
I've thought about these peering nipples, 
feelers on a cat's face sensitive to night. 

Men accept mead, soma, nectar from my hands, 
blood from my womb, fish from my eyes, 
crystals from my eardrums, food from my glands. 
In return, they try to pierce the heart 
that ticks between my thighs 
pinning me to the bed like a butterfly. 

These arms fly out of themselves to talk to you. 
This head becomes small and sightless. 
These breasts and buttocks swell 
until they're all that's left of me, until 
I'm melted into earth and planted as a garden. 



CAVES 

At the hour of sleep a woman enters her own body 
through mouths hidden beneath the skirt of night. 
Inside the darkness, moist and quiet, 
she dreams of all the cavernous wombs of nature 
hidden from the light: 

Caves, temples for gods or monarchs' chambers, 
chandeliered with stalactites formed drop by antique 
	drop, 
underground streams worn through limestone; 
caves from which we first yawn awake 
pressing out between lips, exits from, entrances to 
	death, 
arched by thighs like swords at a wedding; 
caves haunted by sibyls, nymphs, cyclops; 
deep hollows in the sides of sea cliffs 
battered in by tides, blown open by eruptions 
of hot lava; galleries, sink holes reaching 
up to earth like open drains; 
ears vibrating with music, 
sighing with sea sounds of shells; 
nostrils breathing rose, sage, sandalwood; 
stomachs churning food to pulp, echoing with hunger; 
mouths sucking, swallowing, biting kissing; 
womanly caves to which men return again 
and again to burrow back into earth, 
to curl up in like bears, squirrels, bees, hibernating 
through winter, safe with their acorns, honey, semen, 
sleeping snugly in the belly of a tree, 
waiting like eggs to begin. 



THE SEA HAG IN THE CAVE OF SLEEP 

		"For all the bold and bad and bleary 
		 they are blamed, the sea hags." 
				- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake 

Words whirl her round in pools. 
I cling by my teeth, grinding mountains. 
She floats. I scream. She drops 
through an eternity of light. 
I float again. I fall 
calling for animals to warm her, 
pleading with trees to feed me. 

		Darkness fills her like a carbohydrate. 
		Ponds ooze; crickets drone in black space. 
		A snake slides over a rock; 
		a seed is dragged to another grave. 
		Human voices hum behind the stones; 
		a vast, lonely conscience 
		strains to give itself a name. 

The cave of sleep opens as she spreads her legs. 
The father enters the iridescent dark from which he 
	came. 
Blocks of ice fall from his aging flesh. She turns to him 
to marry him and be his mother again. When she turns 
	again 
she is his son. The shine of his skin slides 
down her throat. Seaweed glides through my limbs. 
	Kisses. 
Kisses. Land and water come together in the mud of 
	our lips 
crawling with tongues that give touch to words. 
He swims into me in clouds of semen. 
Babies cry in our mouths. We float from the warm well 
in aboriginal kisses. 

		Lizards nestle in bushes 
		hurting and loving the leaves; 
		landbirds peck at tortoise shells. 
		She feels how wet the earth is, 
		nearly all water. 
		Since she first bled 
		there has been a passion finer 
		than lust, as if everything living is 
moist with her. 
She knows the language of leaves 
as an animal blessed with it. 

		In the trees is a clue to everything 
		and a happy one, like the genesis 
		of estrogen. Ever since 
		the first woman bled, plants cry when 
		animals are murdered; hands think 
		as bees emoting sweet sweat; 
		apples are made for eating; 
		even mathematics is glandular; 
		an algebra of feelings. 
		Only wars are waged 
		in the guise of pure perception 
		as though flesh were an alloy of aluminum, 
		or an isolated element. 

She takes off her dress; 
she lifts off her breasts; 
she has a talk with the sparrows 
who inhabit my chest. 
She is divided by contrary loves I have taken in. 
When I open her legs a river of contradiction flows 
	from me. 
Her limbs are estuaries rippling toward my stomach. 
She drowns inside myself 
longing for a god to speak to her from her lover's 
	tongue, 
as they explode together in whirlpools of sperm and 
	ova 
spinning against the silence. 

		When the baby came down out of her, 
		it felt thick between my lips, 
		squeezing out erect life. Its belly 
		passed her clitoris as it came with 
its cries of semen squirting from me. As its toes slid 
	out 
I was female again . . . 

		A vast landscape accepts her with silence 
		as if it were my private garden 
		to gather stones from her sleep. 
		The phantom of age descends the staircase! 

		In the middle of the afternoon, 
		when light is blinding, 
		I am looking for a man with arms, tree- 
			trunks, 
		fingers, branches to turn her nipples 
		green as spring buds. She waits outside my- 
		self, for him to welcome her in. 
		Or is it sleep, a peace deep as death, 
		she wants from him? 
		She puts on feathers like a bird 
		or a chorus girl. He can't know which. 

If he comes to her bed, 
she will be an orgasm of birds singing in wet leaves. 
The mouth of my dream will be open forever. 
I'll burst with a child, time hurdled from her throat. 
She will paint a song beneath my eyelids 
to sing into his sighs: 

		Down by the water 
		silver-haired witches are dancing, 
		down by the water, 
		tossing their curls. 
		Their breasts are eyes . 
		from which the sea rises. 
		In their mouths the sea cries. 
		They are kicking the sand 
		made from our bones. 
		Silver-haired witches 
		down by the water, 
		singing and dancing, 
		playing with bones. 

We take for each other 
the place of absent gods. 
We bargain for the eyes of fish 
to swim in an underground stream 
longing for no death. 

		These are our plum pits, 
		petrified and strung 
		These are our beetles gleaming in the coal. 
		We have come shining in ice from the mud 
		trailing seaweed in our wings of bone. 

We read; 
we write books; 
from the deep spring of orgasm flowing in the flesh, 
we erupt in cataleptic fits 
as faith from the insane. 
We will invent love until the sea closes in. 

		The phantom of age ascends the staircase; 
		a vast landscape accepts me with silence; 
		I gather stones from her sleep. 

She has knitted him a shawl 
and come to the frayed ends of history. 
His fingers are no longer primal myths kneading her. 

		Sea and shore mix in one giant sex. 

	In the index of my womb, I find her face . . . 
She is no spider queen after all, 
		She is a green beast with arms of sorrow . . . 

Her whole body is a phallus . . . 

		  I come out from between my own legs 
		into this world. 



BELLY DANCER 

An Etruscan priestess 
through whom the earth speaks, 
enters veiled; a mystery 
moves toward the altar. 
Unknown features, shadow of death, of brows, 
of eyes, mouth, lips, teeth of the night, 
jaw thrust forward like a pelvis, 
navel hidden, mysterious circuit, 
electrical wire of the first cries 
thrust from the womb. 
The silk covering hovers over her, 
turns with a whirling gesture 
round as the moon that glows in her belly. 
Her navel winks in a quiver. 
Amazing belly that stretches large enough 
to let a life grow. 
She glides, dips, shimmies, 
thrusts one hip, then another. 
The music breaks. Pain 
fills the drum. She 
falls to her knees, doubles 
over, leans back on her heels 
as her stomach flutters, rolls 
with contractions, upward, down- 
ward, sinks her head into the floor, 
raises her pelvis, arching, widening. 
Arms rise like serpents from a flesh basket, 
beat, caress, nip, shimmer the air with rhythmic 
pulse. At last 
the bloody mystery emerges, 
inch by inch the head presses 
through the lost hymen. 
Her pain works into a smile. 
The decked and bejeweled mother 
pushes out her ecstasy. 
The formless fluid shot into her, 
molded, fired in the secret oven, 
emerges, a child crying: it lives! 
Its voice rings in her finger cymbals. 

She rests her body, slowly 
rises from the earth. 
Her breasts fill with milk. 
She shakes them: 
this is food, I am food. 

Woman, whose nerve-filled clitoris 
makes her shiver, ecstatic 
mother, dance with a fury 
around your circle of women. 
Spin out the time locked in your own womb, 
bloom from your uterus, 
Lady of the Garden. 
The moon pulls you, 
crashes waves on the shore. 
Undulate the branches of your arms 
in the wind, Goddess of Trees, 
of all living things. 
Your flesh is not defiled by 
men who can't contain your mystic 
energy of woman. Belly 
that invites life to sleep in you, 
breasts of mortal ambrosia, 
Amazon groin that lit the hearth, 
altar, oven, womb, bread 
table, Earth 
Mother, pagan 
witch of magic birth, 
from whom all suck 
leaves that flow through the body's blood, 
cave of your sex, our home, 
moon of earth, Great Mother. 



THE PEACH THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE 

	I. 

The peach 
is a belly dancer's fruit. 
It, too, 
possesses a navel 
for seeing the world through the skin, 
has rounded buttocks, good 
to place against the hand 
the way earth 
reminds flesh of its being. 

			II. 

		Through the eye of the needle, 
		death is a country where people wonder 
		and worry what it is like 
		to live. The sullen 
		wish to live and live soon, 
		to be done with death 
		and the happy 
		want to stay dead forever 
		wondering 
		will it hurt to live 
		and is there death after death. 



NIPPLED TREES OUTLAST AN AGE OF STEEL 

Lawn mowers and can openers hammered into arks 
as cradles for bread will float 
because She made the tower lean 
after you built it. 

Blizzards, gale winds, tidal waves, floods, sleet, 
hail, tornadoes, fish frozen in the lake of Her mouth! 
And you thought to tame Her, to hold Niagara 
by the waist. To keep Her from eating kings' eyes 
you built pyramids against sand storms. 
To span Her rivers, you threw legs of steel 
over Her thighs, gathered her fury like roses, 
scoffed at the vulturism of the sea, took 
what you wanted from Her, and refused 
to give back what you threw away. You dreamed 
of keeping her, a wife in a pumpkin shell, but 
no cage holds the sea. When you tied down Her hair 
with steel cables, She sent up a hurricane, smashing 
concrete. Her necessity is your peace, Her mystery, 
your gospel. You shall climb mountains in search 
of berries. You shall walk through the forests to suck 
Her breasts, cling as children at her skirts. 
For every leg of a bridge thrown over Her, 
she changed the course of a river, and so 
you shall build your houses where She chooses 
in the midst of wild grasses. 



THE EARTH IS FEMININE IN MOST LANGUAGES: 
A PSALM 
(From an Essential Libretto for a New Age Symphony) 

			- after a passage in the
			  Taittiriya Upanishad 2.2. 

From food comes all, all that lives upon the Earth. 
All is food, and to food it shall return. 
Food is the only goddess among the living. 

They are blessed with food who worship earth, 
for the Earth is food and goddess among the living. 
All are born of food 
and by food they grow. 

The Goddess is Earth and food her panacea. 
All are born of her food 
and to food they shall return. 
All eat Her 
and she eats all. 

Food we are 
and to food we shall return. 
That is why She is called Sugar! Blossom! Honey! 

The Great Mother gave milk in the beginning. 
She arose as a dream from mud 
but from Her comes food and from food: breath, spirit, 
	truth, 
worlds, and in works, immortality. 



IV. Peace Prospect 

"That unity of culture and nature, work 
and love, morality and sexuality for which 
mankind is forever longing...will 
remain a dream as long as man does not 
permit the satisfaction of the biological 
demands of natural orgasmic sexual 
gratification...Until then, the 
extinguishing of life will prevail, be it 
in compulsive social institutions or in 
wars." 
			- Wilhelm Reich 
			  The Discovery of the Orgone 

"Of physiology from top to toe I sing, 
Not physiognomy alone or brain alone is 
worthy of the Muse. 
I say the Form complete is worthier far, 
The Female equally with the Male I sing." 
			- Walt Whitman 
			  "I Sing the Body Electric" 



MAJOR SURGERY 

My dreams rise, a twist of smoke. 
Spirits hammer at my throat 
or sleep like pig iron in my belly. 

I resolve to leave this hospital renewed. 
An antique bird 
will fly on metal wings 
changed to feathers. 
What is made of wood in my life 
remains fresh, unvarnished. 

All stories close like cupboards, 
cracked teacups line up on shelves. 
I lick ether from my fingers, 
roll my eyes back in my head. 
There were houses, 
many photographs in albums. 

Ants crawl toward a hill 
to be crushed 
when the shoe descends into evening. 

Cars buzz in the walls. 



FALLING INTO SAND 

Yearning rests in the sea: 
a bottle floating messages 
answers to the secret future. 
We talk of the end 
as the driest thing there is. 
Forests burn into their clearings: 
a sense of dread, flags 
of an age of huge weapons, 
poison gases, nitrates, analysis. 
Angry factories send the day into smoke. 
Minerals are asleep in their caves. 
Someone is deciding to disturb them. 

I retreat into a green library, 
explore the garden of your body 
thinking it can make me free of mine. 
We might touch each other into peace, 
a private evolution. 

If we build a fire at all entrances to the dawn, 
we can kiss the red mouths of graves, 
or change books into nipples. 



YOU ARE A MEDITERRANEAN 

Nerves can't reach 
passion that spills on floorboards. 
You are a wild insomniac 
and want a warlock to come to you 
in the night with evil magic 
and say stop trying to do what is right. 
You are a bat who clings upside down 
in a corner of the daylight and flies 
in the dark while the rest are asleep. 
You want to assassinate memory, 
but you need rest from this body 
which offers no ecstasy 
except through clenched teeth. 

No purity to reach, 
no virginal dawn to wait for and rape, 
you pace in a ferment, 
you take your voice in your arms 
and rock it to sleep. 



BICENTENNIAL ANTI-POEM FOR ITALIAN-AMERICAN WOMEN 

			"You are one of only two or three 
			Italian-American women poets in 
			this country," said the professor. 
			"You are a pioneer. There are fewer 
			of you than Black women poets." 

On the crowded subway, 
riding to the prison to teach 
Black and Puerto Rican inmates how to write, 
I think of the fable of the shoemaker 
who struggles to make shoes for the oppressed 
while his own go barefoot over the stones. 

I remember Grandma, her olive face 
wrinkled with resignation, 
content just to survive 
after giving birth to twenty children, 
without orgasmic pleasures or anesthesia. 
Grandpa, immigrant adventurer, 
who brought his family 
steerage passage to the New World; 
his shoemaker shop where he labored 
over American factory goods 
that made his artisan's craft a useless 
anachronism; his Code of Honor 
which forced him to starve 
accepting not a cent of welfare 
from anyone but his sons; 
his ironic "Code of Honor" 
which condoned jealous rages of wife-beating; 
Aunt Lizabetta, Aunt Maria-Domenica, 
Aunt Raphaela, Aunt Elena, grown women 
huddled like girls in their bedroom in Newark, 
talking in whispers, not daring 
to smoke their American cigarettes 
in front of Pa; 
the backyard shrine of the virgin, 
somber blue-robed woman, 
devoid of sexual passions, 
to whom Aunt Lizabetta prayed 
daily before dying in childbirth, 
trying to have a son 
against doctor's orders 
though she had five healthy daughters; 
Dr. Giuseppi Ferrara, 
purple-heart veteran of World War II, 
told he couldn't have a residency 
in a big New York Hospital 
because of his Italian name; 
the mafia jokes, the epithets: 
Wop, guinea, dago, grease-ball; 
and the stories told by Papa 
of Dante, Galileo, Da Vinci, 
Marconi, Fermi and Caruso 
that stung me with pride 
for Italian men; 
how I was discouraged from school, 
told a woman meant for cooking 
and bearing doesn't need education. 

I remember 
Grandma 
got out of bed 
in the middle of the night 
to fetch her husband a glass of water 
the day she died, 
her body wearied 
from giving and giving and giving 
food and birth. 



MY VENUS FLY TRAP IS DYING 

because it frightens me. 
I've tried to remember to water it. 
I keep saying I'll buy it a new pot, 
furnish it with fresh earth. 
After all, it is a plant and I do love 
greenery. But it's carnivorous, 
ingesting raw meat, living 
insects, engulfing them in heart- 
shaped leaves. Other plants wait 
for death to give flesh to roots. 
I resolve to become a vegetarian. 
I've loved and envied plants 
for their peacefulness, 
their quiet conversion of the sun, 
that first all contingent link 
between solar energy and animal. 
But this Venus Fly Trap 
is too much for me. 
It will have to die 
tossed into the waste can 
with the bright red lipstick, 
the blood red nail polish. 
I no longer wear. 
This Venus Fly Trap doesn't 
photosynthesize peacefully. 
It's trying to become an animal 
and I 
trying so hard to be a tree 
can't bear it. 



PARADISE IS NOT A PLACE 

		The poets of the future will come when 
		the infinite servitude of woman will be 
		broken, when she will live for herself and 
		by herself . . . she will also be poet! Woman 
		will find the unknown. "The Great Androgyne 
		will be created . . . Humanity will be woman and 
		man, love and thought, tenderness and 
		strength, grace and energy." 
			- Arthur Rimbaud The Voyant Letters 


Bread in our mouths, 
lightning in the belly of a whale, 
oceans to slice through with steel fins, 
rocks to plant as roses . . . 
We drift together on a mattress 
into the sea of early sunshine. 
Our mattress, Love, floats off to 
a deserted tropical island, glides 
past battleships, over submarines, 
through the tentacles of giant squid. 
Tourists turn to look at us 
floating on our mattress -- 
you pressed between my legs over 
your shoulders, my hair in your mouth, your 
fingers in my ears. They are amazed at our 
sailing by on our saffron mattress of mulberry 
leaves. We undulate up to the Statue of Liberty. 
The old girl winks at us 
and lifts her skirt to reveal her hefty pubes. 
We float past the wedding cakes of presidents' 
	daughters 
as we cruise the Potomac shocking Washington ladies. 
Our bodies melt into one huge rock. 
We are a Magritte Mountain floating out to sea, 
victorious in our battle of the sexes. 
One day, sailors point and say, "There's 
Great Mount Androgyne, 
once a fornicating woman and man!" 
Missionaries plant a neon cross on top, 
enshrining the place where penis merged with clitoris, 
and we are at peace in the clouds 
with gulls flapping gently around our peak. 



LADY GODIVA'S HORSE 

She rides me tamely through the town, 
seated daintily, naked legs 
side-saddling me, a proper lady. 
Silk hair covers her shoulders. 
Townspeople bow in reverance as we pass 
challenging her husband's greedy taxes, 
saving Coventry with her nakedness. 

Triumphant, we reach 
the gates of the city 
and she 
swings one leg over me, 
grips my bare back with her soft thighs. 
Her bootless heels 
kick my sides 
and I run, 
her hands loosening my reins, 
her body bending close, 
her warm weight upon me, 
her breasts galloping with my hooves. 

And we are one, 
beast and lady fused, 
one body. She pressed wet to me, 
my mane, her hair, 
our tail flowing out behind, 
the force of her moon-blood 
coursing through us, fierce 
umbilicus of the moon 
pulling us toward the sea. 



PEACE PROSPECT 

Too many people scribbling on each others' tongues 
gagging the cities. 
Politics muddle the nature of bodies. 
Sexual energy, a force confused, wasted. 

While sleep plays out the pain in me, 
I have a pleasant dream, 
a land inhabited by bright animals 
who refuse fire 
and eat nothing but leaves. 
I count the people I have tried to touch; 
my hands melt sand into glass. 
We can't manufacture food like vegetation 
standing in the light. Photosynthesis 
is the trees making love with the sun. 
A vague intuition blossoms in my stomach, 
a chance for a finer love. 
We are a mind-ridden race, incompatible with earth. 

A better race will come. I feel 
bright animals waiting 
for the right genetic moment. 

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