Birthdays
Next birthday
I am thirty-six,
& formed (for all intents
& purposes)
in tooth & claw.
Six books
have peeled away
all that I am
& all
that I am not;
I turn back pages now
in history's dog-eared
book, & write
of other lives.
& here you come,
pink as dawn,
rosy as the aurora borealis
blooming over Yorkshire
& the ruined abbeys
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poem by Erica Jong
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Aura
I sit in the black leather chair
meditating
on the plume of smoke that rises
in the air,
riffling the pages of my life
as if it were a book of poems,
flipping through
past & future.
If I go back, back, back,
riding the plume of smoke,
I find I died
in childbirth in another life,
died by fire in the life before that,
died by water twice, or more.
I pick out days
& relive them
as if I were trying on dresses.
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poem by Erica Jong
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I Live in New York
I am happiest
near the ocean,
where the changing light
reminds me of my death
& the fact that it need not be fatal-
yet I perch here
in the midst of the city
where the traffic dulls my senses,
where my ears scream at sirens,
where transistor radio blasts
invade my poems
like alien war chants.
But I never walk
the streets of New York
without hoping for the end
of the world.
How many years
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poem by Erica Jong
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Middle Aged Lovers, II
You open to me
a little,
then grow afraid
and close again,
a small boy
fearing to be hurt,
a toe stubbed
in the dark,
a finger cut
on paper.
I think I am free
of fears,
enraptured, abandoned
to the call
of the Bacchae,
my own siren,
tied to my own
mast,
both Circe
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poem by Erica Jong
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Total Eclipse
Not wanting to write
for fear that anything-
the passion for the page,
the love of carbon ribbons & erasers-
will distract me from your face,
from your eyes green
as the flickering base of flames,
& your tarnished copper hair.
My love is thick as rust
& just as hard to scrape off.
It glows like the green roofs of paris:
it shines in the sun like dropped pennies.
I fix on your face
until I am blurred & bleared,
until my eyes cannot focus
& all words become one.
Oh let me write you into my life!
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poem by Erica Jong
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Touch
The house of the body
is a stately manor
open for nothing
never to the public.
But
for the owner of the house,
the key-holder-
the body swings open
like Ali Baba's mountain
glistening with soft gold
& red jewels.
These cannot be stolen
or sold for money.
They only glisten
when the mountain opens
by magic
or its own accord.
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poem by Erica Jong
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To X. (With Ephemeral Kisses)
I hear you will not fall in love with me
because I come without a guarantee,
because someday I may depart at whim
and leave you desolate, abandoned, grim.
If that's the case, what use to be alive?
In loving life you love what can't survive:
and if you grow too fond and lose your head,
it's all for nought-for someday you'll be dead.
Maintain a cool detachment through the years.
Wear blinders, dear, put cotton in your ears.
Since worms will taste the tongue that tastes the wine,
burst not the grape against your palate fine.
With care, your puny heart will still be whole
the day they come to fetch your tepid soul.
And as that strumpet, Life, deals her last blow,
you'll have this final consolatio:
you'll snap your flippant fingers as you fall,
and say, 'I never cared for her at all!'
poem by Erica Jong
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The Heart, The Child, The World
Out in the world, the child
cries for the mother
as the wound cries for salt
as the lover cries
for her unrequited lover
as the ice cries out
for melting in the spring.
My heart is a spring
that pumps red blood.
I would give my child,
my girl child, my daughter
the vision of a mother
who does not flinch
when the heavy heel of man
comes down,
who loves the penis
when it pumps rich red blood
but values the wholeness
of her heart
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poem by Erica Jong
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Dear Anne Sexton
On line at the supermarket
waiting for the tally,
the blue numerals
tattooed
on the white skins
of paper,
I read your open book
of folly
and take heart,
poet of my heart.
The poet as a housewife!
Keeper of steak & liver,
keeper of keys, locks, razors,
keeper of blood & apples,
of breasts & angels,
Jesus & beautiful women,
keeper also of women
who are not beautiful-
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poem by Erica Jong
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The Long Tunnel of Wanting You
This is the long tunnel of wanting you.
Its walls are lined with remembered kisses
wet & red as the inside of your mouth,
full & juicy as your probing tongue,
warm as your belly against mine,
deep as your navel leading home,
soft as your sleeping cock beginning to stir,
tight as your legs wrapped around mine,
straight as your toes pointing toward the bed
as you roll over & thrust your hardness
into the long tunnel of my wanting,
seeding it with dreams & unbearable hope,
making memories of the future,
straightening out my crooked past,
teaching me to live in the present present tense
with the past perfect and the uncertain future
suddenly certain for certain
in the long tunnel of my old wanting
which before always had an ending
but now begins & begins again
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poem by Erica Jong
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