Dearest Man-in-the-Moon
Dearest man-in-the-moon,
ever since our lunch of cheese
& moonjuice
on the far side of the sun,
I have walked the craters of New York,
a trail of slime
ribboning between my legs,
a phosphorescent banner
which is tied to you,
a beam of moonlight
focused on your navel,
a silver chain
from which my body dangles,
& my whole torso chiming
like sleigh bells in a Russian novel.
Dearest man-on-the-moon,
I used to fear moonlight
thinking her my mother.
I used to dread nights
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poem by Erica Jong
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Unrequited
Parachuting
down through clouds
shaped like whales & sharks,
dolphins & penguins,
pelicans & gulls,
we reach
the purple hills
of a green-hearted island
ringed
with volcanic rock
bathed
by cobalt waters
reefed
by whitest coral
tenanted
by sea urchins & sponge
& visited
by barracuda
& tourists.
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poem by Erica Jong
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Books
The universe (which others call the library). . .
-Jorge Luis Borges
Books which are stitched up the center with coarse white thread
Books on the beach with sunglass-colored pages
Books about food with pictures of weeping grapefruits
Books about baking bread with browned corners
Books about long-haired Frenchmen with uncut pages
Books of erotic engravings with pages that stick
Books about inns whose stars have sputtered out
Books of illuminations surrounded by darkness
Books with blank pages & printed margins
Books with fanatical footnotes in no-point type
Books with book lice
Books with rice-paper pastings
Books with book fungus blooming over their pages
Books with pages of skin with flesh-colored bindings
Books by men in love with the letter O
Books which smell of earth whose pages turn
poem by Erica Jong
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Paper Chains
The first snow of the year
& you lying between my breasts
in my husband's house
& the snow gently rising in my throat
like guilt,
& the windows frosted over
as if etched by acid.
You have come from the desert
& have left a little sand
between my legs
where it rubs & rubs
& secretes a milky fluid,
finally a poem
or a pearl.
I am your oyster shell,
your mother of pearl
gleaming like oil on water
for two hours on a snowy day.
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poem by Erica Jong
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How to Name Your Familiar
When the devil brings him,
like a Christmas puppy,
examine his downy fur & smell
his small paws for the scent
of sulphur.
Is he a child of hell?
O clearly those soft brown eyes
speak volumes
of deviltry.
O surely those small pink teats
could suckle witches.
O those floppy ears
hear only the devil's hissing.
O that small pink tongue
will lick & lick at your heart
until only Satan may
slip in.
A fuzzy white dog?
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poem by Erica Jong
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Smoke
Smoke, it is all smoke
in the throat of eternity. . . .
For centuries, the air was full of witches
Whistling up chimneys
on their spiky brooms
cackling or singing more sweetly than Circe,
as they flew over rooftops
blessing & cursing their
kind.
We banished & burned them
making them smoke in the throat of god;
we declared ourselves
"enlightened."
"The dark age of horrors is past,"
said my mother to me in 1952,
seven years after our people went up in smoke,
leaving a few teeth, a pile of bones.
The smoke curls and beckons.
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poem by Erica Jong
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On Reading a Vast Anthology
Love, death, sleeping
with somebody else's husband
or wife-this
is what poetry is
about-Eskimo, Aztec,
or even Italian
Rinascimento,
or even the high falutin Greeks
or noble Roman-O's.
O the constant turmoil
of the human species-
beds, graves, Spring with its
familiar rosebuds, the wrong beds,
the wrong graves, wars
unremembered & boundaries gained
only to be lost & lost
again
& lost roses whose lost
petals
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poem by Erica Jong
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The Color Of Snow
For David Karetsky (April 14, 1940-March 12, 1991) , killed in an avalanche
Putting the skis down
in the white snow,
the wind singing,
the blizzard of time
going past your eyes,
it is a little
like being snowed in
in the Connecticut house
on a day when the world
goes away
and only the white dog
follows you out
to make fresh tracks
in the long blue shadow
of the mountain.
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poem by Erica Jong
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The Sheets
We used to meet
on this corner
in the same wind.
It fought us up the hill
to your house,
blew us in the door.
The elevator rose
on guests of stale air
fed on ancient dinners.
Your room smelled
of roach spray and roses.
In those days
we went to bed with Marvell.
The wind ruffled sheets and pages,
spoke to us through walls.
For hours I used to lie
with my ear to your bare chest,
listening for the sea.
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poem by Erica Jong
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The End of the World
Here, at the end of the world,
the flowers bleed
as if they were hearts,
the hearts ooze a darkness
like india ink,
& poets dip their pens in
& they write.
"Here, at the end of the world,"
they write,
not knowing what it means.
"Here, where the sky nurses on black milk,
where the smokestack feed the sky,
where the trees tremble in terror
& people come to resemble them. . . . "
Here, at the end of the world,
the poets are bleeding.
Writing & bleeding
are thought to be the same;
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poem by Erica Jong
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