Self-Portrait
She was not a slender woman,
but her skin was milk
mixed in with strawberry jam
& between her legs the word purple was born
& her hair was the color of wheat & yellow butter.
Her eyes were dark as the North Atlantic sea.
She learned the untranslatable words of dawn.
She studied her own fear & wrote its verses.
She used the hole in her heart to play wind-music.
She built her book-houses over her empty cellar.
She nursed on the muse at first,
then became her own mother.
poem by Erica Jong
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The Widower
She left him in death's egg,
the bone sack & the gunny sack,
the bag of down & feathers-all black . . .
Somehow he couldn't get back.
It was night,
a night of shark-faced jets
winking brighter than blue stars,
a night of poisoned cities
mushrooming beneath the eyes of jets,
a night of missile silos
sulking in the desert,
a night of babies howling in the alleys,
a night of cats.
She left a death so huge
his life got lost in it.
She left a bloodstained egg
he had to hatch.
poem by Erica Jong
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Zen & the Art of Poetry
Letting the mind go,
letting the pen, the breath,
the movement of images in & out
of the mouth
go calm, go rhythmic
as the rise & fall of waves,
as one sits in the lotus position
over the world,
holding the pen so lightly
that it scarcely stains the page,
holding the breath
in the glowing cage of the ribs,
until the heart
is only a living lantern
fueled by breath,
& the pen writes
what the heart wills
& the whole world goes out,
goes black,
but for the hard, clear stars
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poem by Erica Jong
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Knives
The women he has had are all faces
without eyes.
He has entered them blind
as a cut worm.
He has swum their oceans
like a wounded fish
looking for home.
At nights when he can't sleep,
he dreams of weaving
backward up that river
where the banks
are fringed with mouths,
& weedy hair
grows amid the dark crusts
of ancient blood.
Tonight he is afraid & lonely
in a city of meat & knives.
I would go under his knife
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poem by Erica Jong
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On the Avenue
Male?
Female?
God doesn't care
about sex
& the long tree-shaded avenue
toward death.
God says
the worm is as beautiful
as the apple it eats
& the apple as lovely
as the thick trunk
of the tree,
& the trunk of the tree
no more beautiful
than the air
surrounding it.
God doesn't care
about the battle
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poem by Erica Jong
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For Molly
You-the purest pleasure
of my life,
the split pit
that proves
the ripeness of the fruit,
the unbroken center
of my broken hopes-
O little one,
making you
has centered my lopsided life
so that if I know
a happiness
that reason never taught,
it is because of your small
unreasonably wrigglish
limbs.
Daughter, little bean,
sprout, sproutlet, smallest
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poem by Erica Jong
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Her Broom, Or The Ride Of The Witch
My broom
with its tufts of roses
beckoning at the black,
with its crown of thistles,
prickling the sky,
with its carved crescents
winking silverly
at Diana,
with its thick brush
of peacock feathers
sweeping the night,
with its triangle
of glinting fur.
I ride
over the roofs
of doom.
I ride
while he thinks me safe
in our bed.
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poem by Erica Jong
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Tachycardia
In the chest is caged bat
who seeks escape
through the mouth.
He flaps his wings
& the molars shiver.
He flaps his wings
& the thyroid bulges
like a snake
that has swallowed
a mouse.
He flaps his wings
uttering shrill cries
heard only by the ears
of the teeth.
He wants to soar
into the great world.
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poem by Erica Jong
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Gazing Out, Gazing In
Because I am here
anchoring you
to the passionate darkness,
you gaze out the window
at the light.
My love is the thing
that frees you
to follow your eyes,
as your love,
a sword made of moonlight
and blood,
and smelling of sex
and salt marshes,
frees me to gaze
with a calm inward
eye.
In all your frenzied searching
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poem by Erica Jong
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Sunday Afternoons
I sit at home
at my desk alone
as I used to do
on many sunday afternoons
when you came back to me,
your arms ached for me,
and your arms would close me in
though they smelled of other women.
I think of you
on Sunday afternoons.
Your sweet head would bow,
like a child somehow,
down to me -
and your hair and your eyes were wild.
We would embrace on the floor-
You see my back´s still sore.
You knew how easily I bruised,
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poem by Erica Jong
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