Hematite Heirloom Lives On (Maybe December 1980)

I saw him bleeding but I thought all blood was a dream. Certainly I had none.

 
I may be making erotic art near the red telephone
that connects Ted to his mother dying of cancer
I cut out photos of nude women and place them on food signs
Chicken Pot Pie. Why—because I want to save
the women in the photos, so make them humor-filled or
truly connected to the fountainhead of sex as I imagine it.
She holds the most amethyst grapes to her breasts
I’ve cut out her face it’s off howling in space
sex is for god because it’s a furious
violent brightness so I make a straw fetish
with a red tonguelike clitoris to protect me
from literature and from my dear friends. The women don’t
approve the men do I ignore them but this is minor I want
to be there to describe the harmony between the fact
that I make these collages and write “Waltzing Matilda”
that and the red phone to Peg. That and all the speeches
which must be made
by Ted in the other room waiting for bad news for years.

 
Oh kids life is feelings like these it’s the talk of it
drawing
the others outside to our house: the news is throughout us
the mondial flames of hell, the funniness, we are
unironized.

 
 
Yet I keep not being able to be there. From now it’s because I’m
still hurt. As sweet as pain to a saint is the door
to the actuality of those events.
Will the door open. Not unless I
give up my fear of my anger I’m just a girl from the desert
am I. I’m still so angry at people I know, I can’t go in.
How many of you sexist feminists think I’m only part of him
part of him?

 
You, I remember you then.
You said goodbye to me, outside on
the streetcorner, two years later, because I was “part of him”
and you were making war with him—though I
wasn’t to take it personally You were too much trouble anyway
you always had to be adored. You made me say
I love you; I lied; I’ve adored no person.
Love isn’t your present, you can’t ever have mine I
don’t own a love; saying goodbye now, then

 
the pizza shop there (from where I once saw, in subzero
weather
at night, a naked man barefoot streak by)
the tawdry bar’s over there; I want to win this poem, don’t I
a poem can’t be won by a person, I can’t come out of this one
clean I’m too mean, though there’s
the cleaners there, and even the sneakers store, four
corners crossroads

 
 
I’m telling the truth. I’m going to tell it
anyone’s: that never being what anyone thought
I never cared what anyone thought
as long as I could go home, and resume my work—am I
back in the door? Oh Ted’s here, kids asleep, dark window dreams
oh airshaft dark window I often mistake for
the panelike sails of a clipper ship taking us home.