The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 1/29/09

[BlueIris]

"Readers"

Wanting to breathe life into their own dead babies
They took her dreams, collected words from one
Who did their suffering for them.

They fingered through her mental underwear
With every piece she wrote. Wanting her naked.
Wanting to know what made her.

Then tried to feather up the bird again.

The vulture with its bloody head
Inside its own belly,
Sucking up its own juice,

Working out its own shape,
Its own reason,
Its own death.

While their mothers lay in quiet graves
Squared out by those green cut pebbles
And flowers in a jam jar, they dug mine up.

Right down to the shells I scattered on her coffin.

They turned her over like meat on coals
To find the secrets of her withered thighs
And shrunken breasts.

They scooped out her eyes to see how she saw,
And bit away her tongue in tiny mouthfuls
To speak with her voice.

But each one tasted separate flesh,
Ate a different organ,
Touched other skin.

Insisted on being the one
Who knew best,
Who had the right recipe.

When she came out of the oven
They had gutted, peeled
And garnished her.

They called her theirs.
All this time I had thought
She belonged to me most.

—Frieda Hughes

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear BlueIris...

How very sad this is...

It's bad enough to lose your loved one to death...

But this sounds like she lost her again to something else...Something foreign and strange...

Thank you...

[BlueIris]

2. The author is Sylvia Plath's daughter.

Just FYI.

[BlueIris]

3. Man, this thread is tanking like Governor Rod's defense.

Geeze.

[RetroLounge]

4. I guess Sylvia did belong to her

I mean, she's made an entire career out of being the poor daughter of the famous, much better, much more talented, more famous dead poet.

RL

[Demoiselle]

5. I can't prove this, of course, but

By the time I got to the 13th line, I thought, "This must be about Sylvia Plath, " honest to god. So I"m feeling very smart at the moment.
And wow, I agree with California Peggy...what a sad sad poem!

[BlueIris]

6. Excellent.

Thanks for your comment.