Hematite Heirloom Lives On (Maybe December 1980)

American Poetry Review, The, Jan/Feb 1997 by Notley, Alice

I saw 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.

Alice Notley's book-length poem, The Descent of Alette, was recently published by Viking-Penguin. She lives in Paris, France.