Sunday 10 May 2015

Sunday Poem

AFTER LOUISE BOURGEOIS’ MAMAN 
eight arched arachnid legs
giant ice picks en pointe
joints knobby, ropey muscles twined
tight as a girl’s braids 
at once nurturant tent
rigid mother superior
gargantuan black
widow    how 
to flee this vault of exalted
expectation, detoxify
the paralyzing venom
of self-doubt   the porous 
space between
the sinewy legs of steel
unbarred but charged
with the force field

of your mother’s love how sharp
the bite of disappointment, nagging
disapproval     why can’t you sew
your own clothes like Elizabeth, practise


piano as regularly as Grace, help
in the garden like Carol Ann

summa cum laude not
enough, good manners never

good enough, and though
you broke free never out
from under the smothering
ambivalence of Maman, her power

to gestate, loom, enmesh
From Realignment (Palimpsest, 2015) by Ruth Roach Pierson

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks, Carmine. How lovely to have one's poem appear in your blog.

Unknown said...

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