Sylvia Plath last night

photo: candy diez


My life’s accumulating emergencies. And I just found out that my greatest loss yet is that I cannot find my Sylvia Plath Collected Poems. I've got to have that back; Corinna, now gone in my life, gave that to me. Kim, did I lend it to you? I know I did, way back when you and... okay,enough with conjuncts and adjuncts, you said you can't stand her, the bastard's a girl. Hand it over here, please? Along with your head.

This is the kind of loss that makes me feel unrooted.

Last night someone said Plath is a lesbian.

Sawi, listen to this. Sylvia Plath is a lesbian. You haven’t thought of that, had you? I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair. I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair. O mermaids singing!

So Sawi, your unforgettable line, which you must have forgotten by now, should be, Ah. You’re like Sylvia Plath.

But how come LitCrit never deigned take up Lesbos? They can't handle the girl? Even Paglia stayed on shore. Sucked the incest Daddy-Daddy crap. Ach, Ach. Every woman adores a fascist. She will wrestle to death with her daemon father. How faggoty. Why wrestle with someone you overthrew when you were two?

Every book a lesbian book – you know the feeling? As you read for instance The Hanging Man?

A vulturous boredom pinned me to this tree
If he were I he would do what I did

Goddamn. If one becomes a lesbian by education, that's where I gotit, not from Bob Dylan, and not from Adrienne Rich or Margaret Randall those institutionals.

That contempt for her sex? That what-am-I-doing here nausea?

The smog of cooking the smog of hell!
I live with women who think like birds.

You say I should drown my girl.
She'll cut her throat at ten if she's mad at two.

Ted Hughes who?
Ah yes. My friend Victor said he is not a lesbian. He is a genius.

His neighbor, the impotent husband, slumps out for a coffee.
We try to keep him in. An old pole for the lightning.

Moon-skulled.
Gilled like a fish.

All ripples.
A well-done sum.

But it hit me first when I read The Bell Jar. Rejected it because oh my, I was always claiming, claiming, all spurious. Like my claim that Frances Farmer's last friend was a lesbian, Jean Radcliff sumthin, how tiresome they say so what?

That dyke Joan there? The hardly- noticed character, who at the book’s end was found hanging in a tree at the park in the dead of winter? Of course that was she, Sylvia.

Not?

Her unknown lover, then. Her doppelganger.

Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss!

Ghastly weather

photo by jon roberts




brittle broken nails
brittle
broken
me

Have you got yourself an American boyfriend? her friend asks. Why don't she find herself an American boyfriend if she is so fond of them? Old crackpot. Peering at my wallet to see if I stuffed someone's picture there. Now she's ribbing. That tape belongs to my niece. She lives in New York City.

Why are they surrounding me? My God. They're all of a party. Their coldness. The amused interest. The hostility. Don't they have more of the same tapes in New York? Surely they could send a box to the fucks of Digos? I wanted to ask.

What I really want to tell them is, Why do you want to tear my back?

There's no saving a man from a lifetime of wickedness. Says the Commodore to the Pirate. Ghastly weather. The Prince and the Pirate taking turns to save poor Elizabeth, now she cannot run.

We're done now, she says. Margot will take care of everything. I am bored. Past despair past complaint. Love an old sting I alone bit. Please tell Sheilfa thanks for translating my poem I think the translation is better than the original. Tribute. Tribute. Kindness. To love another person is to see the face of God. Really huh. Not to love is to hang one's bones in the desert. She takes back. Does that all the time. Like the poems she keeps on revising and revising. She takes back love and redistributes love. Who does she think she is the Red Cross?

All beginnings end. From end to end it ends. Between beginnings and endings it ends. I am lost. In the beginning and in the end. And in-betweens. Hell. Who is not.

But this pain of knowing. An iron spiral turning and turning. So some people choose not to think. So as not to hurt. All wounds are mental. The wound deepens as you think more and more. Would you rather love? I asked. She chuckles. I'd rather be a millionaire.

What nut would reply to a crazy crier wailing Have you seen La Stranger?
A hard nut.

That's what she is.
A hard nut to crack.

A nice try that.

This place. The air. Laced with the smell of sepsis. Would she weep if she finds out? Like she did when she found out her love was to die?

Oh here. My heres. Even the silences are heavy with blame.
Scabs on my skin. Scratch and they bleed. Stretch and they bleed. Dear Douglas, all wounds speak in the present tense. No such thing as phantom pains.

Sometimes I choke. In my own self-invented pains. For not having seen her lately.

Hey. Have you seen La Stranger?
Hey you have you? Have you? Hey hey!


October 01, 2010, a journal entry

You are

You are nothing beside me You are nothing beside me You are nothing beside me You are nothing beside me You are nothing beside me You are nothing beside me You are nothing nothing nothing nothing beside me You are nothing You are you are you are beside me nothing nothing nothing nothing beside me You You You You nothing beside me me me me me You are nothing nothing nothing beside me nothing beside me nothing beside me nothing You are nothing nothing nothing beside me nothing beside me nothing beside me nothing beside nothing beside nothing Yes You are. Nothing. Beside. Me. You are nothing nothing beside me nothing you are you you you