My knees were hung with tin triangular medals / to cure all forms of hysterical disease. — Carolyn Kizer
[1997. Kansas City. Figlio Italian Restaurant, Small group dinner for an iconic poet before her poetry reading. I am in attendance.]
The poet sits down at the table. She puts on her earrings. Clip-ons. She explains that they fall off. She removes them every time she goes outside so she won’t lose them. She tells her dinner companions that the earrings are expensive, not like the turquoise found in Mexico. These earrings are better, she says, because they are from Europe. The food comes. The poet complains that her companions aren’t eating enough. She insists everyone have some of her fish, cutting off a large piece for the person sitting to her left. She puts it on his plate. He eats it. She passes her squid around the table, too, for all to pick at. She orders a bottle of wine. She drinks several glasses and tells her companions about the time another iconic poet tried to rape her. She laughs as she tells the story. It’s the second time today she’s told it. The table orders more wine.
… a man can be always in the wrong and always appear to be in the right, and in the end become with the clearest conscience in the world the most unendurable tyrant and bore; and what applies to the individual can also apply to entire classes of society. — Friedrich Nietzsche
I collect toadstools and hemlock / believing that it’s possible / to be impervious to their properties, / to know only their joys. — Lauren Scharhag
Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species. — Friedrich Nietzsche
We are told that the birds with the faces of women are horribly foul and loathsome. They steal food and they smell. I am half partridge. You can tell by my graying legs and thick skin. I go by the name Stormswift. I go by the name Swiftwing. I have no name.
The internal structure of the bird is elegant. Crop. Proventriculus. Gizzard. Pancreas. Intestine. Ceca. Cloaca. Vent. These organs hang like baubles from a charm bracelet.
I used to think internal organs were ugly. Now I think they’re the most beautiful thing we never see.
The association of singing with women is an inevitable consequence considering the connection between the patriarchal construction and representation of woman first and foremost as a bodily entity and the presence of more bodily elements in singing than in instrumental music. To elaborate on the latter, there is literally more body in the singing voice—”more breath, more diaphragm muscles, a more open mouth”—because of the intensified and exaggerated vocalization when singing. Furthermore, singing is inherently a more embodied, more carnal realm than instrumental music in that the sound is produced within the performer’s body, from her throat, whereas in instrumental music, the sound source, whether piano, violin or others, is placed outside the performer’s body. — Linda Austern and Inna Naroditskaya, Music of the Sirens
First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men’s bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them. — Homer
All I can think of is how fitting it is that in the end / it is your own poisons that get you. — Lauren Scharhag
When there is no movement, there is only a series of incidents that temporarily interrupts the system like electroconvulsive shocks to the brain. When there is a movement, someone else decides what it will be and won’t, who will be part of it and who won’t. The movement becomes a system whose structure mirrors that of the larger system it is attempting to reform or overthrow. The movement is the pill swallowed to counteract the effects of another pill.
When he found my torso, he called it his canoe, / and, using my arms as paddles, / he rowed me up and down the scummy river. — Carolyn Kizer
What is individual consciousness when the oppressor is inside everyone else’s mind?
When I envision it, I see him handling my body as if it were a corpse. I am floating above, looking down on the ruin.
Yes, there are friends, but it is error and deception regarding yourself that led them to you; and they must have learned how to keep silent in order to remain your friend; for such human relationships almost always depend upon the fact that two or three things are never said or even so much as touched upon: if these little boulders do start to roll, however, friendship follows after them and shatters. — Friedrich Nietzsche
When encountered in society, Nietzsche says, intelligent women lose their intellectual amiability and throw a harsh light on themselves, their tactics, and their objective of a public victory. The same women “become female again” and “rediscover their intellectual charm” in a dialogue for two. Charm is a bauble easily broken from the chain. Charm is the cheap way into discourse, nothing more than a token from a strip mall jewelry store.
It was as if I had been cloned, but one of me was all body and the other was no body. The part of me that was body could not move my body. The part of me that was no body had no body with which to move.
After this I’m going to cut out my tongue and use it as fertilizer for all / the flowers I’m going to grow in every window of my house. / I’m telling you there’s an after. / I’m telling you this will end. — Sarah Xerta
My body is not ready to emerge. Where others see rain, I see snow. Where others see spring, I see winter. Let me sleep a moment longer in the arms of Hades, my keeper.
I long to be as clear as the urine of a well-hydrated man.
And the breeze wound through my mouth and empty sockets / so my lungs would sigh and my dead tongue mutter. — Carolyn Kizer
I am in the field. Do not talk to me about the neighboring highway.
I dream myself wielder of the spear, / stunner, tanner, carrier of the bolt-gun. — Lauren Scharhag
When did I misplace myself, what year? Where is my garland of intestines? My skin sack? Who is using my brain as a doorstop?
O what a bright day it was! / This empty body danced on the river bank. — Carolyn Kizer
Mannose-binding lectin deficiency impairs the body’s ability to utilize the immunoglobulins it creates, as well as those imported through infusions. That’s because mannose-binding lectin is what both earmarks and breaks through the hard casing of bacterial, fungal, viral, and protozoan pathogens. You can bring in all the fighters you want, but if you can’t penetrate the source of the problem, those fighters will be reduced to witnesses. Or worse, they will wander, aimless, unaware that the pathogen is even present.
The bird flew through me and emerged as a clot of blood.
Contrary to popular belief, Roman vomitoriums were not places designated for vomiting. They were a means for quick escape. Large crowds could pass through the amphitheater’s vomitorium and into open space.
There’s always something dead crowding something living, like the mouse lying motionless beside two owlets. Like the clapper rail beside the mouse. Like the squirrel beside the clapper rail.
And when I didn’t speak / I became a secret, a testimony / against my own body. — Carl Adamshick
The more I want to speak, the more my mouth burns.
Dana Henry Martin 