209. COMFORTABLE AS A FLOAT

From the Archives (April 2006)

BITTERNESS
by Olga Broumas

She who loves roses must be patient
and not cry out when she is pierced by thorns.
—Sappho

In parody
of a grade-B film, our private
self-conscious soapie, as we fall
into the common, suspended disbelief of love, you ask
will I still be
here tomorrow, next week, tonight you ask me am I really
here. My passion delights

and surprises you, comfortable
as you’ve been without it. Lulled,
comfortable as a float myself in your real
and rounded arms, I can only smile
back, indulgently
at such questions. In the second reel—

a season of weeks, two
flights across the glamorous Atlantic, one
orgy and the predictable divorce
scenes later—I’m fading out
in the final close-up
alone. As one

heroine in this
two-bit production to the other, how long
did you, did we both know
the script
meant you to wake up doubting
in those first nights, not me, my daytime
serial solvency, but yours.

Yesterday—the same day that a child was testifying before Congress about being abused by online sexual predators—a high-ranking Bush official was arrested for pedophilia. Yes, Bush’s deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security tried to solicit sex from a fourteen-year-old girl.

This also from the Post:

Another Homeland Security official—Frank Figueroa, special agent in charge of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa—faces trial this week on charges of exposing himself to a teenage girl last year at a mall. Figueroa, who has been suspended, pleaded not guilty.

As my Baptist mother used to say, be sure your sins will find you out, yo.

SANG IN SHOWER: Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” (which dates me, huh?)

READING: The search warrant for 610 N Buchanan St. (AKA the lacrosse team house beside Duke campus).

BEST-OF SPAM: I FAILED AND STILL MAKE 94K! [but apparently cannot find the caps lock key on his computer]

129. HEALED BY IMMERSION

From the Archives (July 2007)

RUMPELSTILTSKIN
by Olga Broumas

First night.
Mid-winter.
Frightened
with pleasure as I came.
Into your arms, salt
crusting the aureoles.
Our white breasts. Tears
and tears. You
saying
I don’t know
if I’m hurting or loving
you. I
didn’t either.
We went on
trusting. Your will to care
for me intense
as a laser. Slowly
my body’s cellblocks
yielding
beneath its beam.

I have to write of these things. We were grown
women, well
traveled in our time.

•

Did anyone
ever encourage you, you ask
me, casual
in afternoon light. You blaze
fierce with protective anger as I shake
my head, puzzled, remembering, no
no. You blaze

a beauty you won’t claim. To name
yourself beautiful makes you as vulnerable
as feeling
pleasure and claiming it
makes me. I call you lovely. Over

and over, cradling
your ugly memories as they burst
their banks, tears and tears, I call
you lovely. Your face
will come to trust that judgment, to bask
in its own clarity like sun. Grown women. Turning

heliotropes to our own, to our lovers’ eyes.

•

Laughter. New in my lungs still, awkward
on my face. Fingernails
growing back
over decades of scar and habit, bottles
of bitter quinine rubbed into them, and chewed
on just the same. We are not the same. Two

women, laughing
in the streets, loose-limbed
with other women. Such things are dangerous.
Nine million

have burned for less.

•

How to describe
what we didn’t know
exists: a mutant organ, its function to feel
intensely, to heal by immersion, a fluid
element, crucial
as amnion, sweet milk
in the suckling months.

Approximations.
The words we need are extinct.

Or if not extinct
badly damaged: the proud Columbia
stubbing
her bound-up feet on her damned-
up bed. Helpless with excrement. Daily

by accident, against
what has become our will through years
of deprivation, we spawn the fluid
that cradles us, grown
as we are, and at a loss
for words. Against all currents, upstream
we spawn
in each other’s blood.

•

Tongues
sleepwalking in caves. Pink shells. Sturdy
diggers. Archaeologists of the right
the speechless zones
of the brain.

Awake, we lie
if we try to use them, to salvage some part
of the loamy dig. It’s like
forgiving each other, you said
borrowing from your childhood priest.
Sister, to wipe clean

with a musty cloth
what is clean already
is not forgiveness, the clumsy housework
of a bachelor god. We both know, well
in our prime, which is cleaner: the cave-
dwelling womb, or the colonized
midwife:

the tongue.

•

READING: Hiss and Tell’s funny, funny entry about how sexy Kris Kristofferson is

LISTENING TO: Lou Reed and John Cale’s Songs for Drella CD

SANG IN SHOWER: curse the guy beside me at the stoplight for reminding me of this song that I would have been happy to forget: Jimmy Buffett’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Must. Burn.Off.Ears.Now!

BEST SPAM SUBJECT LINES: synagogue amazon (uh huh)

108. THIS LATE, THIS ESSENTIAL HEAT

From the Archives (June 2005)

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
by Olga Broumas

For years I fantasized pain
driving, driving
me over each threshold
I thought I had, till finally
the joy in my flesh would break
loose with the terrible
strain, and undulate
in great spasmic circles, centered
in cunt and heart. I clung to pain

because, as a drunk
and desperate boy once said, stumbling from the party
into the kitchen and the two
women there, “Pain
is the only reality.” I rolled
on the linoleum with mirth, too close
to his desperation to understand, much less
to help. Years

of that reality. Pain the link
to existence: pinch your own tissue, howl
yourself from sleep. But that night was too soon
after passion
had shocked the marrow alive in my hungry bones. The boy
fled from my laughter
painfully, and I
leaned and touched, leaned
and touched you, mesmerized, woman, stunned

by the tangible
pleasure that gripped my ribs, every time
like a caged beast, bewildered
by this late, this essential heat.

I am a poet who is fascinated by how people process pain, by what we do to be whole despite our sometimes gaping holes. I am also fascinated by the fact that these holes will sometimes show themselves in long, jagged breaths behind long slow licks that feel oh so exquisite that you may just be sucking in your own breath right now and even gasping as I hold you taut and our nerve endings quiver and there we hang suspended ... our lifelines twitching, breathing.

60. SWEEPING THE GARDEN

From the Archives

(March 2005) Hung Tzu-ch’eng said, "If the mind is not overlaid with wind and waves, you will always be living among blue mountains and green trees. If your nature has the creative force of Nature itself, wherever you may go, you will see fishes leaping and geese flying.”

I’ve lost sight of my geese flying and am letting my frozen and stunned places dictate my behavior, but it’s high time I find my familiar green landscape again.

Yesterday I posted a poem for a friend; ioday I’m posting one for me.

SWEEPING THE GARDEN
by Olga Broumas

for Deborah Haynes

Slowly learning again to love
ourselves working. Paul Éluard

said the body
is that part of the soul
perceptible by the five senses. To love
the body to love its work
to love the hand that praises both to praise
the body and to love the soul
that dreams and wakes us back alive
against the slithful odds: fatigue
depression loneliness
the perishable still recognition—
what needs

be done. Sweep the garden, any size
said the roshi. Sweeping sweeping

alone as the garden grows
large or small. Any song
sung working the garden brings
up from sand gravel soil through
straw bamboo wood and less
tangible elements Power
song for the hands Healing
song for the senses what can
and cannot be perceived
of the soul.

19. MILLER’S LULLABY

From the Archives

(March 2005) Okey-dokey, here’s another nice rain poem from The Sun magazine:

LULLABY
by D. Patrick Miller

I am not a body. I am the rain,
falling all over your house and
in the deep fold of the distant hills.
I cover the leaf, the roof, the field grasses
and the shiny street. A billowing wind
carries me through the swirling branches
and drives me against your window.
I strike and coalesce, fall and spill
into the soil and the swallowing gutter,
taking a wild ride to the sea.
Later the sun may draw me up,
but the clouds will lose me when
they let down their burden of water
again. I am not a body. You can
sleep to the sound of my falling.

All right. Lots to do today so I better get busy. But first I decided to add a new category to my morning entries: SINGING IN THE SHOWER. I’ll try to be honest, but often just start spouting out some incredibly goofy song before it even registers at a conscious level what I’m singing. If something as goofy as “Undercover Angel” ever comes out of my mouth, well, I might just have to lie that day.

SINGING IN THE SHOWER: Bonnie Raitt’s “Angel from Montgomery"

READING: Olga Broumas’s sexy poems
Listening to: the rain

14. BITTERNESS

From the Archives (March 2005)

BITTERNESS
by Olga Broumas

She who loves roses must be patient
and not cry out when she is pierced by thorns.
—Sappho

In parody
of a grade-B film, our private
self-conscious soapie, as we fall
into the common, suspended
disbelief of love, you ask
will I still be
here tomorrow, next week, tonight
you ask me am I really
here. My passion delights

and surprises you, comfortable
as you’ve been without it. Lulled,
comfortable as a float myself in your real
and rounded arms, I can only smile
back, indulgently
at such questions. In the second reel—

a season of weeks, two
flights across the glamorous Atlantic, one
orgy and the predictable divorce
scenes later—I’m fading out
in the final close-up
alone. As one

heroine in this
two-bit production to the other, how long
did you, did we both know
the script
meant you to wake up doubting
in those first nights, not me, my daytime
serial solvency, but yours.

13. WHAT HASN'T HAPPENED YET

From the Archives (March 2005)

SONG FOR SANNA
by Olga Broumas

...in this way the future enters
into us, in order to transform itself
in us before it happens.
—Rilke

What hasn’t happened
intrudes, so much
hasn’t yet happened. In the steamy
kitchens we meet in, kettles
are always boiling, water for tea, the steep
infusions we occupy
hands and mouth with, steam
filming our breath, a convenient

subterfuge, a disguise
for the now
sharp intake, the measured
outlet of air, the sigh, the gutting
loneliness

of the present where
what hasn’t happened will
not be ignored, intrudes, separates
from the conversation like milk
from cream, desire

rising between the cups, brimming
over our saucers, clouding the minty
air, its own
aroma a pungent
stress, once again, you will get
up, put on your coat, go

home to the safer passions, moisture
clinging still to your spoon, as the afternoon
wears on, and I miss, I
miss you.

12. BEGIN BY THE TOUCH

From the Archives (March 2005)

IO
by Olga Broumas

One would know nothing.
One would begin by the touch
return to her body,
One would forget
even the three
soft cages
where summer lasts.
One would regret nothing.
One would first touch the mouth
then the warm
pulsing places that wait
that wait
and the last song around them
a shed of light.
A crumpled apron, a headcloth, a veil.
One would keep nothing.
By the still mouths of fear
one would listen. Desire
would spill past each lip
and caution. That which is light
would remain.
That which is
still would grow fertile.

11. BEGINNING WITH O

From the Archives

(March 2005) Listening to Marilyn Hacker, a dyke master of formal verse and sonnet sequences, describe her writing process made me hyperaware of meter (even though I only occasionally write formalist poetry).

So here’s a brief poetry lesson to introduce a couple of excellent dactyls by Olga Broumas:

To write metrically is to measure and you can measure 4 different kinds of meter: accentual, syllabic, accentual-syllabic, and quantitative.

Dactyls fall into the accentual-syllabic category, the most common type of meter in English.

Poets measure the number of accents and the number of syllables using the basic unit of a foot, or, a rhythmical pattern that generally contains one accented syllable and one or more unaccented syllables.

A dactyl is one of 4 feet mostly widely used in accentual-syllabic meter—iamb, trochee, anapest, and dactyl.

Poets also use substitute feet—spondee or pyrrhic—to vary rhythm.

Note the following diacritical marks: ‘ , or the acute accent, represents an accented syllable, and X represents an unaccented syllable.

A dactyl is ‘XX, as in “faithfully.”

That’s all very technical and distancing, but let’s go for the stomach now and read two of Olga Broumas from Beginning with O.

LINE OF THE HEART

Up the long hill, the earth rut steamed in the strange sun.
We, walking between its labia, loverlike, palm to palm.

•

LINE OF THE MIND

The branch splits in two: I will eat both the male
and the female fruit. Gnaw back the fork to its simple crotch.

10. CRAWLING WITH POETRY

From the Archives

(March 2005) I found a Baby’s First Memories book that my mother kept about me. It’s strange and more than a little sad to think about her scribbling this stuff down way back when.

She married my father when he was 26 and she was only 18 and they started having babies right away.

They had my sister just 10 months after their wedding and had me just 15 months after that.

I’m never sure exactly when adult-onset paranoid schizophrenia took over my mother’s (and our) world, but most of my memories of her are colored by this illness.

This book makes me think about her as a nineteen-year-old mother, jotting down notes about her new babies while she and my father build the house that I would grow up in.

Basic stats > born @ 9:30 PM weighing 6 pounds 8.5 oz. • 19.25 inches height • round head • allergic to evaporated milk

Milestones > coos @ 1.5 months • reacts to emotions (fright/anger) @ 1.5 months • reacts to music @ 1.5 months • laughs out loud @ 3.5 months • crawls @ 6.5 months • understands no @ 7 months • 1st step @ 13 months

And here’s an entry I couldn’t resist:

Baby enjoys singing and is seldom quiet. Her attention is rarely held by toys but occasionally she gets very busy, usually with boy’s toys. She enjoys climbing trees and rides her tricycle very daringly. She is seldom cooperative at play and usually just wants her own way. And what a temper! She really lets us know when she’s not satisfied.

I spent the day at the LGBTQ leadership summit and met some particularly interesting folks from the LGBT lawyers association and from P-FLAG. Was especially impressed by all the work being done in rural communities, and I’m glad we’re building these coalitions.

Now I’m sipping a cup of hot tea and reading a collection of Olga Broumas’s poems.

Here are a few sections from another sexy Broumas poem:

CARITAS

I.
Erik Satie, accused
once of formlessness, composed
a sonata titled: Composition in the Form
of a Pear. When I tell you
that it would take
more brilliance than Mozart
more melancholy precision than Brahms
to compose a sonata in the form of
your breasts, you
don’t believe me. I lie
next to your infidel sleep, all night
in pain
and lonely with my silenced
pleasure. Your breasts
in their moonlit pallor
invade me, lightly, like minor
fugues. I lie
between your sapling thighs, tongue
flat on your double lips, giving
voice, giving
voice. Opulent
as a continent in the rising light, you sleep
on, indifferent
to my gushing praises. It is
as it should be, Atlantis,
Cyprus, Crete, the encircled
civilizations, serene
in their tidal basins, dolphin-
loved, didn’t heed to the faint, the
riotous
praise
of the lapping sea.

2.
Your knees, those pinnacles
competing with the finest
dimpled, five-
year-old chins, are
dancing. Ecstatic as nuns
in their delirious habit, like
runaway needles on a multiple graph,
the first organic model of
seismographs, charting
the crest I keep you on
and on till all
the sensitive numbers on the
Richter scale ring out at
once, but
silently: a choir
of sundial alarums. You reach that place,
levitated by pleasure, the first
glimpse the melting
glacier must
have had, rounding the precipice,
of what came to be known as
Niagara Falls. After all this time,
every time,
like a finger inside
the tight-gummed,
spittle-bright, atavistic
suckle of
a newborn’s fragile-lipped
mouth, I
embrace you, my heart
a four-celled embryo, swimming
a pulse, a bloodstream that becomes, month
to month, less
of a stranger’s, more
intimate, her
own.

3.
There are people who do not explore the in-
sides of flowers—Sandra Hochman

With the clear
plastic speculum, transparent
and, when inserted, pink like the convex
carapace of a prawn, flashlight in hand, I
guide you
inside the small
cathedral of my cun+. The unexpected
light dazzles you. This flesh, my darling, always
invisible like the wet
sides of stones, the hidden
hemisphere of the moon, startles you
with its brilliance, the little
dome a spitting
miniature of the Haghia Sophia
with its circlet of openings
to the Mediterranean sun.
A woman-made language would
have as many synonyms for pink/light-filled/holy as
the Eskimo does
for snow: Speechless, you
shift the flashlight from
hand to hand, flickering. An orgy
of candles. Lourdes in mid-August. A flurry of
audible breaths, a seething
of holiness, and
behold
a tear
forms in the single eye, carmine
and catholic. You too, my darling, are
folded, clean
round, a light-filled temple, complete
with miraculous icon, shedding
her perfect tears, in touch
with the hidden hemispheres,
the dome
of our cyclops moon.

LISTENING TO: Lazy Afternoon, performed by Patti Austin

READING: Olga Broumas’s Rave: Poems 1975–1999