I don't think it's been all that long--
not just in geological time, but just
that long, culturally-- that women
have been invited, or included, at the poetry table.
And so tonight, I thought, I would
read a lot of poems that have to do with women
to honor the fact that women have been writing
poems for an awfully long time.
And it's only been in the last 50,
or so, years, I think, that, really,
women poets have been taken as seriously as they should always
have been taken.
So the first poem that I will read
is called "Clothes That Wear Me."
And there are metaphorical and real clothing.
And this is a poem in four short sections.
"One-- Dress.
One day, the voices of 20 women, singing a Gregorian chant,
caused a dress to materialize out of thin air.
It fit me perfectly and even buttoned itself
in front without my having to lift a finger.
When I went down the street in this dress,
men fell to their knees.
Sparrows stopped their small talk to follow me.
The zipper in the back sang "Ave Maria,"
and the pockets were lined with lilies.
Oh, my dress, full of ballads, my dress that accepted me
like a flask.
How could I lose you that night when
I gambled with those young men and their loaded dice?
Two-- Winter Cloak.
I've taken the selfishness of men and sown
a winter cloak out of it.
Its holes are the size of small towns with storms hovering over
them.
I can never iron out its wrinkles.
So I toss it in the furnace where, naturally, it
refuses to burn.
I'm stuck with wringing out its tears.
It's true.
I'm weak from chin to ankle.
I can only say no on odd days.
I weep over the deaths of spiders, those asterisks
on the staircase.
But my mind, my sanitarium of a mind,
has the strength of 3,000 infantrymen planting
geraniums in the desert.
Such strength recedes when I wear
my angry coat, my barren coat, my coat that
absorbs my life like a sponge.
Three-- Favorite Things.
My favorite bra is bright blue.
One cup is larger than the other so that my heart
has room to expand.
This bra speaks now and then.
It abhors neo-expressionism, black underwear,
fluorescent lights.
Lately, it's been encouraging me to become
a wet nurse to humankind.
My bra argues for divine love, the milk of human kindness.
It is quickly falling out of my favor.
[LAUGHTER]
My favorite shoe is shaped like a book.
When I put my right foot into it,
I become a great, golden Buddha pulling gently on my earlobes.
Suddenly, I can read the whole miraculous world in a glance.
When I put my left foot into it, I
shrink down to a water beetle.
Then I scurry, in between the litter of words,
circumventing commas and periods and rowing through the silences
on each page.
Four-- Veils.
Far away, my dead children are putting on their veils.
First, they press them with tiny irons.
Then they hold them up to the light.
Taking turns, the three infants tie diaphanous
veils around each other's heads.
When they wear their veils, they see everything
that ever was or will be.
When they lift off their veils, they cry.
For them, eternity is inexplicably sad.
As a mother of exiles, I never loved these children,
though, I cried when my body turned them out.
Now, they gather their flocks of stones as a chandelier of rain
hangs over them.
Their veils are clouded with longing.
Their faces were made to shine."
I don't think I've ever read that poem at a poetry reading.