The RetroLounge Daily Poetry Thread Friday 5/12/06

Spelling


My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

*

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

*

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.

*

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

*

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

*

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

----Margaret Atwood

People tend to think only of her prose.... I have a book of her poems and I really like them.


thanks Retro!

Wow, this is one vivid poem.....the images are too much!

The verse about the woman in labor during the war just curdled my blood...

I've been in labor, twice, and I cannot even imagine how horrible it must be to not be able to give birth......

Thank you.....

You are ably filling RetroLounge's shoes!

:yourock:

Thank you. :hug: