We're trying to strike a match in a matchbook
that has lain all winter under the woodpile:
damp sulphur
on sodden cardboard.
...
I hung my wedding dress
in the attic. I had a woolen
shoulder to lean against,
...
Words slip from me lately
like cups and saucers
from soapy hands.
I grope for the names of things
...
Sometimes I want to sink into your body
with the fever that spikes inside me
to be a woman
who can open a man.
...
A man after sex
has that squishy thing in the nest of his lap.
A bashful appendage
like a Claes Oldenburg vinyl drain
...
after Anselm Kiefer
Lately we've begun to talk logistics,
to draw up contingency plans
...
Apprehended and held without trial,
our friend was sentenced:
brain tumor, malignant.
Condemned each day to wake
...
We remember the rabbit when we see
the duck, but we cannot experience
both at the same time
...
1
FAT
is the soul of this flesh.
Eat with your hands, slow, you will understand
...
"Make flour into dough," she answers,
"and fire will turn it into food.
Ash is the final abstraction of matter.
You can just brush it away."
...
On the crown of his head
where the fontanelle pulsed
between spongy bones,
a bald spot is forming, globed and sleek
as a monk's tonsure.
...
My mother said what she thought.
If my father looked up from the paper
to inquire, sotto voce,
where the hell anyone would get such a dumb idea,
...
for my father
You and I used to talk about
Lear and his girls
(I read it in school,
...
There was a ghost at our wedding,
the caterer's son,
who drowned that day.
...
1
We speak too fast.
The child sits at our table, waiting
his turn. The clock
points a sharp finger. The daily
...
Chana Bloch (born March 15, 1940, Bronx, NY) is an American poet, translator, and scholar. She is a professor emerita of English at Mills College in Oakland, California. Bloch earned her B.A. from Cornell University, her M.A. degrees in Judaic Studies and English literature from Brandeis University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley. She taught at Mills College for over thirty years and directed their Creative Writing Program. Bloch has held residencies at the Bellagio Center for Scholars and Artists, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She has given lectures and poetry readings at numerous U.S. colleges and universities. Bloch has published four collections of her poetry: The Secrets of the Tribe, The Past Keeps Changing, Mrs. Dumpty and Blood Honey. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation and included in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize and other anthologies. She is the poetry editor of Persimmon Tree, an online journal of the arts by women over sixty.)
Tired Sex
We're trying to strike a match in a matchbook
that has lain all winter under the woodpile:
damp sulphur
on sodden cardboard.
I catch myself yawning. Through the window
I watch that sparrow the cat
keeps batting around.
Like turning the pages of a book the teacher assigned —
You ought to read it, she said.
It's great literature.