Roshanak Rodanco

 I have done it again.    One year in every ten    I manage it—— A sort of walking miracle, my skin    Bright as a Nazi lampshade,    My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine    Jew linen. Peel off the napkin    O my enemy.    Do I terrify?—— The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?    The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be    At home on me And I a smiling woman.    I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three.    What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments.    The peanut-crunching crowd    Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot—— The big strip tease.    Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands    My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.    The first time it ...

 Bare-handed, I hand the combs. The man in white smiles, bare-handed, Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet, The throats of our wrists brave lilies. He and I Have a thousand clean cells between us, Eight combs of yellow cups, And the hive itself a teacup, White with pink flowers on it, With excessive love I enameled it Thinking 'Sweetness, sweetness.' Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells Terrify me, they seem so old. What am I buying, wormy mahogany? Is there any queen at all in it? If there is, she is old, Her wings torn shawls, her long body Rubbed of its plush ---- Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful. I stand in a column Of winged, unmiraculous women, Honey-drudgers. I am no drudge Though for years I have eaten dust And dried plates with my dense hair. And seen my strangeness evaporate, Blue dew from dangerous skin. Will they hate me, These women who only scurry, Whose news is the open cherry, the open clover? It is almost over. I am in control. Here is my ...