I Go Back to May 1937, by Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,

I see my father strolling out

under the ochre sandstone arch, the

red tiles glinting like bent

plates of blood behind his head, I

see my mother with a few light books at her hip

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,

the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its

sword-tips aglow in the May air,

they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,

they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are

innocent, they would never hurt anybody.

I want to go up to them and say Stop,

don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,

he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things

you cannot imagine you would ever do,

you are going to do bad things to children,

you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,

you are going to want to die. I want to go

up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,

her hungry pretty face turning to me,

her pitiful beautiful untouched body,

his arrogant handsome face turning to me,

his pitiful beautiful untouched body,

but I don’t do it. I want to live. I

take them up like the male and female

paper dolls and bang them together

at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to

strike sparks from them, I say

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

After Reading the Inferno

Second Circle

We cannot condemn the lovers,

but rather relate to their longing.

Together, but never again able

to experience earthly touch.

Doubled over with passion,

where Dante can only faint from the sight

Of the two imprisoned

by their overwhelming love.

She recalls romantic memories of the two

making love with their eyes open,

the light sweat glazing the crease

where pelvis meets thigh.

The coming ecstasy, the tired touch.

To live in punishment from loving too much,

and caring too little about

anything but the lover.

To love someone more than the self,

more than God.

Alexandra Ustach

Bellini's Castadiva

Performed by Maria Callas

I hear it for the first time, in the bedroom,

over the buzz of the ceiling fan,

and it is so graceful it's as if she were

a falcon flying or salmon swimming.

It is that instinctive.

And I only know some Italian

but it doesn't matter.

I don't even want to see the translation.

The way it sounds, her voice, is so much

more than words could ever speak.

I lay there, small amongst the giant notes

that billow in the evening air.

I picture bursting waves over rocks at sea,

Both tension and release,

but mostly release.

Alexandra Ustach

Saying Goodbye

They said she could hear me

as she laid there violently still.

Her soft Irish skin spread like putty

to the mattress,

her speechless mouth hung open,

and her eyes,

like fish eyes- glossy, unfocused, bulging.

How I prayed to hear words

from her, there, living lips

as if to pull out some meaning.

I remember the day

she told me this might happen.

How naive I was about her bruised

and wheezing body.

And when asked a month before,

if the chance of her dying might come,

Any questions? Anything to say?

I just stared at the evening

stroking tall buildings outside.

How much I'd change that,

the closed mouth, the young mind.

What I might ask of her now-

all the things I'd love to know.

Alexandra Ustach

How to Deal with Rivers

How do we come to understand water

in each of its motions,

as it changes form without changing its nature.

In all of its goings and comings--

the inevitable progression,

and the accidental risings of water.

And then to read a book of the earth,

to learn of it uncovered by rivers,

eroded.

And the water under a luminous body,

with an original illusion of strength,

dries up as the rays of the sun

fall upon it.

As if after long and anxious explorations

making love to the edges of the earth,

it fulfills its functions, falls off

and dies.

a collage poem.

by, Alexandra Ustach