Eating the Underworld by Doris Brett Page A

breathing out,
    bright as candles
    wishing towards each other.

 
    Packing for Hospital
    You sit down and write a list—
    this is for a different sort of journey,
    travel for the adventure-minded.
    Inward Bound Holidays—give us your body
    and we do it for you.
    What do you pack for a trip
    like this? What do you own?
    Photos, those still windows
    into another planet,
    your sleeping clothes—
    dress is casual here
    but life is expensive.
    Here’s the suitcase, open-mouthed
    at where it’s going. Take care
    what you put there. It will
    follow you everywhere,
    like a dog
    bringing all that you give it.
    You’re ready? Then begin
    the mystery tour. Here
    is the beating chamber
    that Bluebeard killed
    and died for.
    Enter it carefully.
    See where love lies
    like a terrible flower, wider
    than the walls, higher
    than the ceiling. Pick it up
    anyway. Wear it in your hair,
    close to your heart,
    behind your ear.
    Keep it with you everywhere.
    Wherever you go. And when
    you need it, it will sing you
    all the way home.

 
    Last Menstruation
    â€˜â€¦ the object of secluding women at
    menstruation is to neutralize the dangerous
    influences which are supposed to emanate from
    them at such times … The girl may not touch
    the ground nor see the sun. Whether enveloped
    in her hammock and slung up to the roof … or
    elevated above the ground in a dark and narrow
    cage (sometimes for years), she may be
    considered to be out of the way of doing
    mischief, since, being shut off both from the
    earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of
    these great sources of life by her deadly
    contagion …’
    The Golden Bough, James G. Frazer
    I
    You came a few days early,
    perhaps it was stress
    but I like to think
    you came to say good-bye
    to me. Old unappreciated
    friend. All this beloved blood
    that has performed so cleanly
    for me, washing the womb
    each month, the tender nuse,
    wise blood of the un-wounded body
    bringing each month the brimming
    chalice, the living news,
    Ishtar’s dreamed, forbidden moon.
    II
    I remember at twelve
    when a girlfriend said
    she couldn’t touch plants
    because of you. She was told this:
    that the witch would rise out
    of her, grim and sharp
    as the tip of the spindle.
    This is the unclean one,
    the night visitor,
    head on the pillow,
    who laughs and sizzles
    at the withering bed.
    III
    And I think too of the caged girls
    of Borneo, taken from light
    for seven years of bloom.
    Brought out finally, they are
    pale as wax flowers. Now,
    they are told, you can be new.
    I think of them everywhere, the feared
    girls of the Indians of Alaska,
    the Esquimaux, Bolivia, Brazil,
    the girls of Rio de la Plata,
    hung up high like frozen,
    terrified spiders,
    and the Orinoco, where they know
    that everything she steps
    upon will die …
    IV
    This is what I will do.
    I will go out into the world,
    my feet deep and rich in the living
    earth. I will raise up
    my arms higher and higher
    until the sun sees every
    part of me. I will grow leaves
    for you, the night flowering
    jasmine, the ash, the cedar of Gilgit
    wreathing from my fingertips
    onto doorways, armchairs, stoves,
    the domestic cat. I will bring in
    the fields at midnight and the dark
    reeds where the river pulses
    like an aorta. I will live.
    I will teach you to my daughter.

 
    Uterus
    At first they thought it was you,
    old wanderer whom the ancients
    knew, the seat of emotions,
    cause of hysterical women
    in your clumsy journey,
    bumping and bumping around the room,
    looking for whom? Was it those
    roses of the ovaries,
    blooming each month
    and you wanting to collect
    them in your red basket,
    was it the moon …?
    I don’t know how
    to say good-bye to you
    little mother, wandering bowl
    of the soul. But I remember,
    you took care of my daughter
    and when the time came, pushed
    her into the world. Time comes
    for everyone. In every birth
    there is a dying.

 
    I T TAKES ME A COUPLE OF days to get