Congratulating Wedge by Alice Notley : The Poetry Foundation

Congratulating Wedge by Alice Notley : The Poetry Foundation

alice notely, just under the skin of left leg

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/notley/leftleg.html

as i lay dying.

waterfront night
put his feet on the cold stressed wood
inked with rot in some places
tell him a coffin
rolls out miles
of sunny tuffs of hay
arms legs star spread
his organs shallow and tolerant
of the packed down dirt
his muscles smoothed young again
nothing left in the eyes but nature.

linda bishop starves.

1. the rain is punishing the flat top roofs
i watch it, and feel jealous of the sky's open mouth
gums and tongue and bones showing.


2. the apples are heaped like gold
in the corner of the attic
red and pink shiny rubber galaxies
the white dead sun is coming in at an angle
and bleaching them

I am down below
behind the stairs
hunched over the old heater
arms curled like horns
over the rambling metal frame
12 apples a day, until my love comes
I whisper to myself, looking at the nest
I've made for a small bird, next
to my foot, where my hair has been collecting
a little thumbalina bed of gold gray hay
i watch how the strands are leaving
the shores of my scalp
and i watch them dancers all the way to the wood
12 apples a day until my love comes.
and the rain sounds good.