Lady Lazarus

DATE: Aug 8, 2008   PHOTOGRAPHER: Cherry

“I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it----



A sort of walking miracle, my skin

My right foot



A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine

Jew linen.


Peel off the napkin

0 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 happened I was ten.

It was an accident.


The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut


As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.


Dying

Is an art, like everything else,

I do it exceptionally well.


I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.


It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

It's the theatrical


Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:


'A miracle!'

That knocks me out.

There is a charge


For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart----

It really goes.


And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood


Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.


I am your opus,

I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby


That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.


Ash, ash ---

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----


A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.


Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.


Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

- Sylvia Plath”