A Sad Child

 

 Unsplash

You're sad because you're sad.

It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.

Go see a shrink or take a pill,

or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll

you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad

but some get over it.

Count your blessings. Better than that,

buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.

Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?

Your sadness, your shadow,

whatever it was that was done to you

the day of the lawn party

when you came inside flushed with the sun,

your mouth sulky with sugar,

in your new dress with the ribbon

and the ice-cream smear,

and said to yourself in the bathroom,

I am not the favorite child.

My darling, when it comes

right down to it

and the light fails and the fog rolls in

and you're trapped in your overturned body

under a blanket or burning car,

and the red flame is seeping out of you

and igniting the tarmac beside your head

or else the floor, or else the pillow,

none of us is;

or else we all are.

Margaret Atwood

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

 

StockCake

 The world is full of women

who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself

if they had the chance. Quit dancing.

Get some self-respect

and a day job.

Right. And minimum wage,

and varicose veins, just standing

in one place for eight hours

behind a glass counter

bundled up to the neck, instead of

naked as a meat sandwich.

Selling gloves, or something.

Instead of what I do sell.

You have to have talent

to peddle a thing so nebulous

and without material form.

Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way

you cut it, but I've a choice

of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.

Like preachers, I sell vision,

like perfume ads, desire

or its facsimile. Like jokes

or war, it's all in the timing.

I sell men back their worse suspicions:

that everything's for sale,

and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see

a chain-saw murder just before it happens,

when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple

are still connected.

Such hatred leaps in them,

my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary

hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads

and upturned eyes, imploring

but ready to snap at my ankles,

I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge

to step on ants. I keep the beat,

and dance for them because

they can't. The music smells like foxes,

crisp as heated metal

searing the nostrils

or humid as August, hazy and languorous

as a looted city the day after,

when all the rape's been done

already, and the killing,

and the survivors wander around

looking for garbage

to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.

Speaking of which, it's the smiling

tires me out the most.

This, and the pretence

that I can't hear them.

And I can't, because I'm after all

a foreigner to them.

The speech here is all warty gutturals,

obvious as a slab of ham,

but I come from the province of the gods

where meanings are lilting and oblique.

I don't let on to everyone,

but lean close, and I'll whisper:

My mother was raped by a holy swan.

You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.

That's what we tell all the husbands.

There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here

but you would understand.

The rest of them would like to watch me

and feel nothing. Reduce me to components

as in a clock factory or abattoir.

Crush out the mystery.

Wall me up alive

in my own body.

They'd like to see through me,

but nothing is more opaque

than absolute transparency.

Look--my feet don't hit the marble!

Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,

I hover six inches in the air

in my blazing swan-egg of light.

You think I'm not a goddess?

Try me.

This is a torch song.

Touch me and you'll burn.

Margaret Atwood

in, Morning in the Burned House

na ferida escondida no fundo da camisa

 

Planet Flem

 Algumas pessoas vendem o seu sangue. 

Tu vendes o teu coração.

Era isso ou a alma.

A parte difícil é tirar a maldita coisa para fora.

Uma espécie de torção. Como abrir uma ostra,

a tua espinha, um pulso,

e depois, upa! Está na tua boca.

Viras-te parcialmente do avesso

como uma anémona do mar a cuspir um seixo.

Há um “plop”quebrado, o som

de vísceras de peixe a cair num balde.

E ali está, um enorme coágulo vermelho escuro

do passado ainda-vivo, a cintilar inteiro no prato.

Vai passando de mão em mão. É escorregadio. É deixado cair.

Mas também degustado. Muito grosseiro, diz um. Muito salgado.

Muito amargo, diz outro, fazendo uma cara.

Cada um é um gourmet instantâneo,

e tu ficas a ouvir isto tudo

a um canto, como um empregado de mesa recém-contratado,

a tua mão tímida e habilidosa na ferida escondida

no fundo da camisa e peito,

timidamente, sem coração.

Margaret Atwood

The Moment

Margaret Atwood

by Tim Walker

The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage,

you stand in the centre of your room,

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there,

and say, I own this,

is the same moment the trees unloose

their soft arms from around you,

the birds take back their language,

the cliffs fissure and collapse,

the air moves back from you like a wave

and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

Climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round.

~ Margaret Atwood