Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OPEN LIKE A ROSE, by ANN FISHER-WIRTH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OPEN LIKE A ROSE, by                    
First Line: Open like a rose, he told me
Last Line: 2000).
Subject(s): Bigamy; Birth; Love - Erotic; Flowers; Roses; Child Birth; Midwifery


Open like a rose, he told me,
open like an orchid,
chanting all the names of flowers he knew

while I pushed and two nurses held my knees:
open like a bird of paradise, open
like a daffodil, a tulip,

a magnolia, a hollyhock, a marigold.
I laughed -- this endless list,
and the stubby, stinking marigold --

and something fiery opened,
ring upon ring. With my body I thee worship.
All of it, I guess. All of my body, I mean,

but all of it, too: the violence, the boredom.
Once, he cracked my tooth; I nearly ran him over,
he was plastered to the windshield

yelling Go ahead and do it.
Venus rises to the moon above the mountain,
and here, in the West, I miss lying in his arms

full of my usual doubts
about my wrinkles and my flesh,
full of my usual grief

that as fast as whiskers can push from his skin
or his balls pull up tight the way I love them,
he is going away from me,

I am going away from him,
one of us will close the other's eyes.
With my body . . . The night we first made love

he had to leave me, dress,
ride out in the rain for rubbers.
When he returned, rain streaking the window

and that slippery blue sleeping bag
falling off the bed,
I held him so joyfully, both of us married elsewhere.

First Published in The Kenyon Review, Volume 2, Number 2 (Spring
2000).
www.kenyonreview.org/roth




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