sometimes i hate you
because you knew the golden curve
of my arm, the hairs erect and lit as sun
you touched, the supine leg, the sleek
beautiful muscles, turning and flexing
like dolphins. you opened your eyes
in bed and saw the sharp gloss belly,
the curves like church sides, worshipped.
you touched me. the round ass, smooth
and firm, with give. enough give.
you desired me like water. i saw
your entire future lit up in the magnifying
glass of my powers: i was mesmerizing
you with my all powerful body, the truly
amazing sexuality of the young female
honed with poetry and a gritty life, made
with these elixers into something unstoppable.
lovemaking lost my mind. when i came to,
i felt like the Captain of the ship: everything
in working order, legs locked, arms strained,
tits high, every muscle and tendon long and loose-
the expression on your face made me feel
slightly sorry for you, poor stunned rabbit.
heads turn! hallalujah! fights break out!
for a few years i think i caused a fight,
every single time we went dancing,
fell a little more in love with you
every single time you defended my honor,
claimed your place in my thighs with your big heart.
yes you had a young man's body but let's
not bullshit anyone: it's simply not the same for men.
little else to claim for me then: beauty and soul,
my body and my face made me euphoric and terrified:
i was sure i could never be loved for anything more
than the perfection of my rib cage, the downy indents
on my back, the lay of perfectly measured fat over
my hipbones, where your hands held me, trembling.
i had the misery of a broken bleating childhood
abuse, suffering, loneliness, madness on all sides,
alcoholism, manic depression, anxiety, schizophrenia,
and then the saving graces: beauty and soul.
i had a baby and broke both into his little pink face
like an egg yolk over the best sufflee.
sometimes to be a mother feels like this:
to have distilled the finest of myself into someone else.
darling i know you love me you desire me
yes you want me now. still sometimes i hate you
for the same reason i often love you.
because you knew me then.
because you know me know.
this is what happens
when you fall in love so young, spending the first four
years doing nothing but fucking, as if you invented the
way it all ends up, as if you were the mold they broke to repeat.
maggie may ethridge
august 09
My Published Memoir
About The Writer
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"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open " M.R.
she's precocious / and she knows just what it takes / to make the pros blush
The Mr. & Mrs.
what i thought love was is so much less than what it is
Our Pack: Dakota Wolf, Lola Moon, Ian Oliver and our baby, Ever Elizabeth
Someone may have stolen your dream when it was young and fresh and you were innocent. Anger is natural. Grief is appropriate. Healing is mandatory. Restoration is possible. -Jane Rubietta
you can stand under my umbrella
the light is on for you
My dear child, who can tell? One can only tell that, by remembering something which happened where we lived before; and as we remember nothing, we know nothing about it; and no book, and no man, can ever tell us certainly.
Some couples don’t ask much of one another after they’ve worked out the fundamentals of jobs and children. Some live separate intellectual and cultural lives, and survive, but the most intense, most fulfilling marriages need, I think, to struggle toward some kind of ideological convergence. Norman Rush
Pray For Kate McRae
click for link
I Believe In Nationwide Health Care
E Pluribus Unum ( Out of Many, One )
"I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Profound thoughts!
Yes. So cosmically connected that your poem is what I actually feel inside, even if the details are different.
You're INSPIRED, on fire.
i don't know why, maybe it's the champagne, but i can't tell if you are being sarcastic of not Dotterel, and for some reason when i first read your comment and thought you were, it struck me as so funny i laughed out loud at the world.
elizabeth! it's not the details- EXACTLY.
wow! you are so talented with your words.
it´s your fucking champagne, hehe. you are a genius!!!!!
i love you for feeding me.
yolanda
Wow, I read your poems and have to sit and ponder for a while, they always strike a chord with me, and this one resonates loudly. Such a lovely gift, the music of your words, thanks!
You say what many of us feel, and can't say or identify. And you say it with beauty and clarity.
I am at a loss for words, but there are more.
Peace,
pf
Love it, Maggie May. Just love it!
Quite beautiful...thanks for sharing your intensity.
:-)
Be it the champagne or not, this is epic.
i have always held a bit of envy for those who love young. i didn't fall in love with my man until i was 33. and i'm pretty damn sure we would have never made it while we were young. i always say that he is my reward for learning from my mistakes. but i don't know...sometimes i wish i would have all these years together to look back upon. not just stories to tell each other.
and, we should have coffee. i mean, san diego ain't all THAT far...
:-)
Sublime, Maggie.
Wow, you nailed it. Seriously.
When I say "it," I mean that concept of young love grown older.
Nice job.
always makes me want to read more..
You always leave me a little stunned -your way with twisting your words and putting them into my own life is truly a gift. You always do feel like that when you're in love...like you are experiencing something no one else ever has, nor ever will.
This makes me think of the boys I loved when I was young and DID they appreciate the perfection, DID they appreciate the gift I gave them? I doubt it because I did not appreciate it myself. Which makes me so sad.
I tell you something, though- as I get older, I realize that young men's bodies are actually quite as amazing and beautiful and miraculous as women's in some ways. Don't get me wrong- in my eye, in my heart, there is nothing so beautiful as a woman's body, no matter the age. There is sacredness there.
But. Oh, but. Men can be something too. Oh yes they can.
Thank-you, as always, for this poem, Maggie. It's so sharp and so true. Like your vision always is.
This is beautiful.
I love when you write! My heart skips a beat when I see you in my reader.
Wow. Your writing always leaves me speechless.
Hi Maggie. Thanks for stopping by my blog!!
You are an amazing writer!
such an absolutely beautiful way to explain the power and growth and tenderness and intimacy of your relationship. I LOVE your poetry!
i had love and marriage on my mind, yet yesterday, and not as poetic and without sex cause i'm afraid to scare my father...hehe...
wow. the naked truth can be daunting, huh? is it brutal honesty? or simply, reality?
Ahh, I remember it well...
A comment doesn't seem worthy. This deserves something much bigger and better....if only I could find the words to express it.
ms moon i totally agree :) what i was saying here was that the aging process, the changing from that 'perfection' of muscle and skin and tendon, is not as hard for men. (maybe unless they are 1 gay or 2 an actor) my husband barely seems to notice his changes!
I knew exactly what you meant, what you mean - and I am humbled now that you once visited my blog and complimented the writing... and weeks later, i track you back to this! Brilliant. Beautiful. Well said.
Submit this poem, Maggie, so that more will be able to read it and so that you will win the award you so richly deserve. God, you amaze me.
I'm so glad you stopped by my site to say hello! I've been looking for San Diego bloggers for the last few months but haven't come across many. Your poetry here is absolutely beautiful -- it's so eloquent and mature. I can't wait to read more.
I do understand that, Maggie. I do. Men definitely do not obsess about their bodies and the changes the way we do.
This is gorgeous, you are talented indeed!
And thanks so much for your sweet comment on my blog! <3
xoxo,
S-C
Maaaaarvelous, darling, MARVELOUS!
I love your audacity, knowing that, from you, it's simply honesty taken to its gritty max.
you're more beautiful than you realize. that's it. after kids, no matter what age you had them, you will change and the old ways of looking beautiful no longer work, look garish at best. you give up. then one day you relax about it and recognize someone new in the mirror, older and more beautiful with less makeup and boney. someone sexy and wise with beautiful kids that keep you running. i'm 45 but feel more in tune with my looks now than at 30. the urge to "look pretty" is less strong. and somehow less effort works to my advantage, i make less of a mess with myself if that makes sense.
As usual, I don't ever know quite what to say to your poems, but I like them a lot. You really know how to capture moments and feelings.
I think we need to be beautiful for eachother when we're young because we still have so much work to do.
Looking back on those days "growing up" with my husband, I find comfort knowing that if we stayed together then, than surely we will stay together now!
the comments on this are awesome, so thought provoking and heartfelt. it's not that i don't feel sexy or beautiful anymore- at all. i do. i have quite a bit of vanity ;) it's the dynamic of a marriage that started so very young= the sexual dynamic- that i was exploring here, of specifically what it is like for a woman who 'seduces' her husband as a teenager and then finds herself in her thirties, sleeping with him, 'giving' her body to him. the same body, but different. it's not a matter of feeling badly about how i look, but observing the strange feelings that occur inside myself at times when i think how how many years my husband has been seeing me naked, basically :)
I read this three times and I love your last comment as well, it helped me get it all. I was sixteen when my husband and I met. That's a lot of sex, a lot of changes. I think you have perfectly and exquisitely captured what I mean when I sometimes ask him "am I still beautiful?" After three pregnancies, 20 years, etc. I don't mean, do I still look the same, I mean, do you still want me like that, like you did when we were nineteen. I loved the poem, is what I'm trying to say.
Terrifying good, as you always are, I climbed right inside it, and then re-read, and re-read, and will still be thinking of it in time to come - as with each of your soul works.
You write so very honestly about sex and sexuality and beauty (and so beautifully).
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