the body never lies

i think you wanted to know
his moonshine eye, his cliff-noted past
i caught you looking through his pockets
planting seeds, stabbing your skin on 
hangnails- he was ripshorn and scarcely
alive; you loved him for the weak pulse,
the saline drip of his nose, degeneration
of his eye, where rolling stones fumbled
slowly, wet and dark and hollow.

i think you wanted to know
what you were up against: a war
you would not win clamoring against
your rib cage, a hurricane state 
in the immune system of your heart
where invaders would never be silenced
or your father ever be wrong;
he called you a slut faced bitch
i slapped him twice and took you home.

your favorite poet was Sexton,
reading her suicidal confessions, her calm
representation of madness, premeditated
murder during the childbearing years
i know you hated her for failing as a mother,
now i'm talking about you again
although you tell us how you can't blame
them forever, how you have to grow up 
and take responsibility, to forgive

to forgive the cancer that mouths it's
gumless seams against your wounds,
to forgive the blood rot that licks
sugar off your ribs-
or to forgive your parents.
why would you do that?
deny your body it's truths.

the body never forgets
how your sex foils itself again and again
your arms ache and your stomach broils,
hot plantings sewn into the curve of foot
cold buds wakening in the slip of your mouth,
headaches, dreary Sunday monsoon
flashes it's wet tears against your dry eye.

i think you wanted to know
what it was like to be un-loved
in a million different ways
this mission was your alone
torture yourself for as long as you shall live
in his arms, where he would never know
*never give a shit, want to be inconvenienced, love you*
and you would never remember
and everyone would be so pleased you forgave

it is so much easier that way;
don't you think.

love, first draft

i remember everything about you 
the jeans you wore when we were eighteen
a chevy nova that smelled like sex and cigarettes and oil
god i loved that car
your teenage room where 
we first had sex how
i stripped naked in the lamplight and stood as proud as could be,
Athena, commanding you to sex 
and you were just going to be a great time with a safety net,
but when you pressed your mouth onto my mouth
i closed my eyes and tried not to cry
because love was spilling out from our bodies
out through my eyes and through the crack underneath your dark door
into the hall, where your parents, trying to watch tv
looked backward and then at each other and smiled.
what took you two so long,
your dad asked me weeks later when it was obvious 
we were a thing.
i couldn't tell him the truth, any of it,
but i couldn't hide it either.

i did everything i could do not to fall in love with you.
my car broke down at the community college 
i called you, feeling scared,
the parking lot was enormous and dark and i was alone
and i didn't want to be raped.
come help me, please, i said,
but there was no question
i never questioned if you would come help me,
of course you would and of course you did,
to Alaska or down the street at 7-11.
sitting on the curb and trying to be reasonable
about fear,
the light turned purpling blue, my favorite evening-tide.
into that tide you rode,
inside your big truck, i saw you coming and i stood

you pulled into a random parking spot and slid out of 
your truck and then sat on top of the hood.
you lit a cigarette and took a drag,
and smiled at me
waiting for me as i walked through that dark parking lot
now blue-black and lit with scattered street lamps.
and i walked toward you in that goddamn beautiful light
your hazel eyes glinting at me,
and i knew that i had never and probably never would
have a more perfect moment of romantic love.

under holiday ice

gone to mrs. basilworth's files*****

-maggie may ethridge

birthday card

*gone to mrs. basilworth's files

Anne Sexton, I Could Have Been Your Daughter

the first time i saw you, i thought ' Who is that woman? '
i read your poem ' I think it would be better to be a Jew '
and i knew exactly what that voice was saying,
and how she was saying it
so i loved you, right then.

then i found out you were crazy.
my other Goddess of Words, Sylvia Plath
your somewhat friend, crazy too.
i knew her first. before i read you
and i thought it fitting that you both
spoke witching hour.

i come from Witchland-
let us now check the required boxes:
crazy/distant father (check)
distant/crazy mother (check)
family history of madness (check)
attraction to destruction (check)
self hatred (check)
a skin so thin the world bleeds through
check, check doublecheck

i read your biography this year,
after years of reading only your poems
and certain articles in well known publications.
i think i loved you less
i'm sure you don't care
in the least, now that you are part of the
west wind, the hard rained lake,
the far furious waves clapping toward the sky.

now that you are who you were writing to
all those years,
the same mystery i keen toward with
every black word,
bled out in ink like a saturated rag
the overabundance of ecstasy and horror
we stew in our juices, as they say.

i know about madness, Anne Sexton.
i do.
if i were as brave as you, i'd be clearer on this issue.
if i were as cowardly as you, i'd sleep with my therapist.
if i were as trapped as you,
i'd never make it, either.

it's simply different, when you live it.
than to just say, you know, she was a genius mad woman,
and i love her for that.
it's a deep compassion artists can have for each other.

however, being the daughter of genuis, the daughter
of madness,
i have a different take on the book.
i read from the ending backward-

i already know the story,
it's how we got there i don't understand.
i might have been your daughter, Anne Sexton.
if you lay next to me at night with your sad heavy
breasts up against my small body,
i felt the same great sickening
your daughter did then.
children don't care about genius.
they only want love.

it is never the same for those of us
who have burned in the fire
than for those who hold their hands
and fly eyes open, dance feet on coals and exclaim
' oh burn in this fire! '

Anne Sexton, I could have been your daughter,
but i'm glad i wasn't.
this way, i can love your poems with my whole heart,
and forgive you for your life long sufferings
which tormented your children, and broke hearts.

it's easier this way;
i have my own family to forgive.

m.m.e
on the birthday of the fellow Scorpio and poet, Mrs. Anne Sexton;
it's a complicated relationship.
but that is the story of her life,
so i think she'd understand.

thank you, Anne Sexton, for you poems, especially the list as follows, poems which on too many a tear filled fear filled night have given me great solace, for what reason i can never explain, simply the mystery of brilliant poetry, which i have breathed since i was small:
What's That, The Double Image, The Division of Parts, Rowing,The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator, For My Lover, Returning to His Wife, The Addict, Pain For a Daughter, Cripples and Other Stories, Wanting to Die, Flee on Your Donkey, The Black Art, Old, The Fortress, The Operation, The Truth the Dead Know


"Anne, Anne,
flee on your donkey,
flee this sad hotel,
ride out on some hairy beast,
gallop backward pressing
your buttocks to his withers,
sit to his clumsy gait somehow.
Ride out
any old way you please!
In this place everyone talks to his own mouth.
That's what it means to be crazy.
Those I loved best died of it—
the fool's disease. "

- Anne Sexton

survivable loss

no small divorce, your passing eye
your sweet lip depression or fine clean
smile all gone from me,
gone now for four years and so many
days, gone in the fast forward of
family videos, my children smiling,
laughing, learning to count and
count on.

one by one the clippings have fallen past-
my father, my grandparents, all of them,
and my sister now,vague in limbo,
cast to charcoal sketchings
that blur when the eye focuses in.

i am cast in the shadows for you, sadly
meshed with the prick memories of your terrors
and they were mine, too, but i was there,
witness, and possibly the way my hair falls
or the octave of my voice brings you back there in a way
that just can't be survived.

this is what he took along, in his ever growing bag
of horrors: children, innocence, laughter, trust,
and the good root structure between sisters,
yanked upwards and slit at the throat,
if roots had throats,
and we did.

ours did.

i think of you when she smiles or he shrugs,
i think of you when the predictable reminders
tap, but more, i feel your absence in an unsteady
gait or reaching out that has no body to reach
towards, then i pause strangely and recall
my sister, feel downwards in a compulsive check
for roots gone four years now, and so many
days.

it's a survivable loss. not a death. not a
fatal illness. a mysterious foreboding, it is
the prickle on the back of my neck, the shadows
that hang in the clouds and blink like wide eyes,
the howling of dogs at night, it is a long time
waiting, it is a slow growing doubt, it is a poison
that i drank the day you left.

it spills through my veins and drips out the loose
end roots that dangle harmlessly, drip drip dripping
out into my heart and swelling the damaged thing,
pressing against the rib cage and causing a strange
cut of pain, a sharp stab, a vomit, the occasional
crying jag.

i move forward as i should,
without you.

Maggie M.E.

transcendence

i wonder that the sky rolls
cleft the darkening earth,
beyond my babbling prayers,
smoothly over my keening
like river over rock.
we are small matters, we are infinitely
finite--
the finite winged, flown
-- now impossibly vast
in closure of the warm mouth of daylight
against the naked body of eve.
the tidal earth is turned, and i am--
i am flight, my feet wrapped in bandage.
the murmur of my veins shushes stars,
i wonder what you are.
the sun presses his warm head against
my white shoulder
like a sleepy child.
against my agony he reclines easily,
i burn through evening-tide--
his glorious features aloft.
i will carry him this way if he like:
this is what mother's do
--though our arms may be full of fire.

Maggie M. Ethridge

the reversal of despair

*gone to Ms. Basilworth's files*

M.M.E. july 08

new poem, freshly baked

porn star

you are caught between transmissions
beautiful mute, a silent film on pornographic reel.
the bottoms move in musky light like strange beasts,
breasts toss in waves.
elapsing in lisped desire, drowned but still intact
a muscled rolling of arm conceals your face-
framing the stubborn clip of jaw, the jaw
framing the stubborn face your mother slapped.
you left with a backpack full of crayons,
room frantic and purple, like the skin around her eyes.
the hairless baby of your cunny
meets mouth after mouth in echo of the silence
above; the panic rooms of your eyes
are empty. no one goes there to escape anything.
the small bow of your mouth plays string-
an enduring note pitched too high to bear,
turned like the rim of an unused cup, clean of this mating.
the long line of your tongue on phallis,
the tender soles of small feet
your father tickled with his greying beard.
your legs move scissors, oiled and stripped
mined to their exhaustion, forgotten ballet lessons
flickering along your muscles like phosphorescent fish.
the tiny caves of your nose breath shallowly if at all;
i think you hold your breath.
a corrupt seizure of film, grainy and absolute,
determined to seal you shut.
your mouth, your eyes, the startling demure lines
of your fingers-
all trapped this way on film.
you roll silently in sperm, anchored
to bottom feeders with your heavy breasts
and solemnly pink and white vagina,
opened and left agape, like an unwanted Valentine.
your mouth strains the highest appeal, it's tiny bow red
slicked on the places we call private.

-maggie may ethridge

Mickey, a Soldier in Iraq / Iraq poem

I was taking Math last semester. I hate Math. I was happy to immediately find something else to think about, when Mickey's shoulder tattoo of soldier boots with ominous circling of initials caught my eye.

He was 23, new father of a son and recently back from Iraq. He had been in Afghanistan; he was there at Fallujah. (Click on the title of this blog to see and hear an account of Fallujah from a soldier. WARNING: the youtube this connects to contains images of war. Please be advised, your heart will suffer.) His eyes are electric blue, piercing and direct, and his body never stops moving. Here- fingers tap, here - feet dancing underneath the desk, here- another joke, witty aside, loud laugh during lecture. He is whippet thin and strong, built like a soldier and young- very young, like an American soldier.

I asked about his tattoo and he pulled up the tee shirt sleeve, peered at the boots and dangling dog tags, ran his fingers over the initials. ' These are my boys,' he said, not looking at me. ' They're dead. ' There were about seven sets of initials.

' I'm so sorry, ' I said. What else? ' What about these? ' I pointed to the three silver cuffs circling his right wrist.

' My closest friends, ' he said. ' They're dead. '

' I'm so sorry, ' I said.

' It must be really hard, ' I said.

He nodded. ' One of em, my friend, he died on his last day. Got caught in a IED and his leg was blown up. He bled to death. We wrapped his leg up and all, but he bled to death. '

' I'm so sorry, ' I said.

He shrugged. ' Yeah. '

' How is it over there, ' I asked.

' It's bad. The fucking rules of conduct...fucking gone, no one knows, it's not the same as it was in the beginning, you gotta survive, I've seen kids killed at checkpoints because the car they were in didn't stop in time. The soldiers, they're just shooting at will now, nobody's following protocol, it's fucking insane. It's insane. '

I sat in silence. ' Thank you, ' I said. ' For serving. Thank you for everything you guys do. '

He shrugged. ' Yeah. ' Tap, tap, his fingers. His feet. He grinned. He talked about his son and wife, told a graphic joke.

I bought him a cup of coffee, told him thank you again. There's nothing I can do.
Vote. Buy a cup of coffee. Pray.


This poem does not represent my typical voice, or style. However, it represents my feelings well, so I am pasting it here anyhow.

POEM REMOVED----

Novel Idea

First, The Beginning

I broke my foot, thank God.

If it weren't for the broken foot, I wouldn't be sitting here, at my computer, writing the opening stanza in a blog. I wouldn't have completed twenty poems.

I wouldn't have had words and worlds falling from my fingertips into my novel, filling it up like
the malnourished, hungry thing it was. Full time work, marriage, children and one heinous math class equaled a novel left in the crib, sucking it's proverbial thumb, waiting to be picked up.

So I did, and ' Agitate My Heart ', my second novel, is coming along beautifully, half way finished and flourishing.

After I broke my foot, I set up a routine- take kids to school, pick up iced coffee, feed dogs and cat and kittens, and set up in the sunroom at my computer, writing.

And as Norman Mailer says in his book, " The Spooky Art " , the routine indicated to my brain that at a certain time every day, I was going to write, and apparently, if you sit it, the words will come. Sit on it, Potsie.


I am a prolific writer of poems, whereas the novel comes along at a slow pace, with constant editing.

Then, the Middle

What Will Be Posted?

- book reviews
- various rants
- poetry
- links to other far off places
- dispatches from parenthood
- recommendations for books, movies, art

and of course, notes on the writing life, and all it encompasses.


Interlude for Lists

We have one cat, Kagome, and three kittens: Hermione, Harry and Hagrid.

Yes, we love Harry Potter here.


Two Dogs: Bodie Muchachas and Wolfgang Mozart.

Children: Lola Moon, Dakota Wolf and Ian Oliver.

Ambitions: Published poet and novelist, quit my day job, travel extensively, love well, help children in any way possible, conquer fear, cultivate a flourishing garden, swim naked in the ocean again, touch a dolphin, own horses, live on a farm, raise a puppy, watch my children grow, write as a journalist, experience joy, be of good use.


Begin Again

' i am tired. i am true of heart. you are tired. you are true of heart.'
-dave eggers