Menstruation In May - Erica Jong

Deaths & betrayals,
a friend having her breasts cut off,
a friend having his heart re-wired,
a husband lying,
a lover never writing,
& all this in the middle of May.

I walk out in the green wind of Spring.
The air whistles at my calves
like silk stockings—
my grandmother's silk stockings
kept in a drawer—
& whispering songs of the twenties.

My breasts ache,
my heart skips over cracks,
my womb pulls earthward
with its heavy blood.
I seem to be attached to those I love
by chains of flesh.
Perhaps the mind lacks empathy enough;
the body has to bleed as well.

                        ☙

I can't imagine them cutting you apart—
I with my endless dreams of torture,
who lay awake nights with my eyelids screaming
all childhood long.

I never saw your breasts
yet I can't imagine you without them.

All week I have been fondling my nipples,
half in terror, half in pleasure.
Stay, flesh, stay.
If it is all we have,
especially,
stay.

                        ☙

Is there a poetry of blood
where lines are arms lopped off
& stanzas are whole bodies opened wide?
Is there an art which pains us
just like life?

I squeeze my breast
for the invisible ink of milk.
I bear down hard—
no baby's head appears.

The poems keep flowing monthly
like my blood.

The word is flesh, I say,
still unconvinced.

The flesh is flesh.
The word is on its own.



[From:
Jong, E. (1973) Fruits and Vegetables. London: Secker and Warburg. p72 - p73]



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