Death Benefits (2 page)

the scar tissue open, leaking what we yet could

say, do, hear, think of, understand, dream

from the containment, leaking a different

radiance over bared heads.

What might I do then to get beyond

dying so many lives of affirming Denial?

Who is this figure I swivel behind like a shadow?

Who are the woman and man I'm being drawn back to—

again, the flaw here, the fall now, the original

schism, the atom entire?

Policies lapse. Nothing is sure

any longer. That fact alone is

a renegade benefit, something like grace,

green, mimetic, audacious—daring to bleed,

sing, embrace simply each other, to find

in those arms a planet entire, swivelling up

at us its azure, full face,

blinking new eyes, yawning into a loud

rain of relief to be home. Almost as if,

this late, unveiled and forgiven, even

Denial might weep again. And if not here,

where, you ask; if not now, when? Oh my dear,

who am I to deny?

BATTERY

The fist meets the face as the stone meets water.

I want to understand the stone's parabola

and where the ripples disappear,

to make the connections, to trace

the withholding of love as the ultimate violence.

Battery
: a word with seven letters, seven definitions:

1) Any unit, apparatus, or grouping

in which a series or set of parts or components

is assembled to serve a common end.

2)
Electrical
. One or more primary or secondary cells

operating together as a single source of direct current.

3)
Military
. A tactical artillary unit.

4)
A game position
. In baseball, the pitcher

and catcher together.

5)
Law
. The illegal beating or touching of another person.

6)
Music
. The percussion instruments of an orchestra.

7)
Optics
. The group of prisms in a spectroscope.

I want to understand the connections

—between the tower where Bertha Mason Rochester

is displayed to Jane Eyre as a warning

—with this place, this city my doorstep

where I've learned to interfere between

the prostitute's scream and the pimp's knife

is to invite their unified disgust.

I want to understand the components:

—the stone's parabola, the percussion instruments,

the growth of battered children into battered wives

who beat their children,

—the beating of the fallow deer in Central Park Zoo

by unknown teenage assailants,

—the beating of these words against the poem:

to hit, slap, strike, punch, slash, stamp,

pound, maul, pummel, hammer, bludgeon, batter—

to hurt, to wound,

to flex the fist and clench the jaw and withhold love.

I want to discover the source of direct current,

to comprehend the way the primary or secondary cells

operate together as that source:

—the suburban community's defense of the fugitive Nazi

discovered to be a neighbor,

—the effect of her father's way with women

on the foreign policy of Elizabeth Tudor,

—the volunteers for a Utah firing squad,

the manner in which kwashiorkor—Red Johnny,

the Ghanaians call this slow death by starvation—

turns the hair of children a coppery color

with the texture of frayed wire.

I want to follow the refractions of the prism:

—the water's surface shuddering in anticipation

of the arching pebble,

—the oilslick mask imposed on the Pacific,

—the women of the Irish peace movement accused

of being traitors to tactical artillery units on both sides,

and replying, “We must accept that

in the next few months we will become their targets.”

—The battering of dolphins against tuna nets,

—the way seloscia, a flower commonly known

as coxcomb, is bulbous, unpetaled, and a dark velvet red—

and always reminds me of a hemorrhaging brain.

The danger in making the connections

is to lose the focus,

and this is not a poem about official torture

in Iran or Chile or China, or a poem about

a bald eagle flailing its wings as it dies,

shot down over Long Island.

This is a poem called “Battery” about a specific woman

who is twelve-going-on-seventy-three and who

exists in any unit, grouping, class, to serve a common end.

A woman who is black and white and bruised all over

the world, and has no other place to go

—while the Rolling Stones demand shelter

—and some cops say it's her own fault for living with him

—and some feminists say it's her own fault for living with him,

and she hides her dark red velvet wounds

from pride, the pride of the victim,

the pride of the victim at not

being the perpetrator,

the pride of the victim at not knowing how

to withhold love.

The danger of fixing on the focus

is to lose the connections, and this is a poem

about the pitcher and the catcher
together
:

—the battery of Alice Toklas, conversing cookbooks

with the other wives while Gertrude Stein shared her cigars

and her ideas with the men,

—the sullen efficiency of Grace Poole,

—the percussion of my palm striking my husband's face

in fury when he won't learn how to fight back, how to outgrow

having been a battered child, his mother's battered wince

rippling from his eyes, his father's laborer's fingers

flexing my fist, the pitcher and the catcher together

teaching me how to withhold love;

the contempt of the perpetrator for the pride of the victim.

The collaboration, the responsibility, the intimate

violence, the fantasy, the psychic battery, the lies,

the beating of the heart.

To fear, to dread, to cower, cringe, flinch,

shudder, to skulk, to shuffle.

Wing-beat, heart-beat,

the fist meets the face as the stone displaces water,

as the elbow is dislocated from the socket

and the connections shatter from the focus;

—the knifeblade glimmers in the streetlight;

—it could be a drifting eagle feather

or cigar smoke rising

graceful as a doe who leaps in pain,

rising livid as a welt, livid as a consciousness

of my own hand falling to dispense

the bar of soap, the executioner's axe, the tuna nets,

the rifles, and at last the flint

for Bertha Mason Rochester to strike,

to spark the single source of direct current,

to orchestrate the common end emprismed

in the violent ripples of withheld love.

Batter my heart, seven-petaled word, for you

as yet but flower inside my brain;

that I may understand the stone's parabola,

make the connections, remember the focus,

comprehend the definitions,

and withhold nothing.

BIRTHRIGHT

Bringing what could not be borne to birth—

her heart's decision, reached above your head

indifferent to your wish, but tangled as a myth

wound round your throat insistent with her blood—

surely the hardest of all her simple choices

was this mere waiting until it was too late.

Remember her dreams baring their teeth? her voices

counseling death? You've shared them since, a birthright.

Yet whatever hatred husbanded her will,

that will is yours. Whatever love accedes

accedia, however at home your hell

or lost your bearings, let your death recede

in fear of such raw labor, laugh, and learn

how to let what never can be borne be born.

PEONY

What appears to be

this frozen explosion of petals

abristle with extremist beauty

like an entire bouquet on a single stem

or a full chorus creamy-robed rippling

to its feet for the
sanctus
—

is after all a flower,

perishable, with a peculiar

history. Each peony

blossoms only after

the waxy casing thick around

its tight green bud is eaten literally

away by certain small herbivorous ants

who swarm round the stubborn rind

and nibble gently for weeks to release

the implosion called a flower. If

the tiny coral-colored ants have been

destroyed, the bloom cannot unfist itself

no matter how carefully forced to umbrage

by the finest hothouse gardeners.

Unrecognized, how recognizable:

Each of us nibbling discreetly

to release the flower,

usually not even knowing

the purpose—only the hunger;

each mostly unaware of any others,

sometimes surprised by a neighbor,

sometimes (so rarely) astonished

by a glimpse into one corner

at how many of us there are;

enough to cling at least, swarm back,

remain, whenever we're shaken

off or drenched away

by the well-meaning gardener, ignorant

as we are of our mission, of our being

equal in and to the task.

Unequal to the task: a word

like “revolution,” to describe

what our drudge-cheerful midwifery

will bring to bear—with us not here

to see it, satiated, long since

rinsed away, the job complete.

Why then do I feel this tremble,

more like a contraction's aftermath

release, relax, relief

than like an earthquake; more

like a rustling in the belly,

or the resonance a song might make

en route from brain to larynx—

as if now, here, unleaving itself of all

old and unnecessary outer layers

butterfly from chrysalis

snake from cast skin

crustacean from shell

baby from placenta

something alive before

only in Anywoman's dreamings

begins to stretch, arch, unfold

each vein on each transparency opening proud,

unique, unduplicate,

each petal stiff with tenderness,

each gauzy wing a different shading flecked

ivory silver tangerine moon cinnamon amber flame

hosannas of lucidity and love in a wild riot,

a confusion of boisterous order

all fragrance, laughter, tousled celebration—

only a fading streak like blood

at the center, to remind us we were there once

but are still here, who dare,

tenacious, to nibble toward such blossoming

of this green stubborn bud

some call a world.

About the Author

Award-winning poet, novelist, journalist, and feminist leader Robin Morgan has published more than twenty books, including the now-classic anthologies
Sisterhood Is Powerful
and
Sisterhood Is Global
and the bestselling
The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism
.
Her work has been translated into thirteen languages, among them Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Persian. A recipient of honors including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and former editor in chief of
Ms.
, Morgan founded the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, and with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem, cofounded the Women's Media Center. She writes and hosts
Women's Media Center Live with Robin Morgan
, a weekly program with a global audience on iTunes and
WMCLive.com
—her commentaries legendary, her guests ranging from grassroots activists to Christiane Amanpour, Anita Hill, and President Jimmy Carter.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion there of in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or here in after invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1981 by Robin Morgan

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0688-0

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com