Category Sylvia Plath

“Is anyone anywhere happy?”

Metamorphoses of the Moon

Cold moons withdraw, refusing to come to terms with the pilot who dares all heaven’s harms to raid the zone where fate begins, flings silver gauntlet of his plane at space, demanding satisfaction; no duel takes place: the mute air…

Notes to a Neophyte

Take the general mumble, blunt as the faceless gut of an anonymous clam, vernacular as the strut of a slug or a small preamble by snail under hump of home: metamorphose the mollusk of vague vocabulary with the structural discipline:…

Aquatic Nocturne

deep in liquid indigo turquoise slivers of dilute light quiver in thin streaks of bright tinfoil on mobile jet: pale flounder waver by tilting silver: in the shallows agile minnows flicker gilt: grapeblue mussels dilate lithe and pliant valves: dull…

Bluebeard

I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard’s study; because he would make love to me I am sending back the key; in his eye’s darkroom I can see my X-rayed heart, dissected body : I am…

Sonnet: To Eva

All right, let’s say you could take a skull and break it The way you’d crack a clock; you’d crush the bone Between steel palms of inclination, take it, Observing the wreck of metal and rare stone. This was a…

Jilted

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow, My tears like vinegar, Or the bitter blinking yellow Of an acetic star. Tonight the caustic wind, love, Gossips late and soon, And I wear the wry-faced pucker of The sour lemon moon. While…

Cinderella

The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels, Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels Begin on tilted violins to span The whole revolving tall glass palace hall Where…

To Eva Descending The Stair

A Villanelle Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear; The wheels revolve, the universe keeps running. (Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.) The asteroids turn traitor in the air, And planets plot with old elliptic cunning; Clocks cry:…

Dirge for a Joker

Always in the middle of a kiss Came the profane stimulus to cough; Always from teh pulpit during service Leaned the devil prompting you to laugh. Behind mock-ceremony of your grief Lurked the burlesque instinct of the ham; You never…

Gold mouths cry

Gold mouths cry with the green young certainty of the bronze boy remembering a thousand autumns and how a hundred thousand leaves came sliding down his shoulder blades persuaded by his bronze heroic reason. We ignore the coming doom of…