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  • Direction uncertain, and: A new life, and: Today on my birthday
  • Marge Piercy (bio)

Direction uncertain

The sky looks soft today as unbaked doughspongy, able to be shaped into sun or storma lapse between marching fronts.

I am caught too between projects, unsurewhich mountain I should gear up to ascend,which river I should bridge to cross.

Some elements in my life are surer:you, my partner, my love, my co-conspirator, our land, the words

that migrate through me on their wayto breeding grounds. Peregrinefalcons now arrow overhead south

but the words swarming through meare more like wrens, scolding,flipping their small stiff tails.

I don't know if there are massive worksstill to pass through me before I dieor if I shall content myself with little

tasks, not busy work but mundanenecessary utterances shaped likesimple pots out of mud and blood. [End Page 73]

A new life

My sister-in-law learns Englishfrom soap operas on the hugeflat tv her husband bought her.

Is this the U.S. she dreamed of,adulterous passions in the afternoon, plots and counterplots,

treacherous vamps, shirtlessmen with sculptured abs? Outsidecars roar over the George

Washington Bridge morningand night, all running in packsto places she has never been

and fears to see. I do not wantto go back there, ever, shesays. Her China is a closet

where she felt confined, asnow she confines herselfto this very well furnished

apartment. All day the soapoperas emote of passion. Sheclutches her new baby close. [End Page 74]

Today on my birthday

Today on my birthday I study my aging faceand rejoice I've survived this long and hopeto reach another decade. My lover, my catstrot with me on this journey over sharp rocks.

The valley below is full of shadow, butclimbing down beats climbing up. I wentwhere I wanted to go whenever I could.What fruit hung from the trees I tasted

without a serpent's urging, and sweetand sour and bitter; all quenched my thirst.I climbed where the eagles circled and hungon the updrafts and I saw what they saw

and it was good. When my eyes failednight held me in its warm feathered embrace.When my sight was restored, I dancedin the rainbow and light entered my veins.

Vanity was never my vice. No: lustand curiosity lashed me forward. Mencalled me pretty but I never cared.When it stopped I shrugged. What

I am has never resided in others' eyes.I possessed my will like a magic horseand high I rode, dangerously closeto the sun but never melting except

much lower down in the hot mouthof night. At twenty I liked the Wyfof Bath, who had her world as in hertime, and I took her flag for my own. [End Page 75]

Some experiences skitter off our brainslike hot fat on a wet griddle, and someseep into our bones, and when we dieour skulls grin to recall them. [End Page 76]

Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy has published seventeen books of poetry, including her most recent, The Crooked Inheritance (Knopf). She has also written seventeen novels; the most recent, Sex Wars, is now available in paperback from Harper Perennial. Her memoir Sleeping with Cats is also available from Harper Perennial. Piercy's work has been translated into sixteen languages,and she has a cd available, Louder We Can't Hear You Yet, which contains her political and feminist poetry.

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