Wisconsin death trip
Rent from DeepDyve- Wisconsin death trip
I am your dead babylaid out in a starched white dressas if at my christening: I am so perfectand unblinking.
You have wrapped me in cellophanein order to preserve menext to you forever. I am pretty as mypicture; I am watchful
from the mantle:I breathe—or seem to—in and out. If only I could cry real tearsor even, lying back, say “mama”
innocently:but I am your dressed-up deadbaby. I have gratitude;I love. I have real curls
and even some deeper emotions.If you hurt me enoughthey will surface for a moment:I will widen my startled blue eyes
and then as quicklyshut them, shut you out.Is it you whose chest is heaving?Somewhere someone goes on breathing. [End Page 91]
Kathleen Spivack is the author of nine books of prose and poetry. Unspeakable Things, a novel, is forthcoming from Knopf. With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Plath, Sexton, Bishop, Kunitz, and Others was published in 2012 by the University Press of New England. Her earlier books have been published by Doubleday, Graywolf, and others, and have won numerous prizes, among them those of the London, Los Angeles, and other book festivals. Publications with her work include the New Yorker, Paris Review, Poetry, and more. She teaches in Boston and Paris.
