Poet; Fresco; Life and Literature three poems

Pastan, Linda

Poetry by Linda Pastan Poet At his right hand silence; at his left hand silence; ahead of him the yahrzeit glass; behind him silence; and above his head all the letters of the alphabet to...

...And once I kissed the milliner's shabby son while my mother tried on hats...
...We saw her face rising beyond the door whitened in anger, circled in planetary felt— he wore a yarmulka...
...and above his head all the letters of the alphabet to choose from...
...1 have tried to forget the words, but my genes are suspended like half notes down its strict, musical staff...
...In the shtetl I would have died three times in childbirth...
...Fresco In Masaccio's "Expulsion From the Garden" how benign the angel seems, like a good civil servant he is merely enforcing the rules...
...Now I see Eve covering her breasts with her hands and I know it is not to hide them but only to keep them from all she must know is to follow from Abel on one, Cain on the other...
...Life and Literature In the middle of the century, in the middle of the middle class I stood on a dressmaker's wooden stool fixed forever at twelve in a constellation of silver pins...
...I remember these faces from Fine Arts 13: I was young enough then to think that the loss of innocence was just about Sex...
...Instead washed clean by soap opera, my peasant cheekbones rouged in city lights, they told me: Rise and Shine...
...Tonight I listen to Isaac Bashevis Singer speak in the Yiddish accent of my grandfather How do I write of ghettos who feel at home in drafty English houses sipping my tea from porcelain cups instead of jelly glasses...
...0 sing a song of assimilation— that oldest lullabye...

Vol. 3 • January 1978 • No. 3


 
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