FLORENCE OGAWA / ROBERT HAYDEN.

FLORENCE OGAWA (born 1947):



Twenty-Year Marriage

you keep me waiting in a truck
with its one good wheel stuck in a ditch
while you piss against the south side of a tree.
Hurry. I've got nothing on under my skirt tonight.
That still excites you, but this pickup has no windows
and the seat,one fake leather thigh,
pressed close to mine is cold.
i'm the same shape, size, make as twenty years ago
but get inside me, start the engine;
you'll have the strength, the will to move.
I'll pull, you push, we'll tear each other in half.
Come on, baby, lay me down on my back.
Pretend you don't owe me a thing
and maybe we'll roll out of here,
leaving the past stacked up behind us;
old newspapers nobody's ever goping to read again.

The Anniversary

you raise the ax
the block of wood screams in half,
while i lift the sack of flour
and carry it into the house.
I'm not afraid of the blade
you've just pointed at my head.
If i were dead, you could take the boy,
hunt, kiss gnats, instead of my moist lips.
Take it easy, squabs are roasting,
corn, still in husks, crackles,
as the boy dances around the table:
old guest at a wedding party for two sad faced clowns,
who together, never won around of anything but hard
times.
come in, sheets are clean,
fall down on me for one more year
and we can blast another hole ourselves without
a sound.

Woman to Man

Lightning hits the roof,
shoves the knife, darkness,
deep in the walls.
They bleed light all over us
and you face, the fan, folds up,
so i won't see how afraid
to be with me you are.
We don't mix, even in bed,
where we keep ending up.
There's no need to hide it:
you're snow, i'm coal,
I've got the scars to prove it.
But open your mouth,
I'll give you a taste of black
you won't forget.
For a while, i'll let it make you strong,
make your heart lion,
then i'll take it back.

ROBERT HAYDEN (4 August 1913 – 25 February 1980)



Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
the with cracked hands that ached
from labour in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze.No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly i would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did i know, what did i know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

O.S.