Howe - Magdalene: poems

ALSO BY MARIE HOWE The Kingdom of Ordinary Time What the Living Do The Good Thief Magdalene poems MARIE HOWE W. W. Norton & Company Independent Publishers Since 1923 New York | London Adjusting type size may change line breaks. Landscape mode may help to preserve line breaks. Copyright 2017 by Marie Howe All rights reserved
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15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS CONTENTS Adjusting type size may change line breaks. Landscape mode may help to preserve line breaks. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the following magazines where some of these poems first appeared: The New Yorker : Fourteen; Low Tide, Late August Provincetown Arts : On Men, Their Bodies; Magdalene at the Theopoetics Conference; Before the Beginning; If this line is the beginning Ploughshares : Waiting at the River The American Poetry Review : MagdaleneThe Seven Devils; How the Story Started; The Affliction; What I Did Wrong; Magdalene: Her Dream of Integration; Magdalene and the Interior Life; Magdalene: The Addict; The Disciples; Magdalene Afterwards; The Adoption: When the Girl Arrived; The Girl at 3 So many friends have given close attention to the poems in this collection, and inspiration in their own lives and worktoo many to list here. But there would be no Magdalene without Lucille Clifton, Mark Conway, Mark Doty, Eve Ensler, Nick Flynn, Brenda Hillman, Tony Hoagland, Grace Inan Howe, Michael Klein, Mary LaChapelle, Donna Masini, Richard McCann, Jim Moore, Martin Moran, Elaine Pagels, Spencer Reece, Victoria Redel, Tom Sleigh and Lili Taylor. Thank you to William White and the Crowley/Friedman family. Thank you to my editor Jill Bialosky for her insight and care. To Bill Clegg for his steady encouragement.

Thank you to Bill and Sonya Dunham, true village people, grand and generous spirits, who gave us the miracle of the extra room. Thank you Grace Inan Howe for the cover photograph. His disciples said, When will you be visible to us? and when will we see you? He said, When you undress and are not ashamed. The Gospel According to Thomas Was I ever virgin? Did someone touch me before I could speak? Who had me before I knew I was an I? So that I wanted that touch again and again without knowing who or why or from whence it came? Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out Luke 8:2 The first was that I was very busy. The secondI was different from you: whatever happened to you could not happen to me, not like that. The thirdI worried.

The fourthenvy, disguised as compassion. The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid, The aphid disgusted me. But I couldnt stop thinking about it. The mosquito tooits face.And the antits bifurcated body. Okthe first was that I was so busy. The second that I might make the wrong choice, because I had decided to take that plane that day, that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early and, I shouldnt have wanted that.

The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street the house would blow up. The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing. The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living. The sixthif I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I touched the left arm a little harder than Id first touched the right then I had to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even. The seventhI knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that was alive, and I couldnt stand it. No. No.

That was the first one. The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened? How had our lives gotten like this? The third was that I couldnt eat food if I really saw itdistinct, separate from me in a bowl or on a plate. Ok. The first was that.

I could never get to the end of the list. The second was that the launsdry was never finally done. The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did. And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what was love? The fourth was I didnt belong to anyone. I wouldnt allow myself to belong to anyone. The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didnt know.

The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling. The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying, the sound she madeher mouth wrenched to the right and cupped open so as to take in as much air... the gurgling sound, so loud we had to speak louder to hear each other over it. And that I couldnt stop hearing it years latergrocery shopping, crossing the street No, not the soundit was her bodys hunger finally evidentwhat our mother had hidden all her life. For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots, the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath. The underneath.

That was the first devil. It was always with me. And that I didnt think youif I told youwould understand any of this Looking down at himmy tears fell onto his chest and he looked back at me with such pity raising his hand to wipe my cheek before he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me down to the bed so he could press inside me deeper One penis was very large and thick so when he put it inside me I really did say, Wow. One penis was uncircumcised, and I loved to grip the shaft and pull down so the head popped out like a little man. One penis was curved so I had to move in a different way. One penis was so friendly I was never afraid of it.

One penis was so slender I was startled. One penis was blunt and short like a little pig. One penis couldnt harden until he stuffed it soft inside me. One penis came as soon as I started to move. Im so sorry, he said I have a problem, but I didnt care. I loved that boy.

One penis pressed against me hard almost every morning, but I got out of bed as if I hadnt heard a word it had said. One penis was so dear to me I kissed it and kissed it even after I knew it had been with someone else. One penis I never saw, but my hand came to know it from the outside of his jeans. One penis loved the inside of my mouth so much it sang, it sputtered. One had a name. One was a mouse.

One, he explained to me, had very very tiny crabs, so we couldnt have sex for a while. One was Orthodox and wouldnt touch blood. One had a mole, a hard little dot just under the rim. One penis was extremely patient without making a big deal about it. One penis had a great sense of humor. One penis had herpes but I didnt know that word yet.

One was a battering ram. One was a drunk staggering, a lout, a bully. One slept inside me, comfortably at home. I was driven toward desire by desire. believing that the fulfillment of that desire was an end. There was no end.

Others might have looked into the future and seen a shape inside the coming years a house, a child, a man who might be a help. I saw his back bent over what he was working on, the back of his neck, how he stood in his sneakers, and wanted to eat him. How could I see another person, I mean who he wasapart from me apart from that? I pressed them through my hair into my head pressed them into my waistband and later into my palms, a secret intimacy among those thorns and me a love (from whom or to whom it mattered less than that it was) and that it was was the evidence of love: and so a comfort in the small pain they brought. When I walked across a room I saw myself walking as if I were someone else, when I picked up a fork, when I pulled off a dress, as if I were in a movie. Its what I thought you saw when you looked at me. So when I looked at you, I didnt see you I saw the me I thought you saw, as if I were someone else.