Originally published in The Speed of Darkness (1968) You are looking into me with your waking look. My eyes are closing, my eyes are opening My mouth is closing, my mouth is opening. You are waiting with your red promises. My sex is closing, my sex is opening. You are singing and offering : the way in. My life is closing, my life is opening. You are here. “Anemone,” by Thaerigen. Image in the Creative Commons, https://pixabay.com/en/anemone-water-sea-anemone-2874006
Originally published in The Speed of Darkness (1968) Love in whose rich honor I stand looking from my window over the starved trees of a dry September Love deep and so far forbidden is bringing me a gift to claw at my skin to break open my eyes the gift longed for so long The power to write out of the desperate ecstasy at last death and madness
Posted on September 8, 2014 by Laura Passin On her 16th birthday, my best friend Jess received a copy of Out of Silence: Selected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser from her mother. Jess and I didn’t live in the same state, so we were avid letter writers; after that birthday, her letters always included at least a snippet of mesmerizing, spiky poetry: For sensual friction is largely fiction and partly fact and so is tact and so is love, and so is love. The best way to describe my reaction to Rukeyser’s poetry is to say I got a raging crush [...]
Learn more about this important twentieth-century poet from our website – Who was Rukeyser?.
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