This is for Elsa, also known as Liz,
an ample-bosomed gospel singer: five
discrete malignancies in one full breast.
This is for auburn Jacqueline, who is
celebrating fifty years alive,
one since she finished chemotherapy.
with fireworks on the fifteenth of July.
This is for June, whose words are lean and mean
as she is, elucidating our protest.
This is for Lucille, who shines a wide
beam for us with her dark cadences.
This is for long-limbed Maxine, astride
a horse like conscience. This is for Aline
who taught her lover how to caress the scar.
This is for Eve, who thought of AZT
while hopeful poisons pumped into a vein.
This is for Nanette in the Midwest.
This is for Alicia, shaking back dark hair,
dancing one-breasted with the Sabbath bride.
This is for Judy on a mountainside,
plunging her gloved hands in a glistening hive.
Hilda, Patricia, Gaylord, Emilienne,
Tania, Eunice: this is for everyone
who marks the distance on a calendar
from what’s less likely each year to “recur.”
Our saved-for-now lives are life sentences
— which we prefer to the alternative.
(Marilyn Hacker)
More Poetry from Marilyn Hacker:
Marilyn Hacker Poems based on Topics: Hair, Dancing, Conscience, Horse, Musicians- Rune of the Finland Woman (Marilyn Hacker Poem)
- Scars on Paper (Marilyn Hacker Poem)
- The Boy (Marilyn Hacker Poem)
- Year's End (Marilyn Hacker Poems)
- Iva's Pantoum (Marilyn Hacker Poems)
- Morning News (Marilyn Hacker Poem)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Hair Poems, Dancing Poems, Horse Poems, Musicians Poems, Conscience PoemsBased on Keywords: hive, plunging, sentences, fireworks, celebrating, recur, liz, astride, mountainside, auburn, cadences
- Protestant Popery: Or, The Convocation - Canto IV (Nicholas Amhurst Poems)
- The Protestant Session (Nicholas Amhurst Poems)
- How I Consulted The Oracle Of The Goldfishes (James Russell Lowell Poems)
- The Vision Of Piers Plowman - Part 04 (William Langland Poems)
- Cen'lin, Prince Of Mercia (Matilda Betham Poems)