The cup of Eliyahu • National Poetry Month

The cup of Eliyahu

In life you had a temper. 

Your sarcasm was a whetted knife. 

Sometimes you shuddered with fear 

but you made yourself act no matter 

how few stood with you. 

Open the door for Eliyahu 

that he may come in.

Now you return to us 

in rough times, out of smoke 

and dust that swirls blinding us. 

You come in vision, you come 

in lightning on blackness. 

Open the door for Eliyahu 

that he may come in.

In every generation you return 

speaking what few want to hear 

words that burn us, that cut 

us loose so we rise and go again 

over the sharp rocks upward. 

Open the door for Eliyahu 

that he may come in.

You come as a wild man, 

as a homeless sidewalk orator, 

you come as a woman taking the bima, 

you come in prayer and song, 

you come in a fierce rant. 

Open the door for Eliyahu 

that she may come in.

Prophecy is not a gift, but 

sometimes a curse, Jonah 

refusing. It is dangerous 

to be right, to be righteous. 

To stand against the wall of might. 

Open the door for Eliyahu 

that he may come in.

There are moments for each 

of us when you summon, when 

you call the whirlwind, when you 

shake us like a rattle: then we 

too must become you and rise. 

Open the door for Eliyahu 

that we may come in.

by Marge Piercy

Courtesy The Poetry Foundation 

The Cat's Song — National Poetry Month

The Cat's Song

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother's forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass. 

by Marge Piercy

The visible and the in- — National Poetry Month

The visible and the in-

Some people move through your life
like the perfume of peonies, heavy
and sensual and lingering.

Some people move through your life
like the sweet musky scent of cosmos
so delicate if you sniff twice, it’s gone.

Some people occupy your life
like moving men who cart off
couches, pianos and break dishes.

Some people touch you so lightly you
are not sure it happened. Others leave
you flat with footprints on your chest.

Some are like those fall warblers
you can’t tell from each other even
though you search Petersen’s.

Some come down hard on you like
a striking falcon and the scars remain
and you are forever wary of the sky.

We all are waiting rooms at bus
stations where hundreds have passed
through unnoticed and others

have almost burned us down
and others have left us clean and new
and others have just moved in.

by Marge Piercy
courtesy of The Writer's Almanac

National Poetry Month: The seder's order

The seder's order

The songs we join in

are beeswax candles

burning with no smoke

a clean fire licking at the evening

our voices small flames quivering.

The songs string us like beads

on the hour. The ritual is

its own melody that leads us

where we have gone before

and hope to go again, the comfort

of year after year. Order:

we must touch each base

of the haggadah as we pass,

blessing, handwashing,

dipping this and that. Voices

half harmonize on the brukhahs.

Dear faces like a multitude

of moons hang over the table

and the truest brief blessing:

affection and peace that we make.

by Marge Piercy, from The Crooked Inheritance
courtesy The Poetry Foundation

Marge Piercy — Because

I have loved the works of Marge Piercy for as long as I can remember, carrying The Moon is Always Female like a security blanket to comfort me in times of stress. Do yourself a favor and read her work. You can thank me later.

In the meantime, send me the name of your favorite poet by April 20 — and you may be chosen to receive a copy of my favorite book by my favorite poet. I'll select one submitter at random, and it could be you!

For the Young Who Want To

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

by Marge Piercy

courtesy poemhunter.com

Answer: From the Same Place as Bravery

Where Dreams Come From

A girl slams the door of her little room
under the eaves where marauding squirrels
scamper overhead like herds of ideas.
She has forgotten to be grateful she has
finally a room with a door that shuts.

She is furious her parents don't comprehend
why she wants to go to college, that place
of musical comedy fantasies and weekend
football her father watches, beer can
in hand. It is as if she announced I want
to journey to Iceland or Machu Picchu.
Nobody in their family goes to college.
Where do dreams come from? Do they
sneak in through torn screens at night
to light on the arm like mosquitoes?

Are they passed from mouth to ear
like gossip or dirty jokes? Do they
sprout from underground on damp
mornings like toadstools that form
fairy rings on dewtipped grasses?

No, they slink out of books, they lurk
in the stacks of libraries. Out of pages
turned they rise like the scent of peonies
and infect the brain with their promise.
I want, I will, says the girl and already

she is halfway out the door and down
the street from this neighborhood, this
mortgaged house, this family tight
and constricting as the collar on the next
door dog who howls on his chain all night.

by Marge Piercy, from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

Courtesy The Writer's Almanac