Poems
SUNDAY DINNER
My take on "traditional family values." Published in 1995; written in the mid-1980s.
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THE HOME PLANET VANISHES
Written in December 1985, six months after I left Washington, D.C., for Martha's Vineyard.
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THIS IS A POEM ABOUT EYES AVERTED
Written ca. 1983 and one of my first published poems, maybe the very first. I'm struck now by how thematically similar it is to the essay "My Terrorist Eye," written more than 20 years later.
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THE ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER ADDRESSES HER BROOM AFTER A PERFORMANCE OF "MACBETH"
Written after (surprise) stage-managing a production of the Scottish Play in 1986. Published in Pandora 29 (1993).
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THE BULLFIGHT SONNETS
Published in Sinister Wisdom 35 (Summer/Fall 1988), in my bio for which I wrote that these sonnets "began at the 1987 Feminist Women's Writing Workshops with someone's half-facetious remark that 'the only suitable subjects for academic poetry were bullfighting and war' -- whereupon several participants undertook to write poems about bullfighting."
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THE LAPSED ARCHIVIST ATTENDS A HOUSECLEANING
In my first years on Martha's Vineyard I struggled to understand my Vineyard present through the lens of my feminist past, and vice versa. My companion in this housecleaning was Mary Payne, theater director and island personality (1932-1996). Her mentor was the eminent actress Margaret Webster. Published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, volume 10, no. 3 (1989).
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MERRY MEET AGAIN (LEAVING THE ISLAND)
One of my earliest "keepers," written in late 1981 -- four years before I moved to the Vineyard.
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THE KEY SESTINA
Another one written during my first months on the Vineyard.
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WINTER RENTAL
A sonnet sequence written toward the end of my first year on the Vineyard. It's all still true, except for the population figures in the epigraph, which are ludicrously out-of-date. What the hell am I doing here?
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SEPARATION SONNET
I wrote the Persephone poems in the early 1990s. Instead of becoming a series, they led to my first one-act play, "Persephone's Mother," which in turn led to my second, "Prayers for the Dead." Since then I've been working in longer, entirely prose forms.
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PERSEPHONE, LIKE THE MOON
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PERSEPHONE'S TEETH
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JUST SAY NOOO
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TWO QUEENS
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SOLITAIRE
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