“Do you like me?”No answer.Silence bounced, fell off his tongueand sat between usand clogged my throat.It slaughtered my trust.It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.We exchanged blind words,and I did not cry,I did not beg,but blackness filled my ears,blackness lunged in my heart,and something that had been good,a sort of kindly oxygen,turned into a gas oven.”

“Her KindI have gone out, a possessed witch,haunting the black air, braver at night;dreaming evil, I have done my hitchover the plain houses, light by light:lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.A woman like that is not a woman, quite.I have been her kind.I have found the warm caves in the woods,filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,closets, silks, innumerable goods;fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:whining, rearranging the disaligned.A woman like that is misunderstood.I have been her kind.I have ridden in your cart, driver,waved my nude arms at villages going by,learning the last bright routes, survivorwhere your flames still bite my thighand my ribs crack where your wheels wind.A woman like that is not ashamed to die.I have been her kind.”

“I lay there silently,hoarding my small dignity.I did not ask about the gate or the closet.I did not question the bedtime ritualwhere, on the cold bathroom tiles,I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws.I did not knowthat my bones,those solids, those pieces of sculpturewould not splinter.”

“Live or die, but don't poison everything...Well, death's been herefor a long time --it has a hell of a lotto do with helland suspicion of the eyeand the religious objectsand how I mourned themwhen they were made obsceneby my dwarf-heart's doodle.The chief ingredientis mutilation.And mud, day after day,mud like a ritual,and the baby on the platter,cooked but still human,cooked also with little maggots,sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,the damn bitch!Even so,I kept right on going on,a sort of human statement,lugging myself as ifI were a sawed-off bodyin the trunk, the steamer trunk.This became perjury of the soul.It became an outright lieand even though I dressed the bodyit was still naked, still killed.It was caughtin the first place at birth,like a fish.But I play it, dressed it up,dressed it up like somebody's doll.Is life something you play?And all the time wanting to get rid of it?And further, everyone yelling at youto shut up. And no wonder!People don't like to be toldthat you're sickand then be forcedto watchyoucomedown with the hammer.Today life opened inside me like an eggand there insideafter considerable diggingI found the answer.What a bargain!There was the sun,her yolk moving feverishly,tumbling her prize --and you realize she does this daily!I'd known she was a purifierbut I hadn't thoughtshe was solid,hadn't known she was an answer.God! It's a dream,lovers sprouting in the yardlike celery stalksand better,a husband straight as a redwood,two daughters, two sea urchings,picking roses off my hackles.If I'm on fire they dance around itand cook marshmallows.And if I'm icethey simply skate on mein little ballet costumes.Here,all along,thinking I was a killer,anointing myself dailywith my little poisons.But no.I'm an empress.I wear an apron.My typewriter writes.It didn't break the way it warned.Even crazy, I'm as niceas a chocolate bar.Even with the witches' gymnasticsthey trust my incalculable city,my corruptible bed.O dearest three,I make a soft reply.The witch comes onand you paint her pink.I come with kisses in my hoodand the sun, the smart one,rolling in my arms.So I say Liveand turn my shadow three times roundto feed our puppies as they come,the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!Despite the pails of water that waited,to drown them, to pull them down like stones,they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blueand fumbling for the tiny tits.Just last week, eight Dalmatians,3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord woodeachlike abirch tree.I promise to love more if they come,because in spite of crueltyand the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.The poison just didn't take.So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,repeating The Black Mass and all of it.I say Live, Live because of the sun,the dream, the excitable gift.”

“Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question.”

“God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went out of my fingers. They became stone. My body became a side of mutton and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.”

“and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,and I grew, I grew,I wore rubies and bought tomatoesand now, in my middle age,about nineteen in the head I'd say,I am rowing, I am rowingthough the oarlocks stick and are rustyand the sea blinks and rollslike a worried eyebal,but I am rowing, I am rowing,though the wind pushes me backand I know that that island will not be perfect,it will have the flaws of life,the absurdities of the dinner table,but there will be a doorand I will open itand I will get rid of the rat insdie me,the gnawing pestilential rat.God will take it with his two handsand embrace it”