Said I shouldn’t.
Fingering me.
Everything I did.
A litter of chewed knucklebones
I’ve spread them out over the
rectangular floor as regularly as
I can; so I can account for them.
Her hands are crossed over
her breasts and each holds
a feather; her face has no features
Have I come to beg
What do I wish — to be
judged?
Is it an accumulation
of what I’ve said, that
counts, that I’m counting
is it all alphabet and abacus
everything rhymed?
You still don’t have a face.
Suddenly she has the face of a
cat.
No that’s a different
goddess.
I tell you this
bloodthirsty
jaguar…
I don’t have any idea what my word is, I
mean fault. Is it a word or an act. The
whole thrill is ripping me apart
Inside these
words there’s nothing but a pumping
bloodsoaked…
but clearly, everything I said, did,
was a long shot
We didn’t hear a word
What have you ever heard?
Now I’m here — black-caped in a
chair. Animal staring at me
I sink into your disaffected
ambiance to name.
What emotional
charges
have been laid on me from
earliest times
and my own
earliest
resulting in the bone strewn carpet
I had to grow the dice
of accounting to your love; for
you made me speak to you
lovingly; or did I do that naturally
oh just, bloodthirsty face
who doesn’t have to understand.
I don’t know who I’m speaking to
is pushing me
Judgment maybe it’s when being
fragile I
hallucinate you best
I don’t want to use my name!
‘Where I was born we girls ran
free. and named ourselves,’
Justice says.
She may kill me,
it depends on whether she’s hungry
Copyright ©:
Alice Notley

A few random poems:
- Howard Stern’s Wine
- The Furies by Weldon Kees
- Олег Бундур – На высоком берегу
- Владимир Корнилов – Женщины
- Snail Poem by Peter Orlovsky
- The Blessed by William Butler Yeats
- Василий Жуковский – Моя богиня
- Низами Гянджеви – Искендер-наме – Страница 3 из 15
- The Music Of The Rains – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Collateral Damage by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Trees poem – Angelina Weld Grimke poems | Poems and Poetry
- Invocation by Marilyn Hacker
- Epistle To Mrs Teresa Blount.[On Her Leaving The Town After The Coronation] poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Dawn by Yosa Buson
- Epigram—The Toad-eater by Robert Burns
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Consider This And In Our Time by W H Auden
- The Common Life by W H Auden
- Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue by W H Auden
- Christmas Oratio by W H Auden
- Carry Her Over the Water by W H Auden
- Canzone by W H Auden
- Calypso by W H Auden
- Base Words Are Uttered by W H Auden
- Autumn Song by W H Auden
- August 1968 by W H Auden
- Atlantis by W H Auden
- As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden
- As We Like It by W H Auden
- As the poets have mournfully sung by W H Auden
- Are You There? by W H Auden
- After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics by W. H. Auden
- Academic Graffiti by W H Auden
- A Walk After Dark by W H Auden
- A New Year Greeting by W H Auden
- Continual Conversation With A Silent Man by Wallace Stevens
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works