Erica Jong (née Mann; born March 26, 1942) is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.
EGYPTOLOGY
Erica Jong
I am the Sphinx.
I am the woman buried in sand
up to her chin.
I am waiting for an archeologist
to unearth me,
to dig out my neck & my nipples,
bare my claws
& solve my riddle.
No one has solved my riddle
since Oedipus.
I face the pyramids which rise
like angular breasts
from the dry body of Egypt.
My fertile river is flowing down below—
a lovely lower kingdom.
Every woman should have a delta
with such rich silt—
brown as the buttocks
of Nubian queens.
O friend, why have you come to Egypt?
Aton & Yahweh
are still feuding.
Moses is leading his people
& speaking of guilt.
The voice out of the volcano
will not be still.
A religion of death,
a woman buried alive.
For thousands of years
the sand drifted over my head.
My sex was a desert,
my hair more porous than pumice,
& nobody sucked my lips
to make me tell.
The pyramid breasts, though huge,
will never sag.
In the center of each one,
a king lies buried.
In the center of each one,
a darkened chamber…
a tunnel,
dead men’s bones,
malignant gold.
=========
SUNJUICE
Erica Jong
What happens when the juice of the sun
drenches you
with its lemony tang, its tart sweetness
& your whole body stings with singing
so that your toes sing to your mouth
& your navel whistles to your breasts
& your breasts wave to everyone
as you walk down the summer street?
What will you do
when nothing will do
but throw your arms around trees
& men
& greet every woman as sister
& to run naked in the spray of the fire hydrants
with children of assorted colors?
Will you cover your drenched skin
with woolen clothes?
Will you wear a diaper of herrington tweed?
Will you piece together a shroud of fig leaves
& lecture at the University
on the Lives of the Major Poets,
the History of Despair in Art?