Alicia Suskin Ostriker (born November 11, 1937) is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry. She was called “America’s most fiercely honest poet,” by Progressive.
THE BLESSING OF THE OLD WOMAN, THE TULIP, AND THE DOG
Alicia Ostriker
To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow
To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended
skirt
To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other dogs
can smell it
=========
THE EXCHANGE
Alicia Ostriker
I am watching a woman swim below the surface
Of the canal, her powerful body shimmering,
Opalescent, her black hair wavering
Like weeds. She does not need to breathe. She faces
Upward, keeping abreast of our rented canoe.
Sweet, thick, white, the blossoms of the locust trees
Cast their fragrance. A redwing blackbird flies
Across the sluggish water. My children paddle.
If I dive down, if she climbs into the boat,
Wet, wordless, she will strangle my children
And throw their limp bodies into the stream.
Skin dripping, she will take my car, drive home.
When my husband answers the doorbell and sees
This magnificent naked woman, bits of sunlight
Glittering on her pubic fur, her muscular
Arm will surround his neck, once for each insult
Endured. He will see the blackbird in her eye,
Her drying mouth incapable of speech,
And I, having exchanged with her, will swim
Away, in the cool water, out of reach.
==========
AUGUST MORNING, UPPER BROADWAY
Alicia Ostriker
As the body of the beloved is a window
through which we behold the blackness and vastness of space
pulsing with stars, and as the man
on the corner with his fruit stand is a window,
and the cherries, blackberries, raspberries
avocados and carrots are a rose window
like the one in Chartres, yes, or the one in Paris
through which light floods from the other world, the pure one
stabbing tourists with malicious abundant joy
though the man is tired in the summer heat
and reads his newspaper listlessly, without passion
and people pass his stand buying nothing
let us call this scene a window looking out
not at a paradise but as a paradise
might be, if we had eyes to see
the women in their swaying dresses, the season’s fruit
the babies in their strollers infinitely soft: clear window
after clear window