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poem of the week (2)

12/22/2017

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Photo
PC: Catia (@_gingercake)

By Edna St Vincent Millay

A Visit To The Asylum
​Once from a big, big building,
When I was small, small,
The queer folk in the windows
Would smile at me and call.

And in the hard wee gardens
Such pleasant men would hoe:
"Sir, may we touch the little girl's hair!"--
It was so red, you know.

They cut me colored asters
With shears so sharp and neat,
They brought me grapes and plums and pears
And pretty cakes to eat.

​
And out of all the windows,
No matter where we went,
The merriest eyes would follow me
And make me compliment.

There were a thousand windows,
All latticed up and down.
And up to all the windows,
When we went back to town,


The queer folk put their faces,
As gentle as could be;
"Come again, little girl!" they called, and I
Called back, "You come see me!" 
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poem of the week (1)

12/13/2017

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Photo
PC: Célia Schouteden (founder)

by Sylvia Plath

Elm
For Ruth Fainlight


I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:   
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,   
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,   

Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?   
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.   
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.   
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me   
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.   
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.   
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing   
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?   
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.   
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?—--

Its snaky acids hiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults   
That kill, that kill, that kill.
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  • Home
  • Mental health
    • Anxiety
    • Bipolar disorder
    • Borderline personality disorder
    • Cyclothymia
    • Depression
    • Eating disorders
    • OCD
    • PTSD
    • Schizophrenia
    • Self harm
  • Journal
  • About us
  • Contribute
  • Shop
  • Contact