After Sylvia Plath
The bushes are laden, draw my blood with their thorns.
To find sweetness or at least some nourishment,
Find sweetness before wasps get the drupes,
Don leather gloves. Get ready for a struggle.
Struggle to be delicate. Soften your clumsy touch
On that honey-feast, fat with blue-red juices.
The honey of it, dripping with blue-red juices.
Plump and dumb on the banks of the brook.
I cling to my footing on the slippery banks.
Are the tenderest ones the hardest to hold?
Tender ones tease me, too fragile to hold.
It’s a chore, their thorniness, easily bruised.
As I pick through the thorns, I’m easily bruised.
Poems are blackberries. I give them my blood.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 3.
Margot Wizansky’s poems appear online and in many journals, such as the Missouri Review, Maine Review, Poetry East, Lumina, Inkwell, Quarterly West, and American Literary Review. She has edited two poetry anthologies and won a Carlow University residency in Ireland and a Writers@Work fellowship in Salt Lake City.
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