EMILY DICKINSON HAD THE WORST TASTE IN MEN
by Katha Pollitt
Page 6
Anyway, I don't usually write poems that have very much to do with politics, but that was one and here's another. Another person I really dislike is Carl Jung, and I really hate this sort of way of dividing things--besides men and women--into male and female, and seeing particular symbols--you know, the moon is female, the sun is masculine, all this animus, anima stuff--I really think that is not an interesting way to see either people or things that are not people. In this poem I propose that we just drop all that and think of some other things to say. And it's called "Metaphors of Women."
What if the moon
was never a beautiful woman?
Call it a shark shearing across black water.
An ear. A drum in a desert.
A window. A bone shoe.
What if the sea
was discovered to have no womb?
Let it be clouds, blue as the day they were born.
A ceremony of bells and questions.
A toothache. A lost twin.
What if a woman
is not the moon or the sea?
Say map of the air. Say green parabola.
Lichen and the stone that feeds it.
No rain. Rain.
