Dorothy Barresi

one of my friends shared this on facebook, it's from a book by Dorothy Barresi &

i think it has amazing imagery so i'm sharing it, it's very well done.

Cuttings by Dorothy Barresi

I

Not cut the rug or cut
the mustard.
Not Roethke's spectral
nudgers and weepers
growing in the bruised
root cellar of the heart.

Not exactly Plath's
glottal ragings at mid-century,either,
romance of a thumb-top
pared back
for the accidental perfection
of the idea of pain.

II

We believe or do not believe
her father did
what you have heard
to be true to her.

Roughly speaking, this did or did not
take place when she was
between the ages of three and eleven,
when his pastorate failed
and the family moved
from ---- to --------

penury advising them
in their prayer life
like a cop.

But was it true, you ask.
What are the clues?

Ask the girl with dirt in her mouth.
Ask the girl who is all poem
now, all shapes between the shapes
she carved into her flesh
like a tattoo artist
falling in love

with what remained un-inked, the border crossings
and blue edges
and the razor bleeding
in her hand.

III

Postscript.
Her father died years ago
of cardiopulmonary collapse.
He'd been on the Pritikin Diet,
which helped for a time.
Now he's in jail in heaven.

IV

Postscript.
Sometimes she would cut herself, then go next door
to the neighbor's house---
a drywall finisher out of work
because this was the recession ---
and present her arms to him
shyly, like a girl
in her first prom gown of ruched sateen,
awkward in bows
but with terribly alert eyes.

V

In the end, she took Evian water,
cigarettes, a Bic lighter,
a pinky ring of two
gold willow branches twining, and

200 Xanax
up to the avocado grove
so lush neither horses nor helicopters,
dogs nor daylight,
not one of a dozen volunteers

could cut a trail back
to her alive and nodding off,
and yes,
by the position of her body downslope
the experts agreed,
changing her mind.

VI

Let me start again, here,
where a women ends.
The wrists were involved.
Also the leg-tops, the delicate skin
of the inner arms,
anywhere she could drag sharpness

than factors in and out
what she could not change in her life
which was pain.

The steel ratio of pain
to power
being control.

VII

Now ask yourself, as I did,
why hurt yourself more?