Pink Poems
Barbie Doll
by Marge Piercy
This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
......
At Deep Midnight
by Minnie Bruce Pratt
It's at dinnertime the stories come, abruptly,
as they sit down to food predictable as ritual.
Pink lady peas, tomatoes red as fat hearts
sliced thin on a plate, cornbread hot, yellow
clay made edible. The aunts hand the dishes
and tell of people who've shadowed them, pesky
terrors, ageing reflections that peer back
in the glass when they stand to wash up at the sink.
One sister shivers and fevers with malaria,
lowland by the river where Papa tries to farm
......
Smoking
by Elton Glaser
I like the cool and heft of it, dull metal on the palm,
And the click, the hiss, the spark fuming into flame,
Boldface of fire, the rage and sway of it, raw blue at the base
And a slope of gold, a touch to the packed tobacco, the tip
Turned red as a warning light, blown brighter by the breath,
The pull and the pump of it, and the paper's white
Smoothed now to ash as the smoke draws back, drawn down
To the black crust of lungs, tar and poisons in the pink,
And the blood sorting it out, veins tight and the heart slow,
The push and wheeze of it, a sweep of plumes in the air
......
Bagpipe Music
by Louis Macneice
It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crepe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with head of bison.
John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumbbells to use when he was fifty.
......
Flying Inside Your Own Body
by Margaret Atwood
Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
wings of pink blood, and your bones
empty themselves and become hollow.
When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon
and your heart is light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, pure helium.
The sun’s white winds blow through you,
there’s nothing above you,
you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
radiant & seablue with love.
......
Pink
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
Dawn
coral
skies mixed with
purple and gold.
Daisies glow in bright
field of strange sunrise light,
midst birdsong, nature's finest.
Classical music morning's come!
Yellow bees roam the world humming joy
in the regal sun's colored procession.
......
To the Dogwood He Came
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
Down hot sunny lane came pink robin,
With a beautiful song in his heart!
He perched on a dogwood in my garden,
A moment of rapture, soon to depart.
Blooming days in my garden of delight.
The afternoon dragged waiting for him;
And he came singing long before night,
Like a rainbow's appearance on a whim!
When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom'D
by Walt Whitman
from Memories of President Lincoln
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
......
Two Roses
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
A humble wild-rose, pink and slender,
Was plucked and placed in a bright bouquet,
Beside a Jacqueminot’s royal splendour,
And both in my lady’s boudoir lay.
Said the haughty bud, in a tone of scorning,
‘I wonder why you are called a rose?
Your leaves will fade in a single morning;
No blood of mine in your pale cheek glows.
......
At The Window
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Every morning, as I walk down
From my dreary lodgings, toward the town,
I see at a window, near the street,
The face of a woman, fair and sweet,
With soft brown eyes and chestnut hair,
And red lips, warm with the kisses left there.
And she stands there as long as she can see
The man who walks just ahead of me.
At night, when I come from my office down town,
......
