Sylvia

Was your head smiling in the oven, Sylvia?

In the only space where the crowd

Could not shove in to see?

A million filaments,

Your teeth,

Smiling out to the desperate through ink,

Words blackened as black can be

(as a Frisco seal).

I do not resent you, smiling woman.

The oven set your poems, fired clay,

Into my malleable little brain.

You are my opus, my valuable,

Pure gold smiling woman

Shrieking stanza and verse

Beyond the furnace,

Over the pages that I turn and burn.

You leave me greatly concerned, Sylvia,

One towel among many pressed against your kitchen door,

Straining to hear the ash, ash, hands, knees,

The bit of blood

The cake of soap

As they melt together, now letters and symbols

marking the clay of your grave cave.

I am crunching peanuts

Made of your skin and bone.

Your ash decorates the pages of my anthology.

I handwrote Lady Lazarus into a notebook.

I read it most days,

Searching out new sticky pearls,

Plucking them from your papery skin.

Each word unwraps you, Sylvia,

Each symbol a hand or foot.

The big, poetical strip tease

of the smiling woman.

No matter your Death, your pain,

Your poems now serve to please.