The Resurrection
Of
Sylvia Plath
By Marc D. Goldfinger
Copyright 2000 by
Marc D. Goldfinger
76 Unity Avenue
Belmont MA 02478
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher/author, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages.
For Mary Esther
“I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.”
Sylvia Plath, from the poem Elm, the book Ariel.
Walking Outside The Asylum With Sylvia Plath, December 15, 1952
by Marc D. Goldfinger
She hears the incarcerated scream, howl
inhuman cries. That's how
she describes it to her mother
in a letter. Listen to them, terrifying,
holy, shriek, it's enough to make you
religious, these are the prayers of people
who believe in God. Liquid
voices spit from barred windows, saliva
fills the air, the sun colours screams
crimson and freezes them over
black hills. Sylvia Plath wants
to crawl inside mad throats. She wonders
what the borders at the edge of the torn
lands feel like. She begs God
to give her knowledge.
Sylvia Flies Over Northhampton
Into the red
I am flying. A handsome pilot
at the throttle
are the controls. What is this
God with His hand on
the axis? How He flips
the ocean into light, floats
upside down
with a metallic wing over
my world.
The pilot turns, looks
at me, says “You
fly it.” So I do.
I take
the stick, tilting the clouds
below me, this is ecstasy
better than religion. I am so ripe
with life
you could bite right
into me. I would
burst like a pregnant
sledge-hammer into your mouth.
A Practical Girl
Brown hair, natural, it fades, a bit like me. Becoming
blonde, I might whirl about the sands, curl
my toes around conches, listen
to the roar of the surf. I am full of secret
passions, the grey suit I wear has a rainbow
lining, my inner clock is set
on alarm, I want to tear the white
flesh from the man's cheek who
loves me, below my sparkle eyes lingering
over your surprise. I fall into bed at an early
hour, slide my hands beneath my comforter, between
my legs, wet poetic fingers with myself, bite God's breath
and shudder. I come blonde, I come in
doubles, the true child of Dostoevsky, Raskolnikov's
hand trembling on my joy. Gasped so
hard my mouth lips dry in the wind, a twin
tongue flicks over my fingers come from my heat. I taste
scalded salt, rush my hand down into my
impatience, shut my long
thighs, pumping, stain the sheets. I love
you like this, you with the dark
face, below my eyeshadows, peer
into the mirror of myself. Blonde hair, mouth
packed with words, ready
to shriek them into Devil's ink, erect
breasts nipples hard between thumb
and finger, wanting to bite
you between my rabbit teeth, crime, crime,
I come like punishment.
The Night I Gave God My Clothes
Those clothes. Scattered about my hotel
room like discarded snake skins. When
I sent those clothes to heaven
in New York City, jealousy burned inside
me. What we discard can go places
we'll never know. What discards us
are the people we welcome
into our lives. What discards us are
the people God thrusts upon us. New York is so full
of mystery I could cover it
with my skin, give shadows shape. On this night
I stood on the balcony with my garments
at my feet. Grasped what once covered
me, piece by piece, day by day, part by part, placed
my old skins whiskering in the wind. Dark secret
places. Soon there was once a girl left standing
on the balcony. Now nothing but wind,
lights in my eyes. Naked. Willing. Bereft.
Electricity
On the third week without sleep
things began to get weird. Mother
locked away the sleeping pills. Imagine.
Days of infernal intolerable infinite
wakefulness interspersed with intermittant
electric executions. The first inkling of
what I might expect came when the Rosenbergs
were electrocuted for spying. I felt them
die. They were innocent too.
What It Was, Mother
It wasn't necessarily the rejection
from Frank O'Connor's summer
course at Harvard. Nor was
the month at Mademoiselle
unfruitful. Even ptomaine
from nasty crabs added
perspective to my
life, what with fainting, hypodermics,
wanting to die for only a day. Only
a day. It wasn't the men with
begging cups in the snake tunnel
subways or the grey matter
of my brain pressing me down, ripening
me like bad fruit. It wasn't
the way you looked at me in the rearview
mirror when you told me about the rejection.
New York City had crept
inside of me, turned me yellow outside, skewed
my thought patterns, I hold books
in my hands now, never open them. When you
tried to teach the Gregg shorthand system
to me, I didn't want to tell you there is no
quick way to die. It was so hard
to breathe, I thought I might bleed
instead. That's when I cut
myself for the first time, digging the metal
deep into my fair white legs. Of course, there were times
on electro-shock tables where God dug
His blue-volt fingers into the roots of my hair and yanked
Himself out of me.
But it wasn't until I jammed this
body into the dark basement
crawlspace behind the firewood, thrust
fifty sleeping pills down my hungry
throat into aching emptiness, when Christ
fucked me, split my loins with desire. Frank
O'Connor had nothing to do with it.
How I Found Out
The Warning
When the doctors cut deep into her
brain with steel knives, they knew
what they were doing. We women are
possessed by the devil. Men find
it necessary to slice the imp out of us. Separate
us from ourselves, divorce us
from our nature. Call her
Valerie. When she pushed asid
e
the bangs of her hair two pale
deathmarks showed on her forehead. Once
her spirit had begun to sprout forth,
like devil’s horns the men said, she was
whisked from home at her husband’s request.
When the electricity failed to sizzle her out, men
unsheathed their daggers. Now Valerie
smiles pleasantly, walks the grounds
of the hospital, never
wants to leave.
The Set-Up
Call her Joan. A horse
of a woman. The man
I wanted took her
to her prom. He paid for
that. I wanted him
until he wanted me. It was then my ardor
lessened. But it was
Joan we were talking about.
The school hockey champion.
If that was not enough, let me
say she was a physics major too.
Imagine! Did I say
she was the class president?
She strived for more out of life than
any woman of character deserved.
Not to mention teeth
as big as tombstones, eyes
of sand, and a voice
that had its own breath.
There was so much about her
I hated. I wanted every bit
of it to be me. Then I was
gifted by maturity and vision.
No one could give me what it
was I yearned for. I only
wanted to suck the tongue
of darkness. Lock my lips
to dreamless night. But Joan.
Let's not forget about her.
Little did I know. All this
time we shared similar hopes,
identical sorrows. When I disappeared
into my first suicide in a hole beneath
my mother's house, it was Joan
who loved me so much she tried
to follow me in. She went to
New York, looking for my lost
clothing, found them in a glass
window. Reached into it, shattered
it, raked her soft white wrists into
blood. We arrived at the same
hospital, shared adjoining rooms.
Joan smiled at me when I told her
"You're all right now." She looked
at me. Sand spilled from her eyes
into mine. "I guess so", she said. She
studied me intently. "Aren't you?"
The Execution.
Call me Sylvia. At the hospital I knew when
it was going to happen.
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