The Gold Cell

by Sharon Olds

  all the saxophones began to play

  hot riffs of scat for the return of their rightful owners.

  First Sex

  (for J.)

  I knew little, and what I knew

  I did not believe—they had lied to me

  so many times, so I just took it as it

  came, his naked body on the sheet,

  the tiny hairs curling on his legs like

  fine, gold shells, his sex

  harder and harder under my palm

  and yet not hard as a rock his face cocked

  back as if in terror, the sweat

  jumping out of his pores like sudden

  trails from the tiny snails when his knees

  locked with little clicks and under my

  hand he gathered and shook and the actual

  flood like milk came out of his body, I

  saw it glow on his belly, all they had

  said and more, I rubbed it into my

  hands like lotion, I signed on for the duration.

  First Love

  It was Sunday morning, I had The New York

  Times spread out on my dormitory floor, its

  black print coming off dark silver on the

  heels of my palms, it was spring and I had the

  dormer window of my room open, to

  let it in, I even had the radio

  on, I was letting it all in, the

  tiny silvery radio voices—I

  even let myself feel that it was Easter, the

  dark flower of his life opening

  again, his life being given back

  again, I was in love and I could take it, the ink

  staining my hands, the news on the radio

  coming in my ears, there had been a wreck

  and they said your name, son of the well-known they

  said your name. Then they said where they’d

  taken the wounded and the dead, and I called the

  hospital, I remember kneeling by the

  phone on the third-floor landing of the dorm, the

  dark, steep, stairs down

  next to me, I spoke to a young

  man a young doctor there in the

  Emergency Room, my open ear

  pressed to the dark receiver, my open

  life pressed to the world, I said

  Which one of them died, and he said your name,

  he was standing there in the room with you

  saying your name.

  I remember I leaned my

  forehead against the varnished bars of the

  baluster rails and held on,

  pulling at the rails as if I wanted to

  pull them together, shut them like a dark

  door, close myself like a door

  as you had been shut, closed off, but I could not

  do it, the pain kept coursing through me like

  life, like the gift of life.

  Cambridge Elegy

  (for Henry Averell Gerry, 1941–60)

  I scarcely know how to speak to you now,

  you are so young now, closer to my daughter’s age

  than mine—but I have been there and seen it, and must

  tell you, as the seeing and hearing

  spell the world into the deaf-mute’s hand.

  The dormer windows like the ears of a fox, like the

  double row of teats on a pig, still

  perk up over the Square, though they’re digging up the

  street now, as if digging a grave,

  the shovels shrieking on stone like your car

  sliding on its roof after the crash.

  How I wanted everyone to die if you had to die,

  how sealed into my own world I was,

  deaf and blind. What can I tell you now,

  now that I know so much and you are a

  freshman still, drinking a quart of orange juice and

  playing three sets of tennis to cure a hangover, such an

  ardent student of the grown-ups! I can tell you

  we were right, our bodies were right, life was

  really going to be that good, that

  pleasurable in every cell.

  Suddenly I remember the exact look of your body, but

  better than the bright corners of your eyes, or the

  light of your face, the rich Long Island

  puppy-fat of your thighs, or the slick

  chino of your pants bright in the corners of my eyes, I

  remember your extraordinary act of courage in

  loving me, something no one but the

  blind and halt had done before. You were

  fearless, you could drive after a sleepless night

  just like a grown-up, and not be afraid, you could

  fall asleep at the wheel easily and

  never know it, each blond hair of your head—and they were

  thickly laid—put out like a filament of light,

  twenty years ago. The Charles still

  slides by with that ease that made me bitter when I

  wanted all things hard as your death was hard;

  wanted all things broken and rigid as the

  bricks in the sidewalk or your love for me

  stopped cell by cell in your young body.

  Ave—I went ahead and had the children,

  the life of ease and faithfulness, the

  palm and the breast, every millimeter of delight in the body,

  I took the road we stood on at the start together, I

  took it all without you as if

  in taking it after all I could most

  honor you.

  Still Life

  I lie on my back after making love,

  breasts in shallow curves like the lids of soup dishes,

  nipples shiny as berries, speckled and immutable.

  My legs lie down there somewhere in the bed like those

  great silver fish drooping over the edge of the table.

  Scene of destruction, scene of perfect peace,

  sex bright and calm and luminous as the

  scarlet and blue dead pheasant all

  maroon neck feathers and deep body wounds,

  and on the center of my forehead a drop of water

  round and opalescent, and in it

  your self-portrait—the artist, upside down,

  naked, holding your brushes dripping like torches with light.

  Greed and Aggression

  Someone in Quaker meeting talks about greed and aggression

  and I think of the way I lay the massive

  weight of my body down on you

  like a tiger lying down in gluttony and pleasure on the

  elegant heavy body of the eland it eats,

  the spiral horn pointing to the sky like heaven.

  Ecstasy has been given to the tiger,

  forced into its nature the way the

  forcemeat is cranked down the throat of the held goose,

  it cannot help it, hunger and the glory of

  eating packed at the center of each

  tiger cell, for the life of the tiger and the

  making of new tigers, so there will

  always be tigers on the earth, their stripes like

  stripes of night and stripes of fire-light—

  so if they had a God it would be striped,

  burnt-gold and black, the way if

  I had a God it would renew itself the

  way you live and live while I take you as if

  consuming you while you take me as if

  consuming me, it would be a God of

  love as complete satiety,

  greed and fullness, aggression and fullness, the

  way we once drank at the body of an animal

  until we were so happy we could only

  faint, our mouths running, into sleep.

  It

  Sometimes we fit together like the creamy

  speckled three-section body of the banana, that
>
  joke fruit, as sex was a joke when we were kids,

  and sometimes it is like a jagged blue comb of glass across

  my skin,

  and sometimes you have me bent over as thick paper can be

  folded, on the rug in the center of the room

  far from the soft bed, my knuckles

  pressed against the grit in the grain of the rug’s

  braiding where they

  laid the rags tight and sewed them together,

  my ass in the air like a lily with a wound on it

  and I feel you going down into me as

  if my own tongue is your cock sticking

  out of my mouth like a stamen, the making and

  breaking of the world at the same moment,

  and sometimes it is sweet as the children we had

  thought were dead being brought to the shore in the

  narrow boats, boatload after boatload.

  Always I am stunned to remember it,

  as if I have been to Saturn or the bottom of a trench in the

  sea floor, I

  sit on my bed the next day with my mouth open and think of it.

  Topography

  After we flew across the country we

  got in bed, laid our bodies

  intricately together, like maps laid

  face to face, East to West, my

  San Francisco against your New York, your

  Fire Island against my Sonoma, my

  New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho

  bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas

  burning against your Kansas your Kansas

  burning against my Kansas, your Eastern

  Standard Time pressing into my

  Pacific Time, my Mountain Time

  beating against your Central Time, your

  sun rising swiftly from the right my

  sun rising swiftly from your left your

  moon rising slowly from the left my

  moon rising slowly from the right until

  all four bodies of the sky

  burn above us, sealing us together,

  all our cities twin cities,

  all our states united, one

  nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  A Woman in Heat Wiping Herself

  High in the inner regions of my body

  this gloss is spun, high up

  under the overhanging ledge where the

  light pours down on the cliff night and day.

  No workers stand around in the

  camaraderie of workers,

  no one lays the color down on the

  lip of the braid, there is only the light,

  bands and folds of light, and the clean

  sand at the edge, the working surface—there is

  no one around for miles, no one hungry,

  no one being fed. Just as in the side of the

  lamb no one is tending the hole where the

  light pours out, no one is folding or

  carding while the gold grease of the floss

  flows through the follicle, beading and rippling back and

  curving forward in solemn spillage.

  Things done with no reference to the human.

  Most things are done with no reference to the human

  even if they happen inside us, in our

  body that is far beyond our powers, that we could

  never invent. Deep in my sex, the

  glittering threads are thrown outward and thrown outward

  the way the sea lifts up the whole edge of its body,

  the rim, the slit where once or twice in a lifetime

  you can look through and see the other world—

  it is this world, without us,

  this earth and our bodies

  without us watching.

  The Premonition

  When we got to the island, I would drive the kids

  over to the Community Center,

  its parking lot seething with children, a

  spawn of faces in the rear-view mirror,

  tops of heads just visible

  over the trunk of the car.

  I was so afraid I’d run over a child

  I had to park somewhere else, I

  felt the car straining forward,

  lunging like a hungry shark.

  I could see the still arms, the scarlet

  herringbone pattern across a chest, the

  head cracked like a smooth brown egg—I

  saw it so clearly I thought it was a warning, I went

  slower and slower, wild to be careful,

  feeling safe only at home,

  in bed, your body an ivory tower

  inside my body, and then the condom

  ripped and the seed tore into me like a

  flame tearing out the top of a tower

  into the night, you said you didn’t

  want another child at all,

  and then I knew who it was, the one in the

  center of the pool of blood, the dark

  marks of the tread all over its chest where the

  car had been driven over it back and forth, back and forth.

  I Cannot Forget the Woman in the Mirror

  Backwards and upside down in the twilight, that

  woman on all fours, her head

  dangling and suffused, her lean

  haunches, the area of darkness, the flanks and

  ass narrow and pale as a deer’s and those

  breasts hanging down toward the center of the earth like plummets, when I

  swayed from side to side they swayed, it was

  so near night I couldn’t tell if they were yellow or

  violet or rose. I cannot get over her

  moving toward him upside down in the mirror like a

  fly on the ceiling, her head hanging down and her

  tongue long and purple as an anteater’s

  going toward his body, she was clearly a human

  animal, like an Iroquois scout creeping

  naked and noiseless, and when I looked at her

  she looked at me so directly, her eyes all

  pupil, her stare said to me I

  belong here, this is mine, I am living out my

  true life on this earth.

  Love in Blood Time

  When I saw my blood on your leg, the drops so

  dark and clear, that real arterial red,

  I could not even think about death, you

  stood there smiling at me,

  you squatted in the tub on your long haunches

  and washed it away.

  The large hard bud of your glans in my mouth,

  the dark petals of my sex in your mouth,

  I could feel death going farther and farther away,

  forgetting me, losing my address, his

  palm forgetting the curve of my cheek in his hand.

  Then when we lay in the small glow of the

  lamp and I saw your lower lip

  glazed with light like liquid fire

  I looked at you and I tell you I knew you were God

  and I was God and we lay in our bed

  on the dark cloud, and somewhere down there

  was the earth, and somehow all we did, the

  blood, the pink stippling of the head, the

  pearl fluid out of the slit, the

  goodness of all we did would somehow get

  down there, it would find its flowering in the world.

  This

  Maybe if I did not have this

  I would call myself my mother’s daughter

  or identify my soul with the blue bowl

  that stood on the table, or with the gold wall, or the field.

  I would call myself Cobb, Stuart, Torrance,

  McLean, I would wear the plaid at all times,

  clan green, blood red,

  fine line of the purple vein,

  if I did not have this. Or I would wrap my life in th
e

  flag, in its wide swaths of blood, its

  stars like broken bowls on that table,

  or the cupped curve of my father’s cereal-bowl forehead

  here above my brows, or my mother’s bad vein

  running up the inside of my leg

  like a river under the land.

  But I have this,

  so this is who I am, this body

  white as yellowish dough brushed with dry flour

  pressed to his body. I am these breasts that

  crush against him like collapsible silver

  travel cups that telescope into themselves,

  and the nipples that float in the center like hard

  raspberries in bright sunlight, they

  are my life, the dark sex that

  takes him in as anyone in summer will

  open their throat to the hose held up

  hot on the edge of the sandlot—don’t

  ask me about my country or who my

  father was or even what I do, if you

  want to know who I am, I am this, this.

  IV

  The Moment the Two Worlds Meet

  That’s the moment I always think of—when the

  slick, whole body comes out of me,

  when they pull it out, not pull it but steady it

  as it pushes forth, not catch it but keep their

  hands under it as it pulses out,

  they are the first to touch it,

  and it shines, it glistens with the thick liquid on it.

  That’s the moment, while it’s sliding, the limbs

  compressed close to the body, the arms

  bent like a crab’s cloud-muscle legs, the

  thighs packed plums in heavy syrup, the

  legs folded like the wings of a chicken—

  that is the center of life, that moment when the

  juiced bluish sphere of the baby is

  sliding between the two worlds,

  wet, like sex, it is sex,

  it is my life opening back and back

  as you’d strip the reed from the bud, not strip it but

  watch it thrust so it peels itself and the

  flower is there, severely folded, and

  then it begins to open and dry

  but by then the moment is over,

  they wipe off the grease and wrap the child in a blanket and

  hand it to you entirely in this world.