Before Eden (Teresa Bachman)

This holds up better in my memory---so much so I almost didn't add it to these archives.

I don't think it is well-written in the sense of being good poetry. It is, however, when I began trying to write plainly--directly--what I wanted to say, rather than trying to disguise what I wanted to say "poetically".

(c) 1988 Teresa Bachman
1.
When I was eighteen, I wrote a poem
about food, among other things,
and shared it with my family.
My mother shrugged, but Daddy yelled
"Betrayal".

I threw the poem away, let nothing more
be written to break that glassy harmony
and spent twenty years insulating
to turn all my stones into pearls.

I am not an oyster.
My stones will always remain stone.

2.
When I was four, Daddy
called me to the dinner table,
and there, in front of his guests,
set a butcher knife atop my thumb.
"I'm gonna cut it off" he said,
"unless you stop sucking the damned thing".
The cut would have been smooth and neat.
I hid in the closet, and one last time,
I sucked.

I have not looked at my thumb since.

3.
It was my job to clear the table.
I took this job seriously.
First, the condiments,
the bottles licked clean and returned
to their shelves. Then the pots emptied
into my mouth. Then the plates.
My brother and my sister's were coated
with salad dressing. But Daddy's
held meat scraps,
pieces of fat, bones to gnaw,
a whole meal in itself.

It has been years
and I am still hungry.

4.
Every night at 2 a.m. , Daddy woke me up,
the kitchen smelling of egg-foo-young,
of soy sause, chow-mein, ginseng tea,
pork-fried rice.

Food was our conversation.

Sometimes mom would emerge
from that tomb of a bedroom
in the back of the house and yell
"Christ Jack,
she's got school in the morning."

5.
My father and his musician friends
stumbled in ready to play one more saet.
The drummer had had ehough
so they taught me a simple drum count,
one hit on the base, one on the high hat,
a steady snare, a constant one-two-three-four
on the cymbols and I was part of the band.

6.
My friends and I danced
in the Go-Go dancer's livingroom
while that dancer smoked, languid
and bored on the couch.
and when she moved away, I danced at home
in front of the pantry mirror.

There was electricity-- a fire
I held the pwer to unleash,
and someday, I just knew,
I'd be dancing
and eveyone would watch me.

7.
Locked in the bathroom,
I barricaded the door
with towels, a stool,
in case my back wasn't strong enough.

Daddy banging on the door
"let them watch
them them see
you dance."

8.
These are the books Daddy gave me for Christmas:

age 11: 50 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary

age 12: The Young Miss Diet Guide

age 13: Sylvia's Frank Talk with Teens

age 14: Cosmopolitan's Guide to Good Sex

age 15: Combat in the Erogenous Zones

age 16: there were no more books.

There was nothing else, ever again.

9.
Michael had the face of an angel,
pure and round and soft
and his eyes glistened black
as though he had spent his whole life crying.

He liked to sit behind the counter
and watch me work: flipping burgers,
scorfching fries-- would lick the salt
from my hands at closing.

Michael played guitar and told me
he wrote me songs;
though they were really songs
off the radio.

10.
Daddy found the prescription
for the pill in my purse
and never spoke to me again.

It has taken me twenty years to finally ask
Daddy-- who gave you permission
to snoop through my purse?
To open my life like a cheap leather bag
and judge me?

11.
After work Daddy drank rum
and I drank vodka.
We drank until we could drink no more.
Even after Momma stumbled from her room and yelled

cause we never heard her.

Daddy told me about his girlfriends,
how he liked the girl's on the bottom
where they belonged. He told me
it wouldn't matter if I wanted
sex or not, that a woman was ready
so long as her man was hard.

This was the law of nature.

Daddy told me what attracts a man.
Beauty holds his eye. But I was no beauty.
Intellect intrigues a man. We all knew
I was stupid. And personality--
I had the personality of a slug.

The only chance, he said,
the only chance was that if I could be good
in bed. He warned me

be good, or die lonely.

12.
Michael called me his butterfly
because of all the colors I wore.

In the evening
when our parents were out
he would take me between his fingers
rub the powder off my wings
destroying my power of flight.

All the while,
that strange smell of ether
his whispers
the cold steel through my heart.

13.
Once, Daddy broke his silence to comment
on how like him Michael was.

That Michael was a musician,
that Michael drove a motorcycle,
that Michael wouled have done poorly
without me.

I denied Daddy his pleasure and said

"Michael is nothing like you."

14.
Michael kept me thin.
Michael planned my diet and dressed me.
I was his pretty little doll.

Michael took me dancing and he made me job
and he designed my hair and he turned me
into a worthy show piece.

Michael slapped me when his friends
looked too long.
There were ulterior motives
to watch for and stamp out,
rooms to lock me in
until I behaved.

When my friend annouunced
she'd become a lesbian
then there were women
to keep away as well.

15.
The first time I saw my mother naked
my back bristled in the cold bathroom air.
I begged god
to leave those lumps off my flesh.

When god didn't listen, I took action
into my own hands.
One can starve, and breasts will disappear.

16.
I have solitutde and serenity
in the fat I carry.

This is a secret I have never before shared.

17.
The Greeks tell of Persephone and Demeter,
how Persephone was raped
then forced to marry Hades, her rapist.
And how Demeter, in her sorrow
spread winter across the land.

Hades would have returned Persephone
but Persephone had eaten in his house
and was obligated to live half each year with Hades.

When Michael raped me
I had no mother strong enough
neither to cover the world with winter
nor to stop it
where it had already spread.

18.
Being a parent is a crime.
We pass our anger to our children
and expect them to find a way
through the maze
we could never find.

I watch my daughter dry off from her bath
and I hate her body.

This has replaced
frustration toward my own body,
has given me the ability
to look again in the mirror.

I still do not like what I see.

19.
I am stuck at 15. Any dreamer
would note the symbols,
how I have begun wearing my hair
in the exact same style, my clothes
as mismatched and formless as tey were then.
I have quit wearing make-up,
have thrown away my bras.

At 15 my father quit talking to me.
At 15 my best friend moved clear across the country.
At 15 I first thought I had found love.
At 15 I tried to stave into nothing.
At 15 I fell in love with Death.
At 15 I quit keeping diaries.
At 15 I began to write poetry.
At 15 I closed up and dreams took precedence over life.
At 15 I built pedestals and ignored people.
At 15 I died.

For twenty years
I have been celebrating my birthday
with the wrong age. And unless I grow up
I will always be 15.

20.
Before Eden the silverback
set zebra thigh down
and the gorilla paid him
with the fruit of her haunches.
The transaction encoded
from the beginning of time.

21.
When the bill comes two hands reach,
mine and any man I dine with.
I learned early not to let me pay for my food.

This is preserving my power.

Michael bought pizza and soda pop
then parked on the bluff.

Yes, the moob glimmered on the sound,
and Steely Dan haunted the air waves.
But if Michael hadn't paid for the meal
he would never have driven here.

22.
Persephone, I am sure of it,
knew the power of food.
She bit into that pomegranite willfully.

What daughter wishes to spend immortality
with her mother--
especially if she can spend
at least half of it
with a god?

23.
I am dreaming history
where the beginning of time
was just hours ago
and nothing yet is iknown.

I have been creating a past
set somewhere in the otp of alders,
or somewhere at the root of sunflowers.
There is nothing here to eat.
There is no one here to touch.
There is no music that the wind, alone
cannot provide.
There is only warm light
and a place to sleep.

24.
Feast your eyes here, upon my belly.
It is small and tight as it has never been
before. the skin is soft as a plum
and so much more resilient.

Feast your eyes. I am young again,
barely fifteen, ready to kiss, ready
to say nothing but "love me",
and "let me love."

Nibble on my neck, delight me with the names
of flowers: Lupine, Queen Anne's Lace,
Iris, Lilac, Rose and Goldenrod.
We will all be your lovers.

Call me your special muse, name me
after the skin smooth inside your elbow.
I am your whistling rib, I am
your daughter, sister, mother.
Crawl inside me, be my Daddy, marry me,
plant me in your garden.

I am barely fifteen, and I am so sweet.