Sharon Olds TRICKS

My mother
the magician
can make eggs
appear in her hand.
My ovaries
appear in her hand, black as figs
and wrinkled as fingers on washday.

She closes her hand,
and when she opens it
nothing.

She pulls silk scarves out of her ears
in all colors, jewels from her mouth,
milk from her nipples. My mother the naked
magician stands on the white stage
and pulls her tricks.

She takes out her eyes.
The holes of her sockets
fill with oil, it seeps up,
with bourbon and feces.
Out of her nostrils
she pulls scrolls
and they take fire.

In the grand finale
she draws my father
slowly out of her cunt and puts him
in a tall silk hat
and he disappears.

I said she can turn anything
into nothing, she's a hole in space,
she's the tops, the best
magician. All this

I have pulled out of my mouth right
before your eyes.

Sharon Olds BAROMETER

Being a woman whose elder sister
abandoned a child —dropped her mid-journey,
left her like a husband— I am not like other mothers.

At night, I go into my daughter's room,
and listen to the cool, creaking cistern
of her breath; I go into my son's, the cricket
still safe in his throat, his chest;

I wish I could stand over my own bed
and listen to my breathing, to know what weather's coming.

Sharon Olds THE UNJUSTLY PUNISHED CHILD

The child screams in his room. Rage
heats his head.
He is going through changes like metal under deep
pressure at high temperatures.

When he cools off and comes out of that door
He will not be the same child who ran in
and slammed it. An alloy has been added. Now he will
crack along different lines when tapped.

He is stronger. The long impurification
has begun this morning.

Sharon Olds LAS FORMAS

Siempre tuve la sensación de que mi madre
moriría por nosotros, se lanzaría a un fuego
para sacarnos, el pelo incandescente como
un halo, se zambulliría en el agua, su cuerpo
blanco sucumbiendo y girando lentamente,
ese astronauta cuyo cable se corta
para
perderse
en la nada. Nos habría
protegido con su cuerpo, habría interpuesto
sus senos entre nuestro pecho y el cuchillo,
nos habría metido en el bolsillo del abrigo
lejos de las tormentas. En la tragedia, el animal
hembra habría muerto por nosotros,

pero en la vida tal y como era
tuvo que mirar
por ella.
Tuvo que hacer a los niños
lo que él dijera, tenía que
protegerse. En la guerra, habría
dado la vida por nosotros, te aseguro que sí,
y lo sé: soy una estudiosa de la guerra,
de hornos de gas, de asfixia, de cuchillos,
de ahogamientos, quemaduras, de todas las formas
en las que sufrí su amor.