Silver Spoon Ode

Sharon Olds (2018)

I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth

and a silver knife, and a silver fork.

I would complain about it—the spoon was not greasy,

it tasted like braces, my shining access

to cosmetic enhancement. And I complained about

the taste of my fillings in my very expensive

mouth, as if only my family was paying 

where did I think the rich got

their money but from everyone else?

My mother beat me in 4/4 time,

and I often, now, rant to her beat—I wear

her rings as if I killed her for them, as my

people killed, and climbed up over

the dead. And I sound as if I am bragging

about it. I was born with a spoon instead of a

tongue in my mouth—dung spoon,

diamond spoon. And who would I be

to ask forgiveness? I would be a white girl.

And I hear Miss Lucille, as if on the mountain

where I'd stand beside her, and brush away the insects,

and sometimes pick one off her, sometimes

by the wings, and toss it away. And Lucille

is saying, to me, You have asked for enough,

and been given in excess. And that thing in your mouth,

open your mouth and let that thing go,

let if fly back into the mine where it was brought

up from the underworld at the price of

lives, beloved lives. And now,

enough, Shar, now a little decent silence.

I Could Not Tell

Sharon Olds (2002)

I could not tell I had jumped off that bus,
that bus in motion, with my child in my arms,
because I did not know it. I believed my own story:
I had fallen, or the bus had started up
when I had one foot in the air.

I would not remember the tightening of my jaw,
the irk that I’d missed my stop, the step out
into the air, the clear child
gazing about her in the air as I plunged
to one knee on the street, scraped it, twisted it,
the bus skidding to a stop, the driver
jumping out, my daughter laughing
Do it again.

I have never done it
again, I have been very careful.
I have kept an eye on that nice young mother
who lightly leapt
off the moving vehicle
onto the stopped street, her life
in her hands, her life’s life in her hands.

Self-Exam

Sharon Olds (2008)

They tell you it won't make much sense, at first,
you will have to learn the terrain. They tell you this
at thirty, and fifty, and some are late
beginners, at last lying down and walking
the old earth of the breasts— the small,
cobbled, plowed field of one,
with a listening walking, and then the other—
fingertip-stepping, divining, north
to south, east to west, sectioning
the little fallen hills, sweeping
for mines. And the matter feels primordial,
unimaginable—dense,
cystic, phthistic, each breast like the innards
of a cell, its contents shifting and changing,
steambed gravel under walking feet, it
seems almost unpicturable, not
immemorial, but nearly un-
memorizable, but one marches,
slowly, through grave or fatal danger,
or no danger, one feels around in the
two tack-room drawers, ribs and
knots like leather bridles and plaited
harnesses and bits and reins,
one runs one's hands through the mortal tackle
in a jumble, in the dark, indoors. Outside—
night, in which these glossy ones were
ridden to a froth of starlight, bareback.