Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Jamie Walters that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty.
I Go Back to May 1937
Sharon Olds
by Sharon Olds
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
© Sharon Olds. Published in Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002.
Rite of Passage
by Sharon Olds
As the guests arrive at our son’s party
they gather in the living room—
short men, men in first grade
with smooth jaws and chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
jostling, jockeying for place, small fights
breaking out and calming. One says to another
How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So?
They eye each other, seeing themselves
tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their
throats a lot, a room of small bankers,
they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you
up, a seven says to a six,
the midnight cake, round and heavy as a
turret behind them on the table. My son,
freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,
chest narrow as the balsa keel of a
model boat, long hands
cool and thin as the day they guided him
out of me, speaks up as a host
for the sake of the group.
We could easily kill a two-year-old,
he says in his clear voice. The other
men agree, they clear their throats
like Generals, they relax and get down to
playing war, celebrating my son’s life.
© Sharon Olds. Published in Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002.
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The Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway and Murphy Writing are programs of Stockton University.
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Sharon Olds is the author of eleven volumes of poetry including Stag’s Leap (2012), which was named one of Oprah’s Favorite Reads and awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her numerous honors include the T.S. Eliot Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the San Francisco Poetry Center Award, the Lamont Poetry Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches graduate poetry workshops at NYU as well as the writing workshop she helped found at a state hospital for the severely disabled. Often compared to “confessional” poets, she has been praised for the courage and extraordinary physicality of her work. Her most recent collection, Odes, was published in September 2016. You can watch this video of Sharon giving a reading or read a few of her poems.
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Want to study with Sharon Olds? Sharon will be leading three special feedback sessions of Advanced Poetry Writing at the 2017 Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway.
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