Sweet muse
with bitter milk,
I have lain
between your breasts,
put my ear
to your sea-shell-whispering navel,
& strained the salty marshes
of your sex
between my milk teeth.
Then I've slept at last,
my teeming head
against your rocking thigh.

Gentle angry mother
poetry,
where could I turn
from the terror of the night
but to your sweet maddening
ambivalence?
Where could I rest
but in your hurricane?
who would always take me home
but you,
sweeping off the sooty stoop
of your wind-filled shack
on the edge
of the volcano?

© Erica Mann Jong

Read more poems by Erica Jong