Read Online You Drive Me Crazy by Mary D. Esselman, Elizabeth Ash Vélez - Free Book Online

great light borrowers.
    Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,
    And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
    I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
    Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
    Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
    And dying to say something unanswerable.
    The moon, too, abases her subjects,
    But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
    Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
    Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,
    White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.
    No day is safe from news of you,
    Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.
    SYLVIA PLATH
    Cardinal Points
    At twelve, I believed
    in the glamour
    of winter. I wished for it.
    “The north,”
    is how we thought.
    In a Dublin rooming house,
    scarves, gloves, hot water bottles,
    padded to the bone,
    I read books in a fever.
    Now I'm riddled
    with the coming
    of winter. The south is a
    getaway to stir
    our drugged marriage.
    The plot creaks,
    the books by my bedside
    are props.
    ELIZABETH ASH VÉLEZ
    Hazel Tells LaVerne
    last night
    im cleaning out my
    howard johnsons ladies room
    when all of a sudden
    up pops this frog
    musta come from the sewer
    swimming aroun an tryin ta
    climb up the sida the bowl
    so i goes to flushm down
    but sohelpmegod he starts talkin
    bout a golden ball
    an how i can be a princess
    me a princess
    well my mouth drops
    all the way to the floor
    an he says
    kiss me just kiss me
    once on the nose
    well i screams
    ya little green pervert
    an i hitsm with my mop
    an has ta flush
    the toilet down three times
    me
    a princess
    KATHARYN HOWDMACHAN
    Finding Is the First Act
    Finding is the first Act
    The second, loss,
    Third, Expedition for
    The “Golden Fleece,”
    Fourth, no Discovery,
    Fifth, no crew,
    Finally, no Golden Fleece
    Jason—sham—too.
    EMILY DICKINSON
    Sex
    When I came home from school and told my mother
    I was surprised she had even heard
    of anything so disgusting.
    She sat me in the kitchen and explained that fucking
    was the closest a man and a woman could get
    to wanting the same thing at the same time
    and one day, when I was older, I would understand
    that this was love.
    KATE BINGHAM
    Knowledge
    Now that I know
    How passion warms little
    Of flesh in the mould,
    And treasure is brittle,—
    I'll lie here and learn
    How, over their ground,
    Trees make a long shadow
    And a light sound.
    LOUISE BOGAN
    Broken-Off Twig Budding Out in the Path
    Only the slightest thaw,
    and something plops
    in the water that clears.
    It may be nothing
    that swims,
    nothing that hops, or hopes.
    Edge-ice falling in.
    Something that happens
    and simply stops.
    Or it may be a thing
    like this stick—
    its red buds swelling out
    in spite of what it
    ought to know,
    in spite of where it ought to be.
    Some quickened water sprout,
    separate
    beyond naming in its early spring.
    JANE HIRSHFIELD

Clarity
    W HEN L OVE S HINES
    T he clarity stage of love is such a relief. Finally, you get to step back and look at your relationship with fresh eyes. Whatever was making you demented—the boredom (Can you survive a lifetime of dinner on the couch while watching
Seinfeld
reruns?), the doubts (Are you still in love or just biding time?), the pain (Should you jump off a cliff or push his cheating ass off first?)—suddenly starts to make sense. You feel confident, prepared, ready to make a clean break or recommit yourself to your relationship. Sanity! At last!
    We all hope to find ourselves in clarity at some point—the trick is getting there. Usually you need time, experience, supportive friends, and a wizard of a therapist. But sometimes just a flash of insight or a spark of wisdom can help change the way you see everything. That's what the love poems in this chapter offer: little moments of revelation to help you see your relationship—and yourself—more clearly.
    In fact, that's where clarity seems to start, when you allow yourself to shift your perspective, to change your