Pain Is A Forcing Sieve That Turns

Attention Is Love, What We Must Give Children, Mothers, Fathers, Pets, Our Friends, The News, The Woes Of Others. What We Want To Change We Curse And Then Pick Up A Tool. Bless Whatever You Can With Eyes And Hands And Tongue. If You Can't Bless It, Get Ready To Make It New.

Now That I Am In My Forties, She [my Mother] Tells Me I'm Beautiful; Now That I Am In My Forties, She Sends Me Presents And We Have The Long, Personal And Even Remarkably Honest Phone Calls I Always Wanted So Intensely I Forbade Myself To Imagine Them. How Strange. Perhaps Shaw Was Correct And If We Lived To Be Several Hundred Years Old, We Would Finally Work It All Out. I Am Deeply Grateful. With My Poems, I Finally Won Even My Mother. The Longest Wooing Of My Life.

Shared Laughter Is Erotic Too.

I Was A Working Class Jewish Girl. In My Girlhood, Anti-semitism Was A Daily Fact Of Life In Detroit. I Did Not Come From People Who Had Many Options In Their Lives Or Many Choices Open To Them. I Was A Girl In A Family In Which Women Were, As In Society At Large, Very Much Second-class Citizens. I Did Not See Why I Should Accept These Forced Limitations Without A Fight. Being Free To Make My Own Choices Thus Became Very Important To Me At An Early Age.

The Ruling Class Isn't Dissatisfied: They Are Healthy, Well-fed, Live In Beauty, Enjoy Their Own Importance: Fun-loving Cannibals.