Reading Sharon Olds

“I put my arms around a trunk and squeezed it,

Then I lay down on my father’s grave....

When I kissed the stone it was not enough,

When I licked it my tongue went dry a moment, I

Ate his dust, I tasted my dirt host.” -- From The Father

Such wild, such passionate 

       

exaggeration! 

The way this poet makes oceans 

       out of tears, 

     

volcanoes from pimples— 

     

         entire solar systems—

from self-immolation,

writing herself into its burning center, 

    

 shining so extremely, 

    

     a star on the verge of collapse,

gulping her father her mother—

     

       those lifeless planets trapped

     

in the poet’s gravity. 

The mass of her grief astounds me—

      

      light years thick with pain—

not theirs--

       but her own unquenchable.

It’s what draws me closer, turning the pages.

Her  ache at first unimaginable, 

     

       but more and more real 

and becomes my own. 

With every line, she peals away

     

      my peach skin, cuts me open, 

drops me pitted 

    into her deep cup, 

into its radiant sludge, me too 

     now soft and bruised,

so tender she could eat me

     with her gums.