THE LOST JOURNALS

THE LOST JOURNALS
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The Lost Journals
Incest with Otto
Night Shift
On the Decline of Oracles
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The Lost Journals

“You wanted to
eat your mother”
—Ted Hughes
“Religion,” Howls
& Whispers
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Yes, I wanted to—
Murder my mean
Professor Bad Daddy

And I wanted to—
Murder my Mother too
For doing nothing
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The Lost Journals—
Ted destroyed told the
Whole Despicable Truth

Dr. Otto Emil Plath—
Didn’t just love his
Beekeeper’s daughter
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He fucked her too—
That was our deep
Dark Family Secret

Otto Plath’s incest—
With his young daughter
Caused all my illnesses
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The Disquieting Muses—
And the Decline of Oracles
All pointed to Otto Plath

I ended up illbred—
Disfigured and unsightly
Unasked to my honeymoon

Incest with Otto

“Unasked to my christening”
—Sylvia Plath “The Disquieting
Muses,” Ariel
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Mother, father, daughter—
What an inbred incestuous
New England family

Quietly disfigured—
Unwisely kept secret
Unsightly Unasked Unsaid
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With heads stuck—
With darning-needles
Nodding & nodding asleep

Big Bad Daddy at night—
With his shiny bald head
Stuck between my legs
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Mommy dearest quiet—
In the other room eyeless
Pretending she doesn’t see

Baked into gingerbread—
And eaten alive by my
Fairytale fucking father
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I was twelve years old—
When he locked the bedroom
Door and broke my hymen

He tiptoed thru the tulips—
Pretending Mother didn’t hear
My moaning arabesques
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She gave me piano lessons—
But she was tone-deaf with
Her ears listening elsewhere

Dear mother got off the hook—
And I got stuck with old Otto
Slobbering every night
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I woke up in the mornings—
With you floating above me
Dearest mother before school

You’d mop up the ruins—
Dab up the blood with washcloths
And call me a brave little girl
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Was the whole City full of poor—
Little bruised girls like me with
Swollen black & blue pussies?

I was born into male bondage—
And delivered into bad marriage
Mother, mother, you betrayed me

Night Shift

“It was not a
Heart beating”
—Sylvia Plath
“Night Shift”
Collected Poems
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Mother, you made up stories—
You hid me and my brother
From Otto when Thor got angry

I glowed like a little glow-worm—
Only too willing to please you in
My pretty sequined twinkle-dress
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The other girls were heavy-footed—
While I pirouetted like a firefly and
Did my piano lessons so nicely

My little New England world—
So flimsy and thin like a soap-bubble
Then Daddy showed up naked
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Standing there in his undershirt—
With his ugly bumblebee stinger
The blunt indefatigable fact of life

The noise came from inside—
A muted booming of blood inside
My ears and then lower down
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A thudding male source exposed—
Pounding it took root deep inside me
Confounded by his inept coming

Tonnage of immense manhood—
Hoisted, stalled, then continuing
My pert pussy stunned to the marrow

On the Decline of Oracles

“My father kept a
vaulted conch”
—Sylvia Plath
“On the Decline of Oracles,”
Collected Poems
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Otto made me listen to it—
Vaulted conch between his legs
Like two bronze bookends of ships
Getting read to sail toward Troy

I listened to his cold teeth—
Chatter & seethe when I did him
Down there where seashells hear
The waves and little girls’ screams
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The seashell spoke only to him—
Sixty-thousand leagues beneath
The sea where neither brazen swans
Or young sailors swam the deeps

Mother listened in her bedroom—
My moans & groans weaseling their
Way into her cloistral ears like tides
With me inside a gross comic strip
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It happened every night—
He turned me inside out and then
Went down the shabby stairs to
Work & lecture at the university

Such disgusting memories—
As deceptive as the Trojan horse
Pulling all the Towers down with
A little help from Paris and Helen