Poem for Monday

Prayer
By Kim Addonizio

Sometimes, when we're lying after love,
I look at you and see your body's future
of lying beneath the earth; putting the heel
of my hand against your rib I feel how faint
and far away the heartbeat is. I rest
my cheek against your left nipple and listen
to the surge of blood, seeing your life splashed out,
filmy water hurled from a pot
onto dry grass. And I want to be pressed
deep into the bed and covered over,
the way a seed is pressed into a hole,
the dirt tamped down with a trowel.
I want to be a failed seed, the kind
that doesn't grow, that doesn't know it's meant to.
I want to lie here without moving, lifeless
as an animal that's slaughtered, its blood smeared
on a doorpost, I want death to take me if it
has to, to spare you, I want it to pass over.

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We spent nearly all day Sunday in Baltimore, first at the Maryland Zoo, then at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The zoo closes for the winter months since many of the animals can't tolerate being outdoors, and the indoor enclosures there aren't designed for large numbers of visitors -- today, however, the weather wasn't a problem for anyone, since it was 70 degrees and sunny. We went through all three major areas (Africa, Chesapeake, Arctic) and saw the penguins, giraffes, elephants, chimpanzees (who were very playful), polar bears, otters, and dozens of other animals. Then we went to the art museum, which has an exhibit on Matisse as printmaker -- not my favorite, I must confess, as it's lots of very simple line illustrations of faces and nudes, none of the brilliant use of color that makes Matisse's paintings interesting to me -- and an exhibit on Baltimore's Edgar Allan Poe and the artists he inspired, which is brilliant, not only because Gauguin, Manet, Dore, and many other illustrators did brilliant adaptations of images from Poe's writings, but because there are brief summaries of his stories and poems to accompany the illustrations that are quite entertaining in their own right. It took us longer than usual to get home because a jumper from an overpass shut down I-95, so we had to go the long way around.

















We missed football in its entirety, which is probably why the Redskins won -- well, that and the Broncos losing their quarterback at the half -- and we spent the evening catching up on evil aliens with The Sarah Jane Adventures' "Mona Lisa's Revenge," which I did not love -- lots of stupid gender issues that this show usually avoids, and way too much adolescent behavior, from the adults as much as the teens -- then Doctor Who's "The Waters of Mars," which had much more complicated gender issues and which I really loved, even though I need to watch it again because I thought there was a significant inconsistency at one point, and even though it both exemplifies and doesn't quite provide proper exposition on pretty much everything that bothers me about New Who. It suggests, at least, that the producers are aware of all the problems with the way they've constructed the character and his relationships with companions, particularly humans, particularly women, and they may not let the Doctor or themselves off the hook. Plus the preview for the Christmas episode made me very happy. Proper commentary tomorrow, as I am really exhausted...oh but I don't want to lose David Tennant's Twittersode so here it is.