Before you click on the link below, in which Marie Howe speaks her poem, Magdalene, read it through to yourself. Although I felt confused on my initial reading, part of me understood and I felt connected. Hearing her read the poem is powerful proof that poetry needs to be read out loud. I will make a comment below the post explaining how the poem affected me.
Magdalene
– The Seven Devils
Mary,
called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out"
—Luke 8:2.
The
first was that I was very busy.
The
second — I was different from you: whatever happened to you
could
not happen to me, not
like that.
The
third — I worried.
The
fourth — envy, disguised as compassion.
The
fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the
aphid,
The aphid disgusted
me. But I couldn't stop thinking about it.
The
mosquito too — its face. And the ant — its bifurcated body.
Ok
the first was that I was so busy.
The
second that I might make the wrong choice,
because
I had decided to take that plane that day,
that
flight, before noon, so as to arrive early
and,
I shouldn't have wanted that.
The
third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street
the
house would blow up.
The
fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer
of
skin lightly thrown over the whole thing.
The
fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living
The
sixth — if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and
if I
touched the left arm
a little harder than I'd first touched the right then I
had
to
retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.
The
seventh — I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything
that
was alive and I
couldn't stand it,
I
wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word — cheesecloth —
to
breath through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone
else that
entered me when
I breathed in
No.
That was the first one.
The
second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this
happened?
How had our
lives gotten like this?
The
third was that I couldn't eat food if I really saw it — distinct,
separate
from me in a bowl
or on a plate.
Ok.
The first was that I could never get to the end of the list.
The
second was that the laundry was never finally done.
The
third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.
And
that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what
was
love?
The
fourth was I didn't belong to anyone. I wouldn't allow myself to
belong
to anyone.
The
fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn't know.
The
sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.
The
seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying—her mouth
wrenched into an O so as to take in as much air…
The
sound she made — the gurgling sound — so loud we had to speak
louder
to hear each other
over it.
And
that I couldn't stop hearing it—years later—
grocery
shopping, crossing the street —
No,
not the sound — it was her body's hunger
finally
evident.
—what our mother had hidden all her life.
For
months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,
the
slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew
underneath.
The
underneath —that was the first devil.
It was always with
me.
And that I didn't
think you — if I told you — would understand any of this —
