The Resurrection of Sylvia Plath

The Resurrection

  Of

  Sylvia Plath

  By Marc D. Goldfinger

  Copyright 2000 by

  Marc D. Goldfinger

  76 Unity Avenue

  Belmont MA 02478

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher/author, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages.

  For Mary Esther

  “I am inhabited by a cry.

  Nightly it flaps out

  Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.”

  Sylvia Plath, from the poem Elm, the book Ariel.

  Walking Outside The Asylum With Sylvia Plath, December 15, 1952

  by Marc D. Goldfinger

  She hears the incarcerated scream, howl

  inhuman cries. That's how

  she describes it to her mother

  in a letter. Listen to them, terrifying,

  holy, shriek, it's enough to make you

  religious, these are the prayers of people

  who believe in God. Liquid

  voices spit from barred windows, saliva

  fills the air, the sun colours screams

  crimson and freezes them over

  black hills. Sylvia Plath wants

  to crawl inside mad throats. She wonders

  what the borders at the edge of the torn

  lands feel like. She begs God

  to give her knowledge.

  Sylvia Flies Over Northhampton

  Into the red

  I am flying. A handsome pilot

  at the throttle

  are the controls. What is this

  God with His hand on

  the axis? How He flips

  the ocean into light, floats

  upside down

  with a metallic wing over

  my world.

  The pilot turns, looks

  at me, says “You

  fly it.” So I do.

  I take

  the stick, tilting the clouds

  below me, this is ecstasy

  better than religion. I am so ripe

  with life

  you could bite right

  into me. I would

  burst like a pregnant

  sledge-hammer into your mouth.

  A Practical Girl

  Brown hair, natural, it fades, a bit like me. Becoming

  blonde, I might whirl about the sands, curl

  my toes around conches, listen

  to the roar of the surf. I am full of secret

  passions, the grey suit I wear has a rainbow

  lining, my inner clock is set

  on alarm, I want to tear the white

  flesh from the man's cheek who

  loves me, below my sparkle eyes lingering

  over your surprise. I fall into bed at an early

  hour, slide my hands beneath my comforter, between

  my legs, wet poetic fingers with myself, bite God's breath

  and shudder. I come blonde, I come in

  doubles, the true child of Dostoevsky, Raskolnikov's

  hand trembling on my joy. Gasped so

  hard my mouth lips dry in the wind, a twin

  tongue flicks over my fingers come from my heat. I taste

  scalded salt, rush my hand down into my

  impatience, shut my long

  thighs, pumping, stain the sheets. I love

  you like this, you with the dark

  face, below my eyeshadows, peer

  into the mirror of myself. Blonde hair, mouth

  packed with words, ready

  to shriek them into Devil's ink, erect

  breasts nipples hard between thumb

  and finger, wanting to bite

  you between my rabbit teeth, crime, crime,

  I come like punishment.

  The Night I Gave God My Clothes

  Those clothes. Scattered about my hotel

  room like discarded snake skins. When

  I sent those clothes to heaven

  in New York City, jealousy burned inside

  me. What we discard can go places

  we'll never know. What discards us

  are the people we welcome

  into our lives. What discards us are

  the people God thrusts upon us. New York is so full

  of mystery I could cover it

  with my skin, give shadows shape. On this night

  I stood on the balcony with my garments

  at my feet. Grasped what once covered

  me, piece by piece, day by day, part by part, placed

  my old skins whiskering in the wind. Dark secret

  places. Soon there was once a girl left standing

  on the balcony. Now nothing but wind,

  lights in my eyes. Naked. Willing. Bereft.

  Electricity

  On the third week without sleep

  things began to get weird. Mother

  locked away the sleeping pills. Imagine.

  Days of infernal intolerable infinite

  wakefulness interspersed with intermittant

  electric executions. The first inkling of

  what I might expect came when the Rosenbergs

  were electrocuted for spying. I felt them

  die. They were innocent too.

  What It Was, Mother

  It wasn't necessarily the rejection

  from Frank O'Connor's summer

  course at Harvard. Nor was

  the month at Mademoiselle

  unfruitful. Even ptomaine

  from nasty crabs added

  perspective to my

  life, what with fainting, hypodermics,

  wanting to die for only a day. Only

  a day. It wasn't the men with

  begging cups in the snake tunnel

  subways or the grey matter

  of my brain pressing me down, ripening

  me like bad fruit. It wasn't

  the way you looked at me in the rearview

  mirror when you told me about the rejection.

  New York City had crept

  inside of me, turned me yellow outside, skewed

  my thought patterns, I hold books

  in my hands now, never open them. When you

  tried to teach the Gregg shorthand system

  to me, I didn't want to tell you there is no

  quick way to die. It was so hard

  to breathe, I thought I might bleed

  instead. That's when I cut

  myself for the first time, digging the metal

  deep into my fair white legs. Of course, there were times

  on electro-shock tables where God dug

  His blue-volt fingers into the roots of my hair and yanked

  Himself out of me.

  But it wasn't until I jammed this

  body into the dark basement

  crawlspace behind the firewood, thrust

  fifty sleeping pills down my hungry

  throat into aching emptiness, when Christ

  fucked me, split my loins with desire. Frank

  O'Connor had nothing to do with it.

  How I Found Out

  The Warning

  When the doctors cut deep into her

  brain with steel knives, they knew

  what they were doing. We women are

  possessed by the devil. Men find

  it necessary to slice the imp out of us. Separate

  us from ourselves, divorce us

  from our nature. Call her

  Valerie. When she pushed aside


  the bangs of her hair two pale

  deathmarks showed on her forehead. Once

  her spirit had begun to sprout forth,

  like devil’s horns the men said, she was

  whisked from home at her husband’s request.

  When the electricity failed to sizzle her out, men

  unsheathed their daggers. Now Valerie

  smiles pleasantly, walks the grounds

  of the hospital, never

  wants to leave.

  The Set-Up

  Call her Joan. A horse

  of a woman. The man

  I wanted took her

  to her prom. He paid for

  that. I wanted him

  until he wanted me. It was then my ardor

  lessened. But it was

  Joan we were talking about.

  The school hockey champion.

  If that was not enough, let me

  say she was a physics major too.

  Imagine! Did I say

  she was the class president?

  She strived for more out of life than

  any woman of character deserved.

  Not to mention teeth

  as big as tombstones, eyes

  of sand, and a voice

  that had its own breath.

  There was so much about her

  I hated. I wanted every bit

  of it to be me. Then I was

  gifted by maturity and vision.

  No one could give me what it

  was I yearned for. I only

  wanted to suck the tongue

  of darkness. Lock my lips

  to dreamless night. But Joan.

  Let's not forget about her.

  Little did I know. All this

  time we shared similar hopes,

  identical sorrows. When I disappeared

  into my first suicide in a hole beneath

  my mother's house, it was Joan

  who loved me so much she tried

  to follow me in. She went to

  New York, looking for my lost

  clothing, found them in a glass

  window. Reached into it, shattered

  it, raked her soft white wrists into

  blood. We arrived at the same

  hospital, shared adjoining rooms.

  Joan smiled at me when I told her

  "You're all right now." She looked

  at me. Sand spilled from her eyes

  into mine. "I guess so", she said. She

  studied me intently. "Aren't you?"

  The Execution.

  Call me Sylvia. At the hospital I knew when

  it was going to happen.