Do not praise me.
I have been smeared.
My books smell like gas -
it lingers.

Do not praise the small brown scar
below my eye
from the senseless banging
I did on the cellar wall.
Do not look for my records
at McLean.

I am not your icon.
I am not your décor.
I am a wife. A mother. A daughter.
I did not write in your house.
Not your desk
It was not your oven. I did not
cover your bedroom door cracks.

I bore two Hugheses, two that set me going
going and now I’m gone, but I see
them. I see them in their
homes. I love who they love.
You are not there. Your homes
are concealed from me; do not invite
me in. Do not invoke me.
For I shall raise the hell
biographers said I could.
They wrote that part of me.
Those books made my name.

11/25/2004

Author's Note: This poem is in my Sylvia Plath series that will be a section of my book.

Posted on 11/25/2004
Copyright © 2024 Lisa Marie Brodsky