Greek/U.S., (b. 1949)
Circe
- THE CHARM
- The fire bites, the fire bites. Bites
- to the little death. Bites
- till she comes to nothing. Bites
- on her own sweet tongue. She goes on. Biting.
- THE ANTICIPATION
- They tell me a woman waits, motionless
- till she’s wooed. I wait
- spiderlike, effortless as they weave
- even my web for me, tying the cord in knots
- with their courting hands. Such power
- over them. And the spell
- their own. Who could release them? Who
- would untie the cord
- with a cloven hoof?
- THE BITE
- What I wear in the morning pleases
- me: green shirt, skirt of wine. I am wrapped
- in myself as the smell of night
- wraps round my sleep when I sleep
- outside. By the time
- I get to the corner
- bar, corner store, corner construction
- site, I become divine. I turn
- men into swine. Leave
- them behind me whistling, grunting, wild.
About the Poet
Olga Broumas (b. 1949), is a Greek-born U.S. poet and translator. She came to the U.S. in 1967 to attend college, earning her B.A. in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania (1970) and a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Oregon (1973).
Broumas has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and has taught widely – at the University of Oregon, the University of Idaho, Goddard College, Boston University, and Brandeis University. In 1982 she helped found Freehand, a learning community of women artists and writers, in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Broumas is currently the Fanny Hurst poet-in-residence at Brandeis University and the director of their creative writing program. [DES-11/10]