PoetryMagazine.com
Ellen Bass
USA
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Ellen Bass's books of poetry
include The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)
which was named a Notable Book of 2007 by the San Francisco
Chronicle and Mules of Love (BOA, 2002) which
won the Lambda Literary Award..
She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the
groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by
Women (Doubleday, 1973).
Her work has been published in The Atlantic, The American
Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Progressive, The Kenyon
Review and many other journals. Among her awards for
poetry are a Pushcart Prize, the Elliston Book Award, The
Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman, the Larry
Levis Prize from Missouri Review, and the New
Letters Prize. Her nonfiction books include Free Your
Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth and Their
Allies (HarperCollins, 1996), I Never Told Anyone:
Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
(HarperCollins, 1983) and The Courage to Heal: A Guide
for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
(HarperCollins, 1988, 2008) which has sold over a million
copies and been translated into twelve languages. She
teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University and
at conferences and workshops nationally and internationally.
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Looking at a Diadegma insulare
Wasp
Under a Microscope
The Diadegma insulare is
about 1/8 inch long
As I adjust the focus, it's cleaning
its head,
using both appendages,
running them from what would be the nape
of its neck up over the crown
and down its face, not unlike a person
drying after a shower or a swim. The gesture
so familiar, in spite of the exotic cranium,
round and shiny as a pearl of caviar
and overwhelmed by two huge eyes,
more like shields, carmine red
with perfectly spaced black dots.
The wasp swivels its head
on a neck thin as sewing thread.
And of course there are the wings
with their unique venation,
the segmented antennae
and barbed legs, the feet
with their twin splayed tarsi,
and that wasp waist, shocking
how anything that long and slender
could conduct the business of life.
All the while the thorax is expanding
and contracting, making me aware
of my own shallow breath.
And now it starts the head polishing anew,
slicking and twisting. I’m transfixed.
A child again, staring through the hall window
that looked across the alley
into the bedroom of Zopher's daughter
as she unbuttoned her blouse, shucked off her skirt,
and stood there in her nylon slip, illuminated
by the single ceiling bulb, brushing
and brushing her black lacquered hair.
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© Copyright, Ellen
Bass.
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