Broumas, Olga

Greek/U.S., (b. 1949)

Circe

  1. THE CHARM
  2.  
  3. The fire bites, the fire bites. Bites
  4. to the little death. Bites
  5.  
  6. till she comes to nothing. Bites
  7. on her own sweet tongue. She goes on. Biting.
  8.  
  9.  
  10. THE ANTICIPATION
  11.  
  12. They tell me a woman waits, motionless
  13. till she’s wooed. I wait
  14.  
  15. spiderlike, effortless as they weave
  16. even my web for me, tying the cord in knots
  17.  
  18. with their courting hands. Such power
  19. over them. And the spell
  20.  
  21. their own. Who could release them? Who
  22. would untie the cord
  23.  
  24. with a cloven hoof?
  25.  
  26.  
  27. THE BITE
  28.  
  29. What I wear in the morning pleases
  30. me: green shirt, skirt of wine. I am wrapped
  31.  
  32. in myself as the smell of night
  33. wraps round my sleep when I sleep
  34.  
  35. outside. By the time
  36. I get to the corner
  37.  
  38. bar, corner store, corner construction
  39. site, I become divine. I turn
  40.  
  41. men into swine. Leave
  42. them behind me whistling, grunting, wild.

© Olga Broumas. Rave, Poems 1975-1999. Copper Canyon Press, (1999).

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]

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.