excerpt from Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts: The Woman Warrior

My aunt haunts me--her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her, thought not origamied into houses and clothes. I do not think she always means me well. I am telling on her, and she was a spite suicide, drowning herself in the drinking water. The Chinese are always very frightened of the drowned one, whose weeping ghost, wet hair hanging and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute.

Maxine Hong Kingston

San Francisco Nightsong, circa 1998

Night, fog sings
erasing rooftops and distance
like a mute on a whole tone.
Night,
Night, it whispers
contrapuntal to the choiring
of internal combustion and
the clicktap, clicktap of high heels on asphalt.

Niiiiight, hums neon and halogen,
fluorescent and filament,
illuminating hooker, commuter, consumer,
consumed.
Night, beg the hungry cockroach
and the dizzy moth,
nightnight, coo the gulls and pigeons.

Oh...night, sigh shops and warehouses,
closing yawning doors and
dropping shades like eyelids.
Night now,
Night.

Beauty and the Shoe Sluts

Mother kneels at her closet of dancing shoes
to see which ones I fit--sherbet green
taffeta and crimson crocodile, pumps

in Easter pink, plus a dozen black heels
with bows or aglisten with rhinestones,
all wicked run down. Likewise,

she's gnarled as a tree root, her spine's
warped her shorter than me, over whom
she once towered with red hair

brushed back into flame points.
Seeing her handle those scarred leather hides, I quote
the maenads' sad lament from The Bacchae.

After they've chased down
the fleeing god, fucked him dead, sucked
all flesh from his bones, dawn spills light

on their blood-sticky mouths,
and it's like every party you ever stayed
too late at. In chorus they sing and grieve:

"Will they come to me ever again,
the long, long dances?"
And Mother holding a black patent ankle strap

like a shackle on a spike heel
(it must have been teetering hell to wear) glances
sidewise from her cloudy hazel eyes and says "No,

praise God and menopause, they won't."

Mary Karr
from Viper Rum, 1998

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Dylan Thomas

Notes to Sexton, 2005

I'm older than you now, Anne.
odd to think that I might have something to tell you.
The ciggarettes in the plant were a good gesture;
as a mostly life-long smoker,
I can appreciate the finality of it.
Just so you know,
we all talk to our dead,
KL, Dead Rick, Bob Kaufman, Bob Kaufman, Bob Kaufman.
But my dark girls have all shucked their habits, Anne,
They're all busy trying to change something,
the speed of light, the Ph of the native soil,
the nature of the work, the heart of a child,
their lives.
That's why i like 'em.
That's why i'm hear to tell
whoever will listen, and you, Anne,
that there's more after 45.
There is more.
In fact, it seems to get better, and listen,
just between you and me,
I'm really glad you didn't take
any body with you,
wild woman.
Oh yeah, and thanks for the map.