Well, it’s tax day, and in deference to all those people cavorting around the capital, hoping to catch a glimpse of their heroes David Strom and Michele Bachmann, here’s the most painful poem I know. It must be what it feels like for all of them today, for which I can’t really say I’m sorry.
Cut
by Sylvia Plath
What a thrill–
My thumb instead of an onion,
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian’s axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.
A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man —
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump —
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
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