Marge Piercy
In one corner of our livingroom
just 11 by 12, a cabinet radio
loomed. I’d run home from school
and then turn it on to Terry
and the Pirates, Jack Armstrong
All American Boy. There was
never then a kick-ass woman
although on Terry, the Dragon
Lady smoldered with menace.
I liked her but wasn’t supposed to.
I would close the wooden doors
on me, secluded with adventure
I preferred to the playground
fights I couldn’t avoid, dirty
Jew, four-eyed squinty freak.
Preferred to the neighbors’
beatings, loud quarrels, breaking
dishes, slow deaths from cancer.
fast from factory mishaps. Rape
of a classmate. Her disgrace.
Broadcast dangers always came
out right in the end. Serials
funded by breakfast cereal
fed my addiction in the cave
of radio as adrenalin flooded
my childish brain. Years later
how many times I risked my life
for a cause, jumping barricades.
gassed, crossing borders clan-
destinely, become the hero who
crawled into my small pink ears.
MARGE PIERCY
Marge Piercy has published 18 poetry collections including Colors Passing Through Us, What Are Big Girls Made Of?, The Art of Blessing the Day, and most recently The Crooked Inheritance, all from Knopf. She has written seventeen novels, most recently Sex Wars from Morrow/Harper Collins, who published her memoir, Sleeping with Cats. Two of her earlier novels, Vida and Dance the Eagle to Sleep are being reprinted by PM Press in 2011. In March, Knopf published a second volume of Marge’s selected poems, The Hunger Moon.
