Skip to main content

"The Applicant" by Sylvia Plath

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit--

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"Kiss" by Frederick Smock

Since having to get reading glasses, taking them off has become my sign that I want to kiss you. Sometimes I call out, Honey, do you know where my glasses are? And you know, when we find them, I will put them on just so I can take them off again.

"The Music" by Sharon Olds

When I first stand up to my mother, when I am fifty--and on a civic issue-- she changes, as if she's been waiting for someone to lead her. She does not mention the beauty of her blue eyes, but says she has been sorting her late sweetheart's clothes-- and it BREAKS my HEART , she cries out. and then she cries, as if she has been lowered down into a river of music. I'm not unhappy, she says, this is better for me than church, her voice through tears like the low singing of a watered plant long not watered-- and now it can be heard, her fear of tears, as if they might take her far back to something like the swimming of the flayed in the flay. Now she lets me hear the music of her self--I could be in a cradle by the western shore of a sea, she could be a young or an ancient mother. Now I hear the melody of the one bound to the mast. It had little to do with me, her life, which lay on my life, it was not really human life but chemical, and approximate landscape, trenches and rea...