ckbguy
09-15-2008, 02:34 PM
The Elder Sister
by Sharon Olds
When I look at my elder sister now
I think how she had to go first, down through the
birth canal1, to force her way
head-first through the tiny channel,
the pressure of Mother’s muscles on her brain,
the tight walls scraping her skin.
Her face is still narrow from it, the long
hollow cheeks of a crusader on a tomb2,
and her inky eyes have the look of someone who has
been in prison a long time and
knows they can send her back. I look at her
body and think how her breasts were the first to
rise, slowly, like swans on a pond3.
By the time mine came along, they were just
two more birds in the flock, and when the hair
rose on the white mound of her flesh, like
threads of water out of the ground, it was the
first time, but when mine came
they knew about it. I used to think
only in terms of her harshness, sitting and
pissing on me in bed, but now I
see I had her before me always
like a shield. I look at her wrinkles, her clenched
jaws, her frown-lines—I see they are
the dents in my shield, the blows that did not reach me.
She protected me, not as a mother
protects a child, with love, but as a
hostage protects the one who makes her
escape as I made my escape, with my sister’s
body held in front of me.
The simile in the lines "and when the hair
rose on the white mound of her flesh, like
threads of water out of the ground, it was the
first time," compares her pubic hair to that of threads of water coming out of the ground. What characteristics of do these 2 have in common? I'm looking for at least 3 common characteristics, the only one I can think of is that both the threads of water and the hair are long.
by Sharon Olds
When I look at my elder sister now
I think how she had to go first, down through the
birth canal1, to force her way
head-first through the tiny channel,
the pressure of Mother’s muscles on her brain,
the tight walls scraping her skin.
Her face is still narrow from it, the long
hollow cheeks of a crusader on a tomb2,
and her inky eyes have the look of someone who has
been in prison a long time and
knows they can send her back. I look at her
body and think how her breasts were the first to
rise, slowly, like swans on a pond3.
By the time mine came along, they were just
two more birds in the flock, and when the hair
rose on the white mound of her flesh, like
threads of water out of the ground, it was the
first time, but when mine came
they knew about it. I used to think
only in terms of her harshness, sitting and
pissing on me in bed, but now I
see I had her before me always
like a shield. I look at her wrinkles, her clenched
jaws, her frown-lines—I see they are
the dents in my shield, the blows that did not reach me.
She protected me, not as a mother
protects a child, with love, but as a
hostage protects the one who makes her
escape as I made my escape, with my sister’s
body held in front of me.
The simile in the lines "and when the hair
rose on the white mound of her flesh, like
threads of water out of the ground, it was the
first time," compares her pubic hair to that of threads of water coming out of the ground. What characteristics of do these 2 have in common? I'm looking for at least 3 common characteristics, the only one I can think of is that both the threads of water and the hair are long.