The New Yorker

Detail from Amanda Robins
“Little Smiling Hooks” (1993)
The New Yorker
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“The yew’s black
fingers wag”
—Sylvia Plath
“Little Fugue”
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How much longer—
How much longer does it
Take to be a writer?

Terrible Ted Hughes—
He simply appalled me
Mexborough hoodlum poet
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He dragged my body—
Across all of Mytholmroyd
Only to dump me

He even seduced—
The Queen of England
For the Order of Merit
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No wonder I tried—
To off myself with
Pills in the basement

Men are all Perves—
Pumping little girls like me
Nonstop in bed all night
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Daddy’s dynasty built—
On broken Boss Cupid
Arrows up my Twot

No wonder I ended up—
In a hospital for dead dolls
Shot up with tranquilizers
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No wonder I ended up—
Strapped down for hours of
Rosenberg shock-treatment

I can’t undo myself now—
Daddy Devil in every dewdrop
Men are such Seducers
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The body of woman—
Her charred dirty Panties
Garlanded with death masks

Denouement came later—
Touched by untouchable lips
Ted going down on me
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Big Daddy such a Animal—
Leaving bloodspots on my
Sheets, a done-in baby

Wounded and writhing—
Mother tried to console me
Told me be brave & shut-up
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The cock that rocks—
The cradle rocks the
Tombstones of my death

The body of a woman—
Who was once just an
Innocent young girl
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Now I bury myself—
Each day in the Land of
The abused Living Dead

I’m off to Auschwitz—
Every day I go to school
Wellesley is a Smokestack
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I publish my Panic in—
The New Yorker & Mademoiselle
Then off to Cambridge

Surely British men—
Aren’t bourgeois Pigs
Like the American ones?
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Surely Ted Hughes—
Mytholmroyd moody man
Isn’t like Big Daddy?