Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons Quotes

“i'm alternatingly brilliant and witless-and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in.”
― Marilyn Hacker, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons

“[Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?]"

Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?
Before a face suddenly numinous,
her eyes watered, knees melted. Did she lactate
again, milk brought down by a girl’s kiss?
It’s documented torrents are unloosed
by such events as recently produced
not the wish, but the need, to consume, in us,
one pint of Maalox, one of Kaopectate.
My eyes and groin are permanently swollen,
I’m alternatingly brilliant and witless
—and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in.
Although I’d cream my jeans touching your breast,
sweetheart, it isn’t lust; it’s all the rest
of what I want with you that scares me shitless.”
― Marilyn Hacker, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons

“Bloomingdale's I

“If I weren’t working, I’d sleep next to you
an hour or two more. Then we’d get the car
and drive a while, out of Manhattan, to
a quiet Bloomingdale’s in Westchester.
If we saw anything we liked, we’d buy it!
We’d try things on, first, in one cubicle.
You’d need to make an effort to be quiet
when I knelt down and got my fingers full
of you, my mouth on you, against the wall.
You’d pull my hair. You’d have to bite your tongue.
I’d hold your ass so that you wouldn’t fall.
Later, we’d take a peaceful walk along
the aisles, letting our hands touch every chance
they got, among the bras and underpants.”
― Marilyn Hacker, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons