Women in Poetry

I try to read feminist poetry.

A crater of a volcano
having no height without depth
makes it visibly female.
They say.
They talk about breasts being the bellies
of small upturned sparrows
of a woman being the fire of loins
merciful and mighty
sensual and slight
Women - the sisters of mercy
making beggars of lovers, and
kings of toads

I've heard a woman
say the only love she has felt
is for children and other women
and the rest just
lust, pity, self-hatred, pity and lust.

They said we tied our feet with the lead of love
and burnt love in our ovens every night
and stitched and pottered about
in stuffy homes spending
time waiting around bedsheets
and detergent and knives.
Wrapping and cleansing.

It's being able to create another human being they say,
that drive your compassion and bigotry
your heartache and your poetry
they say we have trained love to our walls
like ivy branches
and that this pain is unwarranted
and artificial, and if only there could be
a place to get out.
Together.

Governments protect me.
Fiction makes me the agent
for the change of a man's heart
These are the options for
A woman in poetry
the depictions of freedom and desire
have been
as marked and bounded
as the lives they try to escape