LITMIR.BIZ

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      I wanted the insides of what I saw.

      And so I left. There was a separate room

      For Sylvia, and also for Assia.

      Not too many people know a third.

      So the world can be. I was dividing.

      I didn’t see my conscience as an idea,

      But rather as a way inside the word.

      When Sylvia died, I was in hiding.

      4. Olwyn, Ted’s Sister

      When Sylvia died, I was, in hating

      Her already, an unexpected state.

      Bitch. Like Barbie on a primal date,

      She choreographed what we’d all be wading

      Through for life: her life, her observations.

      Like Virginia Woolf, she made the money

      That paid for everything. It was like honey,

      Her papers and her poems. Shrewd. Way stations

      To the dead. Meanwhile, I watched the children grow:

      To school, tra-la-la. It is hard to be the story

      Of a ghost, of people’s own vague narratives.

      It seemed it wrote itself long time ago.

      I loved Ted too. I am not really sorry.

      You tell yourself the story as it lives.

      5. Shura, Ted’s Daughter with Assia

      You tell yourself the story as it lives,

      And mine was that my mother was as dead

      As I was. You see, we lived inside the head

      Of Sylvia, and because she had her sheaves

      Of manuscripts, then, doubled, so would we.

      I was four when I died, and I was “one up,”

      The child who died, a pretty buttercup,

      Along with Mother. This, too, is family.

      There are things that I would like to have done,

      But sometimes you’re a prop, or almost placed

      To give dramatic contrast to the act.

      We were more than Sylvia, the one

      Who was two, the one who was twice blessed.

      We were an undeniable fact.

      6. Nicholas

      We were an undeniable fact,

      And we were a fiction, in other words, a family.

      I was a baby, both Ted Hughes and Plath:

      And Otto too. From genealogy,

      The traits could re-connect, for all we knew,

      But something else as well. A mythic true.

      I had a well inside that I’d look down,

      Like sorrow’s fetus, opening. No sound

      The day I killed myself. I was my mother

      Without her fame, but I would know the loss

      Of ambition hurling down, with vicious seething.

      I was, in the end, a version of her father.

      My hanging was ancestral. All our eyes.

      In a row, we are our silent voices mouthing.

      7. Aurelia

      In a row we are our silent voices mouthing.

      I want to be last. As the official word,

      I want the world to know my girl was good.

      I don’t want people thinking of her breathing

      Out these lies. I want the smart and normal,

      The one who would do anything for Mother.

      I want to take the rights back from the father.

      She was sad then. She cooked. She shaped a formal

      Way that everything was going to be.

      I didn’t like that she was cruel about

      The things I did. But either way, I bless.

      My goal is to control her legacy.

      It doesn’t matter in her winding sheet:

      You never know the truth, but try to guess.

      Buying Sylvia Plath’s Typewriter

      I want the words to burn. So too the ribbon,

      Like a silken extension, or like betrayal’s braid.

      Words have a power—although not quite as often

      As we hope—to throw the Underworld some shade.

      They thought of themselves as gods, the best gods going,

      But gods that could type—and would—and saw themselves

      As makers of a special brand of knowing.

      They’d place themselves with spirits. Who resolves

      To live in rural landscapes? These two.

      The keys

      Today are quaint with fire. The time has passed

      Where people think relationships can last.

      I’m an optimist by nature, hurt by lies.

      The more I use this typewriter, I will learn

      Through simple practice how the world can burn.

      Sylvia Plath’s Paper Dolls

      If Sylvia’s paper dolls were to play with mine,

      It would be crazy. Each change in an idea

      Would be narrated by rule maker Sylvia.

      That would be the only way to break a line.

      My dolls were lovely too. I used their tabs

      To hold on tight, to turn my back on terror.

      (By that I mean, of course, potential error.)

      I like to think that Sylvia’s mad libs

      Of poems were what I, too, was trying to say.

      My paper dolls are not in museums, but lost

      To history, burned, or turned to dust.

      I remember when Sylvia, still ordinary,

      Created who she was through paper scraps.

      That’s how we terrorize ourselves. Cuts. Snips.

      That Sylvia Plath Feeling

      So many of us wanted to be her;

      So many of us wanted to be famous:

      So many of us the inheritor.

      What we didn’t want: to go so far.

      What we didn’t want, not the same as.

      So many of us wanted to be her:

      But without Ted, without the madness card,

      Without her daddy, blackboard showbiz,

      So many of us the inheritor

      Of typing up the manuscripts, the professor

      Grading papers: “It is what

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