Sharon Olds writes about a lot of heartbreaking experiences all the time. Painful things. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always gravitated to her as a poet. She’s fearless in her work. Today’s poem is no different . . .
That Day
by: Sharon Olds
None of the pain was sharp. The sash
was pliant, its cotton blunt, like a bandage
it held my wrist to the chair. And the fierce
glazed string of the woven seat
printed me in deep pink, but I was
used to that, that matter could mark us
and its marks dissolve. That day, no one touched me,
it was a formal day, the nerves lay easy
in their planched grooves. The hunger grew, but
quietly, edgeless, a suckling in my stomach
doubling, it was a calm day
unfolding to its laws. Only the pleasure had been
sharp—the tilt of the squat bottle
over their bed, the way the ink
lowered itself, onto the spread, I had
felt its midnight, genie shape
leave my chest, pouring forth, and it was
India ink, the kind that does not come out,
I sat attached to the chair like Daphne
halfway out of the wood, and I read that blot.
I read it all day, like a Nancy Drew I was
in—they had said You won’t be fed
till you say you’re sorry. I was strangely happy, I would
never say I was sorry, I had left
that life behind. So it didn’t surprise me when she
came in slowly, holding a bowl that
held what swayed and steamed, she sat and
spoon-fed me, in silence, hot
alphabet soup. Sharp pleasure
of my wing-tip hands hung down beside me
slack as I ate, sharp pleasure of the
legible school of edible letters flowed
in, over my taste-buds, B,
O, F, K, G,
I mashed the crescent moon of the C,
caressed the E, reading with my tongue
that boiled Braille—and she was almost kneeling to me
and I wasn’t sorry. She was feeding the one
who wasn’t sorry, the way you lay food
at the foot of an image. I sate there, tied,
taking in her offering
and wildly reading as I ate, S S F
T, L W B B P Q
R, she dipped into my mouth the mild
discordant fuel—she wanted me to thrive, and decipher.
So, basically Olds is writing about child abuse here. Tying a young girl to a chair, starving her. Perhaps, back in the day, this kind of discipline was considered alright. Nowadays, it would end up with Child Protective Services getting involved. It’s a brave poem based on childhood trauma.
I spent most of today with a poet named Keith Taylor—a wonderful writer who led a poetry workshop this afternoon and read in the evening at the library. I think I first met Keith over ten years ago at another poetry reading. Since that time, we’ve kept in touch via Facebook and email. I hosted him the first year of the Great Lakes Poetry Festival (five years ago) that I helped plan.
Keith’s events were welcome distractions from my good friend’s problems for a little while. (Worry is kind of a useless emotion. It doesn’t accomplish anything. I have no control over what’s going to happen, so worrying about it only increases my anxiety and blood pressure. Better to take things as they come.). Anyway, I was able to spend a few hours writing with Keith, and then I got to listen to him read his gorgeous poems after dinner.
So, tonight, I’d like to end with some gratitudes:
- I’m grateful that my friend has been able to find necessary help. My last conversation with him, he sounded exhausted but not as panicked. A blessing for that help and his peace of mind,
- I’m also grateful for my friend, Keith, and his company today. He’s a wonderful, giving man, and it was a blessing to be with him today.
- Finally, I’m grateful for the new poem I wrote in Keith’s workshop. The birth of a new poem into the world is always a blessing.
Saint Marty is going to watch something mindless now—maybe a cooking show—and then go to bed. It’s been a really long day.
Louis F. Taccolini Hand-Carved Birds Collection,
Peter White Public Library
for Keith Taylor, October 22, 2025
by: Martin Achatz
They sit outside this library meeting room named
after a man who pioneered outdoor photography
for the likes of National Geographic, the carved
feathers delicate as birch bark. As with any living
or once-living thing, they are imperfect as stones
on the shores of Lake Superior. Gloriously imperfect.
Leonard Cohen imperfect—a voice cut by razors
wrapped around words that split my heart open.
The man who took logs and made this flock could
be a god. Think about it. In Genesis, Yahweh
speaks nothing into something, into light and earth
and mud and fur and thigh and love. This log god,
though, he did something more miraculous:
he made trees fly.
❤️jt
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