The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog
To be blessed said the old woman is to live and work so hard God’s love washes right through you like milk through a cow To be blessed said the dark red tulip is to knock their eyes out with the slug of lust implied by your up-ended skirt To be blessed said the dog is to have a pinch of God inside you and all the other dogs can smell it Alicia Ostriker, a poet and critic, has published eleven volumes of poetry, including The Volcano Sequence and No Heaven. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Paris Review, Yale Review, Ontario Review, The Nation, and many other journals and anthologies, and has been translated into numerous languages including Hebrew and Arabic. Twice a National Book Award finalist, she has also received awards from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the Poetry Society of America, the San Francisco Poetry Center, and the Paterson Poetry Center, among others.