Grace Paley Poems

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face
...

My friend tells me
a man in my house jumped off the roof
the roof is the eighth floor of this building
the roof door was locked how did he manage?
...

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
...

What is sometimes called a
tongue of flame
or an arm extended burning
is only the long
...

I did not want to be dependent on autumn
I wanted to miss it for once dropp into
another latitude where it wasn't so
well knownI wanted to show that beauty
...

That's when I saw the old maple
a couple of its thick arms cracked
one arm reclining half rotted
into earth black with the delicious
...

One day I decided to not grow any older
lots of luck I said to myself
(my joking self) then I looked up at the sky
which is wide its bluenessits whiteness
...

she said
you were a wonderful boy this evening
at a dinner among friends so attentive so
grown up the boy's heart oh his ribs
...

In my family
people who were eighty-two were very different
from people who were ninety-two

The eighty-two-year-old people grew up
...

What has happened?
language eludes me
the nice specifying
words of my life fail
...