Marge Piercy, “Collectors”

Some people collect grudges
like stamps or rare coins.
They take out their prize holdings
to polish till they glow.

But after a while, it doesn’t work
any longer, so they need fresh
ones to cherish the way another
will groom a champion setter.

Friendships are expendable
as last decade’s palazzo pants.
Rejecting is more fun than
holding close. So on they go

their paths littered with torn
and discarded friendships,
like bones outside the den
of a fairy tale giant.

“Collectors” is one of the previously uncollected poems in The Hunger Moon, a selected retrospective of Marge Piercy‘s poems from 1980 to 2010. Other new Piercy poems in the collection include “The low road,” “The curse of Wonder Woman” (published in Blue Fifth), “Football for dummies,” and “End of days” (published in Rattle).

12 May 2011 | poetry |