In this category:

    FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY - classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc.
    MODERN POETRY
    Origo, Julia

New on FdM

  1. Almost by Emily Dickinson
  2. Rudyard Kipling: The Press
  3. Bert Bevers: Verdwenen details
  4. Georg Trakl: Nähe des Todes
  5. Rouge et Noir by Emily Dickinson
  6. Invictus by William Ernest Henley
  7. Anthology of Black Humor by André Breton
  8. Gertrud Kolmar: Verlorenes Lied
  9. Georg Trakl: In Venedig
  10. Masaoka Shiki: Buddha-death

Or see the index

All categories

  1. AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (13)
  2. AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV (217)
  3. DANCE & PERFORMANCE (60)
  4. DICTIONARY OF IDEAS (203)
  5. EXHIBITION – art, art history, photos, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ready-mades, video, performing arts, collages, gallery, etc. (1,521)
  6. FICTION & NON-FICTION – books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets (3,943)
  7. FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY – classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc. (4,836)
  8. LITERARY NEWS & EVENTS – art & literature news, in memoriam, festivals, city-poets, writers in Residence (1,617)
  9. MONTAIGNE (112)
  10. MUSEUM OF LOST CONCEPTS – invisible poetry, conceptual writing, spurensicherung (54)
  11. MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY – department of ravens & crows, birds of prey, riding a zebra, spring, summer, autumn, winter (186)
  12. MUSEUM OF PUBLIC PROTEST (151)
  13. MUSIC (223)
  14. NATIVE AMERICAN LIBRARY (5)
  15. PRESS & PUBLISHING (93)
  16. REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS (112)
  17. STORY ARCHIVE – olv van de veestraat, reading room, tales for fellow citizens (17)
  18. STREET POETRY (46)
  19. THEATRE (191)
  20. TOMBEAU DE LA JEUNESSE – early death: writers, poets & artists who died young (374)
  21. ULTIMATE LIBRARY – danse macabre, ex libris, grimm & co, fairy tales, art of reading, tales of mystery & imagination, sherlock holmes theatre, erotic poetry, ideal women (230)
  22. WAR & PEACE (127)
  23. WESTERN FICTION & NON-FICTION (23)
  24. · (2)

Or see the index



  1. Subscribe to new material: RSS

Julia Origo: Bad girl

 

Bad girl

 

Pity those poor Italian men,

out of reach,

(oh, celibacy in despair!)

but they never look sorry

(why?)

I was invisible to the man on the street

I told him that I was really excited

(born one second after midnight

on New Year’s Day)

a self-absorbed, thumb-sucking bad girl,

beware your wildest dreams…

 

Rain fell like nails upon us,

I seduce his father who flirts with his seatmate

on a long plane flight.

I had always wanted a real man

(always the same face)

as I knew better than to offer him to pay

for he can watch his family from

beyond the grave

(sad news of the death, oh yes,

the theft of childhood and

the dangers to the young, oh yes)

 

delve deeper into Celebrating Possibility

and an engaging sense

of

pale

naked

PAIN.

 

It made no difference.

 

 

Julia Origo

Verona 1965 – London 2005

(From: Bad girl, 1985)

 

 

More in: Origo, Julia

Previous and Next Entry

« | »

Thank you for reading Fleurs du Mal - magazine for art & literature