| I am somewhat more familiar with her novels than her poetry, favourites being "Woman on the Edge of Time" and "Summer People". The latter is a real potboiler, but soo well written, beats the socks off any "chicklit".
I loved her memoir "Sleeping with Cats".
But I loved this Poem as a response to Laura Bush when Piercy was invited to the Whitehouse.
Choices
Would you rather have health insurance
you can actually afford, or occupy Iraq?
Would you rather have enough inspectors
to keep your kids from getting poisoned
by bad hamburgers, or occupy Iraq?
Would you rather breathe clean air
and drink water free from pesticides
and upriver shit, or occupy Iraq?
We're the family in debt whose kids
need shoes and to go to the dentist
but we spend our cash on crack:
an explosion in our heads or many
on the TV, where's the bigger thrill?
It's money blowing up in those weird
green lights, money for safety,
money for schools and headstart.
Oh, we love fetuses now, we even
dote on embryos the size of needle
tips; but people, who needs them?
Collateral damage. Babies, kids,
goats and tabby cats, old women's sewing
old men praying, they'll become smoke
and blow away like sandstorms
of the precious desert covering treasure.
Let's go conquer more oil and dirty
the air and choke our lungs till
our insides look like stinky residue
in an old dumpster. More dead
people is obviously what we need,
some of theirs, some of ours. After
they're dead a while, strip them
and it's hard to tell the difference.
-Marge Piercy
Copyright 2003, Middlemarsh, Inc.  | 
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