A sort of walking miracle, my skin
                        Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
                        My right foot

                        A paperweight,
                        My face featureless, fine
                        Jew linen.
compares herself to a victim of the holocaust-- but it is a holocaust she has visited on herself.
                        Peel off the napkin
                        O my enemy.
                        Do I terrify?--

                        The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
                        The sour breath
                        Will vanish in a day.

                        Soon, soon the flesh
                        The grave cave ate will be
                        At home on me
Decalring her ability to survive, even though she has almost died.
                        And I a smiling woman.
                        I am only thirty.
                        And like the cat I have nine times to die.

                        This is Number Three.
                        What a trash
                        To annihilate each decade.

                        What a million filaments.
                        The peanut-crunching crowd
                        Shoves in to see

                        Them unwrap me hand and foot--
                        The big strip tease.
                        Gentlemen, ladies

                        These are my hands
                        My knees.
                        I may be skin and bone,

                        Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
                        The first time it happened I was ten.
                        It was an accident.

                        The second time I meant
                        To last it out and not come back at all.
                        I rocked shut

                        As a seashell.
                        They had to call and call
                        And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
This is an account of her attempt to kill herself by taking sleeping pills.  She crawled under the house, but they found her. Again that image of going down deep, into the water.  Almost dying (worms as if she was already dead).  Pearls are an allusion to transformation-- to resuurection.  ARIEL... Tempest

Full fathom five thy father lies
And of the coral his bones are made
those are the pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade but doth suffer a sea change
into something rich and strange.

                        Dying
                        Is an art, like everything else.
                        I do it exceptionally well.

                        I do it so it feels like hell.
                        I do it so it feels real.
                        I guess you could say I've a call.

                        It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
                        It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
                        It's the theatrical

                        Comeback in broad day
                        To the same place, the same face, the same brute
                        Amused shout:

                        'A miracle!'
                        That knocks me out.
                        There is a charge

                        For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
                        For the hearing of my heart--
                        It really goes.

                        And there is a charge, a very large charge
                        For a word or a touch
                        Or a bit of blood

                        Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
                        So, so, Herr Doktor.
                        So, Herr Enemy.

                        I am your opus,
                        I am your valuable,
                        The pure gold baby

                        That melts to a shriek.
                        I turn and burn.
                        Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

                        Ash, ash--
                        You poke and stir.
                        Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

                        A cake of soap,
                        A wedding ring,
                        A gold filling.

                        Herr god, Herr Lucifer
                        Beware
                        Beware.

                        Out of the ash
                        I rise with my red hair
                        And I eat men like air.