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From Hoogland,
Cornelia. In the meantime: Elizabeth Smart poems. Marrying The
Animals.
Brick Books: 1995
I was furious and disgruntled when those two young girls
came knocking at my door and sat wasting my evening,
interrupting my wait…
…girls flopping over the bed that waited for him, picking
up books for his hands, drinking coffee hoarded for him, smoking
his cigarettes,and then, Lord save us, hollering to their boys
whistling below, leaning out the window that couldn’t hold,
full as it was of desire braiding my stripped life into a ladder
to let him up or me down. I don’t know which but it’s
my window and sitting at it steadies the room until his appearance
up the path. Then quick as stones they run off kissing their youths,
trampling trilliums, delicate flowers. It doesn’t matter.
As long as they’re out of the days I wait for life to start.
My pretty room. My sonnet.
******
He comes after a long rain
the sudden sun on every wet thing so fierce the compost in its
gleaming wire-mesh begins to percolate. And underneath my fussing
with sheets and drinks hums the unplayed strings of a room bursting
for dancing.
In bed at night that old image of strong capable woman surfaces.
My hair falls like grief over his face thinking he sees me as
braver than Jessica. Surely it won’t work against me.
Roll onto my back to ease the cramp, ask G to rub and his fingers
sink into the joint where pain’s sharpest. Asleep
under his hands if it weren’t for the baby kicking up like
wind off water and
the field tomatoes heaped below the window. Spiked with rain.
Smelling of feverish decay.
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