The Bad Wife Handbook. Rachel Zucker
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Название: The Bad Wife Handbook

Автор: Rachel Zucker

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Поэзия

Серия: Wesleyan Poetry Series

isbn: 9780819576118

isbn:

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      His v-neck suggests—

      The bruised way he sits—

      What to do with his lips—

       Hermeneutic

      The sea is supposed to be something

      more than a saline menagerie.

      I thought to be full of feeling

      rather than with child was

      mutable, could stay small, but now I’m

      desolate, fleeting, pierced with this blunt

      fissure. My babies left a narrow passage

      where longing festers. And here he entered.

      Brutal shunt, my heart fills

      with sea water. Involuntary muscles

      seize, shudder, refuse to scar.

       The Tell

      The basketball makes him not my husband

      and saying so in poems makes me

      the bad wife. Where is the private, i.e., impassive

      mask I purchased for my wedding

      but then forgot to wear?

      My mind wrote me a letter requesting to be

      left out of it. My body sent flowers

      and a note: “sorry for your loss.”

      But both paid to see the flop and stayed in ’til the river.

      Better to fold the winning hand than fall in love with your cards, says the husband.

       Where I Went Instead of Paris

      In the city, out windows, I fit his face

      onto the faces of other men and boys

      and look away before it fades.

      I have learned to fly by running fast,

      though the waking body won’t comply.

      His face is the face of all men

      not my husband; I see him everywhere.

      In the next dream I shave my head

      and find my skull misshapen. In the next dream

      I am raped in the elevator. The doorman

      steps over my body. He has your face.

       Wife, Wife, Duck

      I’m not sure what this could be called “doubt”

      but that’s too simple these clouds: grayer than white

      (the white sky behind) like the sky at evening.

      To wish the best for someone

      I love might mean leaving

      or leaving him alone. To wish for

      him. Wish for him to—

      It looks like rain means it’s not raining.

       It Took 24 Hours to Make the Moon

      I forgot to think of him today.

      Made of carbon, oxygen, calcium: you, him, I, stars.

      When a Mars-like body and Earth collided

      within hours was a protoplanet named Moon

      and a planet moved away.

      For days

      I forget.

      Mantle, core, ocean, air, I

      am made of our

      —air, air, air and air—

      carved-out crater of impact.

       Alluvial

      They say God’s voice in the city

      sounds like a man but in the desert

      sounds like a woman. His voice, the spine

      of nighttime, sounds like water.

      Rock grazed by streamlets long enough

      will sunder. One word against my sternum and

      I unzip.

       Monogamist

      I’ve fallen ________ with him, stupid

      cliché, with his dark blue

      officewear. Maybe

      I just love my little boy too much—he

      looks like him—itself a grievous treason.

      Just ask my older son. Ask

      the husband. Ask anyone. Ask

      the language for one decent synonym

      and watch it stutter: perseveration,

      obsession, attention to detail

      aren’t love exactly nor is

      chastity enough punishment.

       My Beautiful Wickedness

      Someone dropped a house on me

      and stole my blood shoes.

      The girl with her skipping and singing

      comes to kill me. What then will become

      of my spells, sole treasure I possess?

      What I see when what I see

      is not there—I know he feels it.

      Looking at him like this

      isn’t a spell to make him

      love anyone

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