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A Woman Alone at Some Other Time (in progress)A woman alone eats stew for every meal, keeps the pot simmering.She chops onions for practice. A woman alone puts red nail polish: Very Moscow, On just her left hand, lets it chip. A woman alone wears sweaters to bed, a hat for good measure, Shivers all night, wakes to poems, makes coffee first. A woman alone watches the cat Watch the woman alone. A woman alone shovels a path in snow round the house, That does not lead away, or towards. A woman alone makes a lot of toast, boils water For tea she doesn't drink, from a cup she washes right after, puts away. A woman alone picks up the phone puts it down Picks it up. Hears it ring, she thought. A woman alone reads Sense and Sensibility. A woman alone moves wood from the woodpile into the mudroom, Sorts carefully, the fat logs from the skinny, Moves a good mix into the wood box by the stove. Sweeps up after herself. A woman alone has been collecting, it turns out, too many mermaids, too many glow in the dark animals, too many dead roses, too many Dollar store dishes shaped like hearts, Too many boxes shaped like hearts, too many rocks shaped like hearts, too many hearts shaped like cheap boxes. A woman alone listens to Charlie Parker and Blossom Dearie. A woman alone eats anchovies and marzipan. A woman alone practices Hebrew letters, the yod, the vav, their soft strokes, The way they become quickly A woman alone piles up all the books bedside. A woman alone wipes the counter often. A woman alone wears socks, socks, socks. A woman alone wears Shalimar again. She gets younger, minute by minute, soon she will be girlish, lock her diary with a key, eat Mallomars, dance to Martha and the Vandellas, Cut one side of her hair very short. A woman alone makes a lot of plans and uses hand cream, lavender, lemon verbena, keeps water aboil on the wood stove, thinks about free-radical damage. Her issues are skin-deep: emollient, botanical. A woman alone looks at pictures of her children, they get older, and her mother, is 22, then 28, then 98 pounds and falling. At 48, she stops. A woman looks at photos of her father, who may or may not be alive. They buried him, but that is not proof. When she dials 6092593557, she hears him say that he is sorry he cannot take her call right now. That seems true, it had often been true. Then he says he will he will get back to her. So far, he hasn't. That proves nothing. She has decided, maybe he just doesn't return calls. Maybe that's all death is, or maybe she has misunderstood death. Or her father. A woman alone buys car parts, small ones, fuses and dome lights, which the man at Auto Zone installs because she is a woman alone. A woman alone forces bulbs, Narcissus. Paper whites, fragrant. Two ways: a loamy soil, bought, planted half way down. Or set, bottoms only, in watered pebbles. For pebbles, read: marbles, broken china, glass beads. Why even think further than the word forced, or fragrant? A woman alone listens to Billy sing, Here is a strange and bitter crop. A woman alone sings Blake, " Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire...bring me my chariot of fire". A woman alone applies a beauty mask, examines her pores, exfoliates. She listens to Ella marinate "Mack the Knife" in her luscious scat, Bobby D and Louis A wish they were there, so that she was not without the words, but a woman alone is also without certain words. Words she has: Unrequited Obtuse Viking Stilt Holy Cow Birds Peregrinations E words like Estuary, Ecclesiastic, Egress. And words she wonders about: cenotaph, A woman alone, drinks a good deal of wine, red, a Faux Frog Merlot, a Domaine something or other, half Syrah, half Merlot. Too much of either. Enough said. |
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Issue #22/23, October, 2001 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.