Leftover Woman
So whippet-bare to-the pools of richness
Where minds expand and put out branches;
So opulent to the gathering of desks and tea-pots;
She locks her feet upon lush carpets,
Watering her throat with gin,
And drying it with smoke;
Waiting numbed for legacies,
For there are no expectancies of bodily arrivals.
Hag, coiffed in a bee-hive weekly,
Unaware of stagnancies;
Each year she plants petunias in a trough,
Hangs over them, dripping ash,
Feeling the need to make puce rise out of black.
Peering into other peoples’ lives
From her bookless room,
Her mind is a wet eel crawling aimlessly
In its box of bone.
Fat dugs dangle like underset blancmanges
Through the twin-set, violet cheeks
Making pin-heads of her eyes;
Pickled daily to walnut hardness,
There are notes of iron in her voice;
And her only death so far has been a cold.
There are no roots to drag out when she goes:
Snails and worms will certainly not notice
The silent explosion of a bladder.
Page(s) 27
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