When the carcass comes back,
the antecedent conjures up
a doll covered in pastel
confetti. Each time she moves
her wrist, pinks, yellows
and blues unfurl over
the basin where she wipes
her hands, flosses her brightened
teeth. A porous gadfly begs
for asylum in the liquor
of her eau de toilette.
The wilted episode runs
its course. She hears the treble
deep within the spout.
The steam heat clears
the mirror. She can write
her name there on the white glass
in a squeaking fleshy scrawl.
I don¹t care who you may
not have become. Before,
I loved you as you were.
Now I hate your commercials.
I didn¹t want to buy you
in the first place. I gave
myself to you for free.
The market share you offer me
comes loaded with amenities
I must call enemies.
We were friends until you sold
yourself to that corporate jet
landing on the floating casino
anchored to my heart.
They supplanted your whisper
with gas, not a tremor
eking out from the corner
of your mouth, but a bog,
trapped under your diaphragm,
hidden in a hiatal hernia
too small to contain explosives.
You felt a tugging across your chest.
We looked for the nearest vent.
As you swallowed air we heard it catch
in the arc at the top of your stomach.
The witch¹s wand whisked away
ten pounds, then twenty.
You flirted with her until
she made it stop raining.
The perfume from the swamp
soothed your tired wings.
You woke up quacking.
I¹ll admit; I was besotted. I drank
in all your complaints and as I swallowed
I hoped we¹d find a tonic for your bad moods.
I chased your demons with maternal earnest.
And poof! It turns out I entered a body
which had no boundaries, no ideas beyond
salvation and a scotch on the rocks. That¹s why
I cry now, vomiting up the dregs of our dour
cocktails. I can¹t strain your concocted
physiognomy. Your blood¹s a thin river
running to that famous shiny pool. My vision¹s
blurred and I¹m halving while my dear twin
splits. Pour me into one cup this time.
Offer me to someone who will have me.
We were having an argument
about the best way to empty
the dishwasher. Sperm leaked
onto my red bikini underwear
as he chastised me for having put
a champagne flute on the lower rack.
I took a vow twenty years ago
in a church during a rainstorm,
my trousseau packed away
in the trunk of a rented Lincoln
Town Car, the best man hung-over
from a submerged ménage a trois
with bridesmaids in a neighboring
dowager¹s pool the night before.
The plastic lid of a Tupperware container
caught the rim of the glass and it shattered
on the bamboo floor. The crowd hushed,
pushed the needle-pointed kneelers
under the pews. The sun blew up the nave.
He put the broken glass in the kitchen garbage
and then took it out so that I would not cut
myself, he said. I appreciate the gesture.
As the sun comes siphoning down
to the parameters of this January Wednesday,
sequestered between the adept
darkness of late December and
our ascendant post-solstitial world,
my shatterproof synapses are on display
while the hazard sign blinks ferociously
in my fuel-efficient motor, or
should I call it my metallic throne,
that alert seat where I whiz by the slick flagstone
and practice parallel parking in the slots
between my older and younger brothers.
Have I stressed enough that our family crest,
depicting a Dutchman sparring with a windmill,
tarries too long in the west-bound exit ramp?
Our 80-year-old mother has taken a lover.
We watch her from the backseat as she makes
a U-turn in the direction we came from.
Sally Van Doren’s book, Sex at Noon Taxes, (LSU Press 2008) won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary, Barrow Street, Boulevard, Cimarron Review, Lumina, Margie, The New Republic, Roger,
Southwest Review, 2River, Storyscape, and Verse Daily.
Her poem, “Preposition,” is featured as an animated film in the Poetry Foundation¹s Poetry Everywhere program. She has taught in the St. Louis Public Schools and at Washington University.
