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| Passage
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by Eve Alexandra |
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Tiny jewels of sand and salt spill from her mouth. Her
lips lie like cloistered nuns. But her ears--they open like
lilies. And suddenly all around her there are songs being
sung. New notes slick and green, currency on everyone
else’s tongue. Her own was slow, cut from the wrong cloth,
it hadn’t been out on the town in years. When it slipped
out it wore shoes of cordovan and danced the old dances
like somebody’s grandmother. There had been a book like the
big screen. She had slept for years on pages of silk and sweet
organza. Her legs opening fields of lavender and white space.
And the babies. It’s true she had wished for them. But
this chapter she had wrapped tight, kissed their little
heads and left them sleeping. She was prepared to be a murderer,
to be the worst kind of woman if that’s what it took. She
would later her best black dress and make it new. She would
pray for red shoes. She who had chattered away inside
her won mind through miles of salt and sea was not afraid to
dine alone. She would go to the finest of restaurants and
point to the menu. Her teeth would bite and her tongue
would remember: asparagus, quail egg, tiramisu. When
she cleaned her plate she would stare down into it like a
mirror, the tiny pond where she had said goodnight to her
two sons. It would blink back, her third eye. The city
sparkles before her. Oh glory of glass, oh gloss of
steel. Waltzing back through the maze of brilliance, past the
park and public library, the lions purring, her teeth
clicking, the alliteration of old avenues and boulevards,
the constellations necking with the skyline, the chambers
of her heart glowing now, her blood orchestral, the little
cells, the millions clapping--the men she passes, their
mouths itching Aren’t you? Do I? Didn’t she?
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Poem from The Drowned Girl, reprinted with permission of
Kent State University Press |
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