Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Poems by Catherine Bowman
Heart
Related Poems
Charity Must Abide Call for Ancient Occupation
by Susan Wheeler
String Theory Sutra
by Brenda Hillman
Poems About Breakups and Divorce
"To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage"
by Robert Lowell
The Aeneid, Book IV, [So, you traitor]
by Virgil
A Book Of Music
by Jack Spicer
After Love
by Sara Teasdale
Apart (Les Séparés)
by Louis Simpson
Chaos is the New Calm
by Wyn Cooper
Dear Miss Emily
by James Galvin
Donal Óg
by Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory
Family Reunion
by Jeredith Merrin
Footprint on Your Heart
by Gary Lenhart
Good Night
by Wilhelm Müller
Heart's Needle
by W. D. Snodgrass
I May After Leaving You Walk Quickly or Even Run
by Matthea Harvey
In Praise of Their Divorce
by Tony Hoagland
Man and Wife
by Robert Lowell
One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
Remember
by Christina Rossetti
Sita
by Jason Schneiderman
The Afternoon Sun
by C. P. Cavafy
The Gift
by Sara Teasdale
The Primer
by Christina Davis
The Vampire Bride [I am come—I am come!]
by Henry Thomas Liddell
This Was Once a Love Poem
by Jane Hirshfield
To Earthward
by Robert Frost
When We Two Parted
by George Gordon Byron
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

Provisional

 
by Catherine Bowman

When he procured her, she purveyed
him. When he rationed her out, 
she made him provisional. On being

provisional, he made her his trough.
On being a trough, she made him her silo. 
At once a silo, he made her his cut. On being a cut,

she made him her utensil. On being
a utensil, he turned her downhill. So being
downhill, she made him her skis. 

When she was his stethoscope,
he was her steady beat. From beat
she was dog, from dog he was fetch,
 
from fetch she was jab, from jab
he was fake. When he was her complex
equation, she was his simple math. 

So she turned him into strong evidence,
accessory after the fact. So he turned 
her eyes private, made her his man

on the lam. So he became her psalm, 
so she became his scrubby tract. When he
became an aesthete, she became his

claw-foot bath.  So she made him a rudimentary
fault line; so he made her a volcanic rim.
So she made him her unruly quorum;

so he made her his party whip.
That's when they both became
mirror, and then both became lips.

From lips she was trumpet, from trumpet
he was mute. Then he made her his margin
of error. Then she made him stet.









Copyright © 2010 by Catherine Bowman. Used with permission of the author.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.