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When They Fought
I'd turn my head to the wallpaper:
a swirl of pink roses
at once, refuge and rosary.
Please, Jesus, don't let them kill each other . . .
With each erupted glass, another beat skipped--
my hands a sweating prayer knot
under thin blankets.
I could still hear skin cracking,
the profane bellow of wounded bears.
Who knows what finally lured me
to sleep's muffled edge,
violence snuffed behind doors
or enough blooms counted
to transport me to the next morning
where I'd find them in a yellow nook
sipping coffee, turning newsprint,
the word Honey sweetening
the air between them.
My father's paw reaching out
for her sunny eggs,
below the sink
the swept pieces hibernating.
Whatever It Was
Whatever it was that made you stop last night,
go limp and flop, all the air suddenly taken
from your sex like a sprung tire--exhaustion,
routine, the artifice between our skins.
Whatever made me flee
the house like Zorro, pause
at an abandoned yard nearby
to cleave wanton fruit off branches
like corsets from their owners.
Whatever it was, it's nice to be
curled this morning, naked
on your lap, lit up fuzz of your thighs
tickling me underneath,
the tang of a new plum
ripe in my mouth,
sweet and firm with possibility.
Poem For My Husband
I dropped our son at school
and hurried back,
the day still young
and just as you'd promised:
candles--smoky, sea-scented
currents wafting from another room
where I found you naked
on the bed, our blue quilt curled
in waves about your cock.
It lay there on its reef of dark coils
like a stranded creature
and I, not one to refuse a swim
first thing in the morning,
dove in and took you gently in my teeth--
I carried you to the surface
and hauled you up, dripping,
breathless as a newborn.
The Young Woman on the Elevator at the Mall
She holds the door for me,
my overstuffed stroller,
then sighs, seeing how
the elevator's once transparent wall
has been replaced by
a frosted kind, fan
of etched gold stars
sprayed over the glass,
making it impossible now
to view the swarms of shoppers
shriveling to doll-size below.
How pessimistic, she laughs,
stepping in, amused by
our newly shrouded view.
I like this girl, I think--
her perky cynicism,
brown ponytail harnessed
beneath espresso puller's cap.
Your baby, she says,
eyeing my swaddled care,
you're so lucky, she says,
telling me
of her own
lost in a car accident.
Numbers blink. Walls tighten.
And longing for
transparency, I wonder,
why bother getting up at all?
Still, there she is--
teeth polished, cereal chewed,
cheerful apron donned
in spite of the hole in her chest,
making me uncomfortably aware
of Death's swift, greedy hand--
what's missing and
what thrives between us--
my own precious bundle
and a fatal, finite twist
I could never rise above
Michelle Bitting has work forthcoming or published in Glimmer Train, Swink, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, Small Spiral Notebook, Nimrod, The Southeast Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Many Mountains Moving, Poetry Southeast, Slipstream, Dogwood, Salt Hill, Pearl, Rattle, and others. She has won the Glimmer Train, Rock & Sling--Virginia Brendemeuhl Award, and Poets On Parnassus Poetry Competitions. Formerly a dancer and a chef, she teaches children and is a devoted outreach worker. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Phil Abrams, an actor, and their two young children. (February 2007)
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