-after Corso
Should I get married?
Should I be sweet?
Should I let the boy next door throw himself at my feet
with wit and charisma charm him with short skirts and intellect
and wait saintly patient until the third date…
When I meet his parents
legs crossed, hair tied, sitting smiling stiffly
(and wait maybe hours for a cigarette?)
We make pleasantries and I am thinking
of words that rhyme with ‘anti-thesis’
Nodding hearing their Florida stories, winking wanting 5 grandkids
(and then can I go have a cigarette?)
Oh God and the wedding!
His booming Christian family and Saturday game day pub pals,
mine at a table at back hairy-legged sneaking flasks from their purses
pestering parents for vegetarian dinners
and the priest shake his head like he knows I own vibrators
saying, what, ‘Til divorce do us part?’
The grade school birthday party bleached reception hall
my friends burping Bacardi and me wanting to join them
Place-cards! Toaster ovens! The Macarena with grandpa!
My poor divorced parents keeping distance like death’s head…
Taking that awkward elevator ride up ten flights
to the vinyl flowered white sheet bridal suite
The desk manager bored with the whole thing, giving us the key
Me wanting to play Scrabble all night—
Design, Id, Gnostic, double word score!
I would pack light to the Honeymoon
He’d lose his luggage and meanwhile,
I’d spray paint and change the name to ‘Viagra Falls’
(agreeing with him I don’t know who’d do such a thing)
blowing kisses to all those new brides
But I should get married, it’s the right thing to do
It would be nice not to think about rent
spend my day writing until he comes home
happy to see me and I don’t ask too many questions
til he’s done with the paper and shakes his head
saying the latest in the Army and baseball
over a steaming plate of basil linguine
I might not make such a bad wife!
Oh, and that suburban double-life dream:
throwing sodium into the baptismal bowl during Revelations sermons,
sneaking into the neighborhood closets, hemming the pant legs too short
then asking Ms. Jones if she’s growing…
Yet if I were to get married and it’s Rochester and snow
he is working late into the night, ragged, plagued by headache,
me with a fresh baby, sleepless, sore, too tired to fight
when he comes back emasculated at eleven o’clock
Finding myself a common wife mother woman
concerned with teething, not charcoal smudge nor anapest bumble
Oh, but what a child of mine would be!
Learning Latin participles in the playpen
coddling calimba dissonant chords in the den
knowing only stories with no Cinderella, but strong women
pre-nuptial to the Prince
No, I doubt I’d be that kind of mother
Not off-the-land, not herbal garden
but 600 a month one bedroom downtown
flickering electricity and fruit flies
my carbohydrate olive oil cooking making us fat
dish breaking threatening divorce and no pension
the kids with bad genes, destined for addiction and psychosis
WIC stamps HMO Medicaid Disability Collections
No, I should never get married!
But imagine if I were married to a delicate, passionate man
tall and thin with feminine fingers and rugged shirts
and we lived in a lofted house and his speckled end table
matched my big purple couch completely…
But what about love? It’s easy to forget about love
not that I’ve qualms with love, but my love is harder to live with
I come from a long proud lineage of divorce
and Thich Nhat Hanh is too old for me
and I’m always drawn to penniless turbulent men
and I’m too shy with women
but what if I wait too long and I’m 90 years old with 80 cats
no teeth and bad joints, alone post-menopausal & all the dirty old men want college girls
the TV is too hard to hear, there’s no shred of decency in this goddamn world
the newspaper boy won’t even listen to my stories and suddenly,
The whole world is married but me!
Yet if I am impossible to live with, there must be another
impossible to live with and what I know of the chaos of the world
is that if marriage were possible, it would enter stumbling
unexpected with all its improbability
