The Bad Wife Handbook - Rachel Zucker Wesleyan Poetry Series

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Room

      Isn’t hidden. Nor filled with goods

      or bodies. This feeling—

      [strip the wallpaper,

      knock for panels]

      I can’t explain it—is always,

      I think his gaze made it. I say

      what I don’t intend

      so as to say something of

      this tending, tendency, tender

      unsayable place I mean to take him.

       Firmament

      Below his clean shadow:

      a sunlit prairie. A wheat field

      from the air: plush and temperate.

      The breeze is a brave caress. There is

      something I see in him: tip, edge, hint

      —the skin of it. Shifting wheat

      over soil over cavern over water

      over igneous over molten.

       Monogamist

      Riding a bike down a flight

      of steps misnames them,

      reveals their lusty gravity.

      Have you heard that Brontosaurus

      is a Camarasaurus head on

      an Apatosaurus body?—my

      love’s like that: shaped,

      named beast did, did not exist.

      They should be called falls, this

      plummet.

       Galaxies Rushing Away

      I’m trying not to try to

      get him into bed. Instead I try

      but the husband flinches when I

      and flinches when I say

      I love you and I do love you but say

      I’m meeting a woman named Kate. Then, off to the winebar, order

      sancerre, nice summery white at $7/glass; he, me, and vast millions are fast,

      —red shift getting redder, every galaxy

      from every galaxy, vow, promise, primordial

      atom—rushing faster, all on our way

      to greater disorder.

       Axon, Dendrite, Rain

      When he speaks I am allowed to look at him.

      Let this perfect conjure slide over (all over)

      the thought reaching out to my loud now—

      I want to—

      but find no way to make my hands

      natural, accidental. I try to make his skin

      a chaste idea. But even his gloves, made from slaughtered

      goats, their pliable kid leather become a bias-cut

      slip, myelin sheath, the impulse jumps node-to-node, too fast for capture.

      The body.

      Less, less real. I am aware of wanting

      to look at him. In the long space

      in which others speak I cannot look at him.

       take your clothes off

      And I do. In dream after dream, except

      last night when I’m running a long way

      in the rain and, basketball in one hand, he

      stands watching. And when he watches—

      I run and run, do not wake up

      but that—(there,) that, that, that: rain

      at my window, husband in my bed.

       Rhyme, Lascivious Matchmaker

      Each time I try to—

      here comes my husband again and

      my mind, I’m describing; context.

      Forgive me, anemone, my green clearing.

      He is no still pool, but actual.

      If I showed him my skull below the skin

      then threw out the skin, would he wipe clean

      the bone? A thin gold wire

      prevents my jaw from metaphor or…

      His v-neck suggests—

      The bruised way he sits—

      What to do with his lips—

       Hermeneutic

      The sea is supposed to be something

      more than a saline menagerie.

      I thought to be full of feeling

      rather than with child was

      mutable, could stay small, but now I’m

      desolate, fleeting, pierced with this blunt

      fissure. My babies left a narrow passage

      where longing festers. And here he entered.

      Brutal shunt, my heart fills

      with sea water. Involuntary muscles

      seize, shudder, refuse to scar.

       The Tell

      The basketball makes him not my husband

      and saying so in poems makes me

      the bad wife. Where is the private, i.e., impassive

      mask I purchased for my wedding

      but then forgot to wear?

      My mind wrote me a letter requesting to be

      left out of it. My body sent flowers

      and a note: “sorry for your loss.”

      But both paid to see the flop and stayed in ’til the river.

      Better to fold the winning hand than fall in love with your cards, says the husband.

       Where I Went Instead of Paris

      In the city, out windows, I fit his face

      onto the faces of other men and boys

      and look away before it fades.

      I have learned to fly by running fast,

      though the waking body won’t comply.

      His face is the face of all men

      not my husband; I see him everywhere.

      In the next dream I shave my head

      and find my skull misshapen. In the next dream

      I am raped in the elevator. The doorman

      steps over my body. He has your face.

       Wife, Wife, Duck

      I’m not sure what this could be called “doubt”

      but that’s too simple these clouds: grayer than white

      (the

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