getting on
the mirror is gone, although you can
clearly see where it once hung…
S.
Slavenka
Drakulic
it’s the women
who get back to getting back:
to the first order
of living work to rubbing
the wash up and
down up and down
on the scrub
board of their lungs
(not the heart
no it can’t ever be the heart)
it’s most
certainly the lung because
they don’t stop
they don’t feel they don’t
listen they
breathe the way trees breathe
in the low tide
granite cove when after
the nor’easter
pulls out
after it’s
rammed and rammed into her
basin and punctured
every mem
brane every
cell not crouched behind
the old broken
tooth of a once upon a time
pier where when,
once, there was real
work when the
shit of fish
floated to the
top of the water it was
their scum that
rubbed the palm of his empty purse
yes after all
this linens still
needed bleach
and wind and sun
and after all it’s
what’s not said about what’s been
done after the
bloody bum is rubbed
and salve covered
and it tells no one not even
a flinch! when
he walks by
and pats her
under the clothes
line she gets
on she scrubs
and wrings and
pins she gets on
and on she gets
the fuck on.
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