Times Like These
If you’re in or around New Jersey this weekend, I’m reading at the Ridgewood Library. What’s really exciting is that my name is misspelled in this headline. This is not at all unusual, I just sent an email asking for a correction elsewhere. How it goes. The lack of symmetry! Why don’t I have two Es in both parts? I don’t know. Ask my mom. Or actually ask my grandpa. (Good luck with that.) Anyway, come. I’m going to read to a backdrop of my dear friend Joe Merritt’s paintings.I’ll probably wear some kind of flashy jeans ensemble. I’ll read some new stuff and some old stuff and talk a bit. If you have a puppy (that’s not pointy faced) and is well-behaved, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to bring him or her to listen to me talk. I’m delightful. My mom thinks so. Don’t you, Ma?
Here are three things I want to do while women are on trial for men’s behavior:
- Listen to Lizzo
- Ignore my (very nice) boyfriend
- Read Prey by Jeanann Verlee
I’m trying not to do the second. But it might be best for him if I do.
Here’s your Verlee:
The Sociopath’s Wife Knows Endurance
by Jeanann Verlee (from Prey)
What you don’t know about the show—
after he dresses in his fineries, after the cape and top hat
(and you know it is I who straightened his bowtie),
after he sharpens the saw, after he smiles his broad teeth,
after he seals the box
(and you know I have already climbed inside),
after the saw parses my feet from ankles,
legs from knees, torso from hips
(and you know I should be screaming),
after my head is severed, heavy and mute
(and you know its real because you saw the rigor of his arms,
watched him struggle against bone’s cruel resistance
and the tricky catch of muscle),
after my body has leaked itself a flood
(and you know it must because you yourself
have before pricked a finger),
after he wipes clean the blade, after he unlatches the box
(and you know he must because it is his need
to show the world what he has done),
after he opens the lid
(and you know I will be gone, thin as hot red
seeped through the box’s seams),
after you gasp your expected gasp and see
with your own eyes the box empty as a lie—
what you don’t kno wis the massacre:
Sitting alone in my dressing room,
my drenched-red gown dusting the floor,
head in my lap, and how I begin: each slick limb
in my tender hands, I repeat over and over
every careful stitch: arm to elbow, torso to hip,
thigh to knee, ankle to foot, and, eventually,
with the mirror’s grace, head to neck.
I build myself again stitch by stitch,
praising my hands—and too, his mercy,
always leaving my useful fingers: a way to endure.
Here’s your prompt:
“What you don’t know about….”
And here’s your Lizzo.
Now go do something else. Well, okay one more:
