The Bad Wife Handbook. Rachel Zucker

make the city slow and mute—is real.

      So, say it really happened. That doesn’t mean

      it will again or did. Or that the dream

      doesn’t make you ordinary.

       Freud Had Sex but Jung Had God

      I take water

      into my lungs

      in lieu of him, want for air,

      have none and not

      because a good wife rose up in me

      or a sharp right turn, bright

      discipline befell me: I wanted

      sugar and salt in equal measure

      one making the other desperate

      the now tasteless by turns desperate

      this was this wanting of course

      it was the kind of snow that never

      sticks—O blizzard! wild sky at wit’s end—

      but when I look again

      the street is barely stained

      (sugar, flurry, salt, drift)

      and the flat, clean air swears

      snow never fell here.

       Squirrel in a Palm Tree

      up, out of the sentry box over the parapet, bastion, rampart, breastwork

      [don’t think “I have left them…”]

      draw and look, lift—erase, draw and lift and lift and lift

      an erasable slate

      the velum top sheet takes away

      [“left them”]

      up, over the country

      the edge of coast and further out the clouds like stones in deep waters

      a river delving the lush green

      marsh an amorphous rum babba, soaked and spongy

      grasses and cattails misstate the surface

      the cabin has the sharp inhale of opening a gift

      Ø

      high ceiling (blue) and pink and gray striped walls shape me

      make a naked Alice in the bath

      big and tiny

      here and far away

      a wonder the body fits

      so mythic is the mother-absentia

      tundra of abandon

      I suffer the gift, silence,

      for once, nothing happening

      none using my name to mean anything

      Ø

      bed as wide as it is long

      the night inhuman calm

      the outlets and picture frames and decorative plates are safe

      the bathtub and mirror and doors and linens

      I am as light as negligee

      have not my army’s entourage

      Ø

      on Sunday I will step back into the living room littered with toys

      the two boys happy/shy/mad to see me

      but like I dawdled in the shower

      like I never was anywhere but ready to answer

       where is my?

       can’t find the…

      look here, the light through the sycamores and dense magnolias

      live oaks tasked with spanish moss

      a veranda you reach through a twelve-foot window