PRESSING

I press this heavy cold old
thing to my hungover head. It flakes rust,
freckles my sweaty brow,
leaves its heady ferrous savor.

Other women in the antique shop
cluck at my feeble bicep curls,
how I pump this cast iron flat iron
trying to guess its weight.

And just how much does the past weigh?

I learned last night the one I might
have married, married.
There was a time he wanted me, pressed
me to be with him. I wasn’t sure.
He said goodbye to my maybe,
found someone else to take his name.

If this had been my iron,
one hundred years or so ago,
there would have been no choice.
I’d have long been a mother or spinster,

and certainly wouldn’t be paying
cell phone bills and rent, buying
frozen dinners or appliances
stainless steel and plastic,
shiny, electric and new.

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ON SALT, CHOPINS, & MARRIAGE

Two weeks until I’m twenty nine and by this
age, Kate had half a litter. I am not a “mother-woman,”
but when I heard that Beatle’s song at a gas station,
I remembered him and all the vinyl we had shared.

I see so many miserable marriages. What’re the odds?
But God, “Norwegian Wood” is such a good, good song.
Simply put: it made me sad and so I read The Awakening again,
in one long sitting, drinking it in like this warm stout
that tastes so much like a man.

Now I’m feeling a bit reckless.

I bought a big, old piano on a whim— I can’t play it
much, but it makes a nice stand for these conch shells.
You know, after a swim in the sea, I like to suck salt
out of my wet strands and wonder: what percent?
My bones? My blood? Some salty mix courses
through this body as through grasses of a brackish marsh.

Palm readers tell me it’s my fortune to be dissatisfied.
Frederic died just before Kate was born. It pains me
that they missed each other, one on the way in, the other out.
“The voice of the sea is seductive” they say and so
I walk into the waves with two Chopins
on my mind, Nocturne in E flat major (second song
of that unscratched album we found by the curb)
still ringing in my ears, salt stinging my eyes.

Oh, I know it’s not the same, but just how many chances
does one get to share a name?

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SIGNS

Read: “Time Wasting Class.”
Thought: Who needs it?
Reread: “Wine Tasting Class.”

The leaf-filled brown bags at the curb:
“Lawn & Refuse” not “Yawn & Refuse”
like a tired wife.

Perhaps she’ll need the lawyer
I was certain offered “meditation”
not “mediation” Om Mani Padme
(I get the) Hum(mer). Ah, it’s all
water under the bride.

Like how I heard the prayer:
Our Father who aren’t in Heaven…
No. That can’t be right.
Our Father who art.
Our god the painter.
Our god the sculptor.

Our God is an artistic God.
Our God is an autistic God.
That’s why he avoids eye
contact, is so taciturn
& awkward.

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