Nobody's Queen

I am sticky in our bed, towel on my head,

hot and clean from the shower, I am

plaiting time, peering inwards, humming

inwards, hoping outwards, trying to touch him,

him downstairs, it's as though I want him all the time, 

I come up or down or go away a while or to

a corner of our boxy house, and I cannot

read any more, like I cannot write any more,

cannot do anything as sustained as concrete

musing any more, because everything

wraps around him, I'm obsessed, I'm a

Calypso or a Circe trapped on her island

'til he came and supped of her breast

and of her wine, feasted at her table

on the banquet of her body,

brief freedom of passionate love

pretending to sustain -

if he wasn't now growing weary of her,

beginning now to think of his men and

remember his odyssey, to see her now

as all the world and all its readers see

her, beautiful witch, powerful

only in her own tiny kingdom,

forever at the mercy of

passing sailors.

As though I want him all the time.

As though I haven't missed the bliss

of sitting opposite my mind,

of taking it apart, piece by piece,

slowly as I once skinned that papaya

on an Indian rooftop

with nowhere to be and nothing to do

but thread the streets criss-cross

watch write feast fattened fruits

of my own. Await the day that is

truly shared

and not be compromised by it,

not be cut open and revealed for

cheap reward, cheap bliss.

It forms like breath

on a window pane, leaves my face

in the square of your drab pebbledash,

pale and wizened, small nut of age.

Come inside. I am

nobody's Queen.

Reviews

[John the Baptist]

Had it not been for the mention of the shower and the Indian rooftop, I would have sworn I was reading the thoughts of the wife of Ulysses.