Title: Listen,
Last semester, we were reading Lucille Clifton's collecton of poems, Quilting. She had all these great poems dedicated to friends of hers, poems that were so full of her strong, sermon-like voice. I decided I wanted to write a poem like that, too.
Finding a topic I felt strongly enough about was a challenge. But, after listening to a friend of mine go on about finally deciding to marry a guy she'd been dating for five years, I knew I had found my topic.
Marriage. For women, it seems to be the moment when we decide whether we're going to honor ourselves as who we are or spend a lifetime in servitude to someone who doesn't quite get us.
***
Marriage, for my friend, Kate
listen,
we are closing in
on that moment,
the one all women
are told to wait for
and we are down
to the choosing
between the kind of death
that means we reincarnate
and the kind of death
that means we get stuck
in purgatory moaning
over our old selves
and I tell you,
we are perfectly capable
of choosing all kinds of deaths
but
no one’s going to
walk that far down
the brimstone just to
pull out your remains
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