Percussive

by Martha Zweig

Tin husband -- the cookie-cutter, disgrace
of my middle years -- struck up the kettle of mineral
deposits over the blue flame & clashed
toast & jam. It's because of long-suffering
breakfast six of his letters didn't timely
stuff & evacuate what rural-route box? --
minutes ahead of the next-best delivery
dogs' postal jaws. Scuffle: that'll be the dogs now.

Remember love? No. I think of a spring-driven
bicycle bell's tremolo but that's childhood, nobody
riding but me into my birthday. Horsechestnuts
dropped & cracked, the husks popped off. Sunlight, some
from inside the eyeball, fluttered the screen between
what was me & wasn't: never know what to make
of your own body, which even your poor face is, chipmunk
cheeks! -- Auntie Alarming tweak them & I screech.

Just one irritable word, clap hands & banish me!
I'd go live in a pony's ear, that swivels: subtle hairs
tickle to pick up parade drums faint from downtown
where this one never marched yet, the pony I mean,
with the ears. Dull thuds of distant children, civic officials
& their auxiliaries -- but High Street switches aside at me
listening, tips every last soul of them up & off that
precipice where the rocky surf booms, & now dead-ends.

-- MZ
©1998 Martha Zweig

Martha Zweig is an award-winning poet who has published poems in many literary journals across the country. In 1998 she received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. Her new collection of poems, Vinegar Bone, will be released in early 1999 by Wesleyan University Press. Ms. Zweig currently lives in Hardwick, Vermont.