The Bad Wife Handbook. Rachel Zucker
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Room
Isn’t hidden. Nor filled with goods
or bodies. This feeling—
[strip the wallpaper,
knock for panels]
I can’t explain it—is always,
I think his gaze made it. I say
what I don’t intend
so as to say something of
this tending, tendency, tender
unsayable place I mean to take him.
Firmament
Below his clean shadow:
a sunlit prairie. A wheat field
from the air: plush and temperate.
The breeze is a brave caress. There is
something I see in him: tip, edge, hint
—the skin of it. Shifting wheat
over soil over cavern over water
over igneous over molten.
Monogamist
Riding a bike down a flight
of steps misnames them,
reveals their lusty gravity.
Have you heard that Brontosaurus
is a Camarasaurus head on
an Apatosaurus body?—my
love’s like that: shaped,
named beast did, did not exist.
They should be called falls, this
plummet.
Galaxies Rushing Away
I’m trying not to try to
get him into bed. Instead I try
but the husband flinches when I
and flinches when I say
I love you and I do love you but say
I’m meeting a woman named Kate. Then, off to the winebar, order
sancerre, nice summery white at $7/glass; he, me, and vast millions are fast,
—red shift getting redder, every galaxy
from every galaxy, vow, promise, primordial
atom—rushing faster, all on our way
to greater disorder.
Axon, Dendrite, Rain
When he speaks I am allowed to look at him.
Let this perfect conjure slide over (all over)
the thought reaching out to my loud now—
I want to—
but find no way to make my hands
natural, accidental. I try to make his skin
a chaste idea. But even his gloves, made from slaughtered
goats, their pliable kid leather become a bias-cut
slip, myelin sheath, the impulse jumps node-to-node, too fast for capture.
The body.
Less, less real. I am aware of wanting
to look at him. In the long space
in which others speak I cannot look at him.
take your clothes off
And I do. In dream after dream, except
last night when I’m running a long way
in the rain and, basketball in one hand, he
stands watching. And when he watches—
I run and run, do not wake up
but that—(there,) that, that, that: rain
at my window, husband in my bed.
Rhyme, Lascivious Matchmaker
Each time I try to—
here comes my husband again and
my mind, I’m describing; context.
Forgive me, anemone, my green clearing.
He is no still pool, but actual.
If I showed him my skull below the skin
then threw out the skin, would he wipe clean
the bone? A thin gold wire
prevents my jaw from metaphor or…
His v-neck suggests—
The bruised way he sits—
What to do with his lips—
Hermeneutic
The sea is supposed to be something
more than a saline menagerie.
I thought to be full of feeling
rather than with child was
mutable, could stay small, but now I’m
desolate, fleeting, pierced with this blunt
fissure. My babies left a narrow passage
where longing festers. And here he entered.
Brutal shunt, my heart fills
with sea water. Involuntary muscles
seize, shudder, refuse to scar.
The Tell
The basketball makes him not my husband
and saying so in poems makes me
the bad wife. Where is the private, i.e., impassive
mask I purchased for my wedding
but then forgot to wear?
My mind wrote me a letter requesting to be
left out of it. My body sent flowers
and a note: “sorry for your loss.”
But both paid to see the flop and stayed in ’til the river.
Better to fold the winning hand than fall in love with your cards, says the husband.
Where I Went Instead of Paris
In the city, out windows, I fit his face
onto the faces of other men and boys
and look away before it fades.
I have learned to fly by running fast,
though the waking body won’t comply.
His face is the face of all men
not my husband; I see him everywhere.
In the next dream I shave my head
and find my skull misshapen. In the next dream
I am raped in the elevator. The doorman
steps over my body. He has your face.
Wife, Wife, Duck
I’m not sure what this could be called “doubt”
but that’s too simple these clouds: grayer than white
(the