Page 56 - WTP Vol. XIII #1

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CORRESPONDENCES
Dearest M:
First she wrote him
The effusive letter.
That one said seeing you again was like teetering on the cusp of ecstasy. Next she wrote him the restrained letter.
That one said the Westphalian ham was elegant and the view from his terrace impressive. Then she composed telegrams she did not send, saying:
It has been twenty-seven weeks since you undid the buttons of my blouse. Happy Anniversary.
When a steel blade slices taut skin,
there is a brief moment just before the lean glare of pain
when the wound looks
entirely gorgeous.
THREATS OF DEPARTURE
Every year her sister arrived and ruined Christmas. It wasn’t so much what she brought them:
free key rings from the car wash, refrigerator magnets for the kids, a set of recycled coasters
and a bad attitude—as what she didn’t bring: peace on earth, good will toward men. Not
in their house, that’s for sure.
One year in despair they went en masse to Paris where Mass was said at ancient churches to shrive the soul, although
in those days they were all atheists except for the Jews among them.
This trip was a disaster any way you looked at it and for a very long time nobody dared look at it. There was a solid gold bracelet washed down a drain, hysterics and plumbers on New Year’s Eve. One abrupt departure
by overnight train for Zurich and points East. And the ferris wheel in the Tuileries went round.
Another evening the hostess sobbed in the lavatory, face pressed against cool white tiles, when she was called Herman Goering.
Jostling crowds hugged on the Champs Elysees, little dogs yapped and the long-married thrust each other aside, moving to embrace a stranger.
Cigarette smoke hung like fog
in every Metro station. Pick-pockets
and sheets of rain and missed engagements and huddling under thin and inadequate blankets listening to threats of departure, until the threats turned real and only the lavish artifice of Versailles seemed reliable.
What did the sister have to do with this?
Poor desperate woman whom they readily fled, now exonerated by being dead.
Not much, really. She was easier to name
than other failures too complicated
to consider. When grief runs rampant
among families, anyone can be the catalyst.
Ansie bAird