“Remarkable institution, women.”
–Cary Grant, on hearing of dear Randolph Scott’s marriage
The hanger-on, the wife object,
the bauble in an ear that can’t wear baubles.
A man’s ear, too big on a strong neck.
Men can barbecue but hors d’oeuvres are dicey.
What of this bauble? Who put her there?
The word agent means creating a change.
So does the word sex. This man-doll
needed the right outfit.
So she is draped over him, this Virginia
or Patricia or Kay, names for girls
who do their homework in Peter Pan collars,
whose eyes will widen just a little.
The Nevers
Never name the days that are gone. You’ll remember too hard. Your green period? The Museum times? There could always be more. Don’t shut the door before it shuts for you.
Never shouldn’t be such a beautiful word. Next life I’ll have a cottage in Oxfordshire, call it The Nevers. I’ll be a botanist who named a soft dark evergreen
growing all around me, a beautiful forest, neverending.
What to Do with Sins
Let’s put them all in bottles, but then how do we stop them? Cork or tin?
Let’s wash them out, like men. Or burn them out like sparklers on a ham.
We sing “Just As I Am” but never stop remaking brokenness
we think is there. The bottle’s empty. Kitchen’s bare. No one’s taking sanctuary.
That was another century. That was what we outgrew. That was our old allegiance.
That was our mom. That’s another life. Tell us what we’ve won.
A Friend Writes That His Mother Has “Dimensia”
What does she see that we can’t? She’s speeding through space in a kitchen chair. She isn’t afraid of the dark. Where she is, there are lights, however brief, as when I roam the house at night with my phone as a torch, giving me interludes of vision. Must mind the stairs.
She can slide under doors, eat whole buildings. She can be a car, a moat. She is liquid. Unafraid to take up space, filling it where you least expect. There she is, in your refrigerator. Is she suffocating? Is she judging your choices? Are you saving her for later?
Pamela Murray Winters is a writer from Maryland.