ANNE HEIDE
from WIVING
make her a body
new where she can
carry nothing
and cleanly
make me a wife
out of plaster
and shoestring.
…
could she have stopped
herself from growing
from an inevitable pair
to an uneven third.
if will would unmake.
…
try to pen
the crevice
that lines her legs.
buckets bailed,
and the rest of
her here.
she is flooding,
see: in the greenyard.
call her to my fence.
make a veil of it.
…
this wife is a wife
for your white legs
never widowed.
count two that make
your shape, then hers.
…
she is not as you
would
think suffocating she
has
resigned herself to swallow
the key and hatch
herself
open.
…
shake me brittle
from your wrap
sleep against my tremors
call me into you again
…
I'll tell you like it no longer
matters that you are
half-made
I want to see you through your living
room window tending to
your broken children
mending
tending to your sick son I
want to see you
through your living room
window
…
this is not a requiem
for her but her escape
this is her escape she
wants
him to grow into a fixture
that she can delicately
tend and I would take it. readily.
…
she introduces her
children
(heel sinking into
the mud)
to her buried
relatives
and that small stone
initialed
is where her feet are
this is the start if
her hands hadn't
wrapped around
him in the bathtub if
he'd had
that diving reflex this
could all be.
…
please he says let me in again
I'll hold everything and misplace nothing
for you.
I will not let you I will let you in only
if you promise let me
in I'll
say anything if only
you promise to
not hold that bottle
against me
…
she has locked the
door again their
house is half built and
there is no
wall to the bedroom but
he sleeps
outside anyway passed out
on the
sinking stoop, wood like
wet plaster.
…
how her ghost was made
with hands sticking
to the sides
how he
wrote her on his leg
and left it there.
…
try to set her up
against the wall lean
her there I'd like
instead to place
her children there
breathing.
…
let's not let anyone in
her
she's quiet let's keep
it that way.
…
there is no problem here
the
wife is in the bathtub
circling soap
around the edge.
she is bathing the
ceramic,
children file in, bees
against
the floor.
…
pregnant again her arms
can be sore so hum
into
them says the doctor
and they'll undo
themselves
from you.
…
she can find him
stopped
feeding something to her
children, gin, and holding
their necks
back against his
stomach.
she can, but stays
inside.
…
I am here to remove her
anyway. she is too light.
this is the building
where
we can find her and
then
find her.
…
bring her leg to me,
slightly, and I'll etch.
what
noise made her capture:
hands of sugar
hands of legs.
…
be in that house,
dark, and I'll rescue.
and in that bed, ache,
and she'll undo.
or else could she
silence: open mouth and tourniquet.
…
one at a time, into
the house
the children will eat
themselves
large until the
doorframe gives
to their passing.
…
at every age she'll
bury
small animals in the
yard.
this for companion
and this for food.
…
stay in the water, she
isn't done floating.
try on these stones
and string
yourself into a papery
house.
there her sons are
hoping the rocks
will make some noise.
…
you cannot really fit
her in your
legs
a mistake was made
this is not prosthetic
children made of legs
and children made of
children.
…
gestate in me
I cannot make you with your heady gasp.
…
I'm here to lean by the wife-side,
if you'll not fix
her, straighten then, her blouse.
and take her children
for children to sleep.