MARTHA RHODES
After the Now it’s over,
even the cutting boards split.
The recliner locks upright,
the ottoman refuses her legs,
the bathroom her spillage.
There is a chair, a rope, a beam.
But for the one who sits at his desk
humming, the day is gloriously lit.
How to stretch that light to her corner?
Or leave her corner? Or sing—
if only to show him she can, despite—
when her voice is a cracked tweet.
A friend urges, Imagine a pitiless
and without dark place. But for her,
the swim up river is easy. Familiar
the blind passage back to that moment
before, before he, who waited hungry
on that river’s bank, pulled her out,
if not to devour her in the breathless open,
then to do what, and for how long,
and then, what after?