She hates the children because they are not her own.
Her smile forced, her hands crooked with some secret defeat,
and the children pay for it.
From the back of the classroom, she looks beautiful,
but it is an illusion.
She has a mane of red hair framing her face like a lion’s mane.
But that is the most remarkable thing about her.
She is gaunt. She is very tall. She is unmistakable.

She is awkward when she relaxes. She fidgets and trembles.

In the playground, she has Yard Duty.
She resents the students in grades 2, 3, 4, …
because they have outgrown her, they no longer need her.
She must be in her thirties, you can tell by her hands.
And there is no ring there.
That might be the thing. There is no ring.

Her bed sheets are white.
She curls her long body up into a ball at night.
She works hard. She can’t help herself.
Yet she knows there is no reason to admire people
for working hard if they can’t do otherwise.

She’s absent from school today.
She is never absent.
The words that blow through the air in the playground
and hallways are: She is getting married today.
She decided to get married today.

She already hates her husband, though she hardly knows him.
She hates him because a person, a man,
needs to be attached to the ring that she wears
and the baby she will have. And why should there be?

He calls her name from the other side of the bed.
She curls herself up into a ball.
Perhaps she will hate her baby, too.
She might not be able to help it.
But can you blame someone for feeling
something she can’t help but feel?

I think I might not know my son.
I'm not sure who he is, though I live with him –
a little eight-year old boy – just the two of us, living together
in a little apartment downtown.
I think we are lonely with each other there.

We are both tired and fed-up at the end of the day.
I say, Take off your shoes. Help me with this.
Wash your hands. Set the table. Sit down.
Then I have to repeat myself.
He tells me he loves me when he knows he's in trouble.

He can't wait not to have to look at me or listen to me,
so he shuts his bedroom door
and leaves me standing in the hall.

We spend the day apart, but it is not enough time.
It must be very unpleasant, living with someone like me.

I don't know which books to buy him,
or how to make him read one book over another.              
I look at children's books in stores,
but the books make me sad.
The comics are angry and ugly,
the other children's books are simple and foolish;
those ones must be below him, but then
I might not even know how old he is.

The summer comes and he is relieved school is over.
He begins to eat more and sleep better.
He begins to relax and thrive.
He is confident and contented.
He goes to day camp, and it is satisfying for him:
they swim and play games all day and the kids get tired out.

But the good changes the summer brings
aren't enough for the two of us; we need something more.
His father takes him on the train to see his grandparents,
and I spend the whole week trying to calm down.

I leave him alone for a few days, then finally I call.
He is reluctant to take the phone.
When he does, I think it's a joke:
someone is pretending to be my son, but it is he;
there's a little man on the other end, his voice deeper,
his words bigger than I remember.
It's the voice of someone I've never met.

Then he becomes impatient, and wants to get off the phone
so he can return to playing with his cousins.
He can't wait to get rid of me,
so that by the time I hang up,
I think I might know who that was.

after Ohran Pamuk

Everything just rushes by  me now.
There are no longer the ritual pauses:
when I held a cigarette between *******,
I could hold Time itself.

I could pluck two stills
from the hurried film of my day –
one of what had just happened,
and the other of what might come next –

and I could stand, quietly alone
between those two frames,
holding time still in my hand,
and just look, and think, and smoke.

When she steps onto the streetcar,
the passengers feel judged.
In this, for an instant all strangers are related.
A woman may offer her seat as if the pregnant woman were ill.
A man may sigh a nervous laugh to himself.
Standing near her, he can hear the other music of her body,
and it startles and embarrasses him:
his animal-self is waiting for signals from her
that his cocksure instincts can ordinarily understand.

Because few men celebrate the blood of another man’s child,
or cherish another man’s seed.
The root of his brain tells him: There must have been a chance:
There is always the chance it could have been me.
The loathing defeat of it that it wasn’t …

He turns away and looks out the window,
his hand a quivering fist at his mouth
as he chokes on his lust.

My left eye is lazy, meanders the landscape.
my gaze crooked, my vision weak,
I cannot appreciate delicate objects;
I wait to hear about finer edges of what exists.

I try to speak and look into people's eyes;
they look through me, then over their shoulders
to see if someone else is behind them;
there is never anyone there.

There is a gulf between me
and the further side of what there is.

I hear whispers:
She sees the world with one eye,
and eternity with the other.