“But you make more noise than any man in the world when
you clear your throat
Deafening woke me
And I caught the thread of the argument
Immediately assuming my personal mental attitude
And ceased to be a woman”
Three Moments in Paris
Mina Loy
I. Breech
You fell so hard
from your mother’s mouth, that gaping
vacancy of nag lodged miles from her heart,
that when I turned to you, started asking
for explanations, started in with the truth
you went blind with rage.
You had already gone deaf from fear,
your backwards birth leaving you unable
to kiss your lovers, to show some tongue,
to give a little flicker in the dark.
Left you unable to tolerate verbs
caressing the backsides of a woman’s teeth.
II. Café Deluge
I’m wearing a hairnet to keep it all together,
otherwise it’s all over. If my hair comes out,
the red, the curls, the news, they all take over.
Confessions tangled up in the coffee cups,
wound around forks, sitting in the curve
of spoons hot out of the dishwasher.
What does anybody see in a waitress anyway?
We all have these tattoos now, it’s not like the 80s.
We all have to wear these hair nets. We need the tips.
Here, go ahead take it.
I know what it’s like when you can taste
the weight of skin rising up in your throat.
There’s just enough warmth left in this tea
to rinse your mouth out.
Forget the entire affair.
Spit.
III. One O’Clock in the Afternoon
This is a bad time of day for us
to be near each other, telling
the truth. Objects fly like egrets
from the shore, their feathers ruffled
by the sound one woman can make
by finally clearing her throat.
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