I can be patient
but when my spirit
someday
seeps from out
my corpse
I know that it will
slither toward
suburbia
and slip into
the backyard swimming pools
of Cheever country
one after another
to seethe
below the chlorinated surfaces
until each bully girl
appears
and confidently plunges
then submerges
gliding
with smirking smiles
designer swimsuits
sculpted limbs
into the depths of
loathing
where I wait
to fill her eardrums
throbbing pain
self-doubt self-hatred
let her rise
and wrap herself
in shame
Eve in a towel
slinking toward the Gate.
(Warning:
the fat girl
in the cheap clothes
will always
bide her time
then strike
before dispersing)
Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae & Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware, USA. Although she has spent most of her life teaching and writing about literature, she still finds it hard to reconcile academia with the world that she knew as a working-class child growing up in Queens, New York. Many of her poems reflect this class-based tension and disjunction, along with issues such as domestic violence and abuse. In the past year, her poetry has appeared in A Plate of Pandemic, C*nsorship Magazine, Kerning, Mono, Review Americana, Rushing Thru the Dark, West Trestle Review, Existere, and other journals, as well in the Washington Post.
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