Skip to content

Log Out

×

Poetry

I am so attractive
to you said the drunk
boy. Was it Halloween?
Montana: circa 2003.
No, you are so attracted
to me I corrected, left
the party for a man who
whistled his brown dog
into bed with us, called
me hot mama, drove me
to the bar and ordered brains
and eggs. I went from beer
to the bakery where I mixed
croissants and passed them
through the sheeter but never
stayed long enough to see them
rise. I should have paid attention
to that metaphor. I didn’t. I also didn’t
sleep with the marine who’d slept
with 62 women or the alcoholic who
drove me home so drunk we rode
the boulevard. I was still in love
with a man I’d loved three years, whole heart.
He now worked at the only co-op in town.
I’d go in to squeeze the avocados and there he’d be.
How reckless I was with my body then and how easy
with language. Poems drifting everywhere, my mattress
on the floor and my printer the most solid thing I knew.
A said, over naan and dal, she’d win the Pulitzer by thirty.
C turned her car into a truck and killed the friend beside her.
I wore Chacos and pounded out iambs and memorized “Pied Beauty.”
Stipple and brinded were words I had to learn. My teacher, over strawberries,
advised me to become a nurse. Words for a student who tried hard but probably wouldn’t
succeed. I wrote a poem about Herod’s wife, her impossible dream, thickened myself with gin
and the scraps of cake the bakers placed in a silver bowl above the timecards. Slow, sweet, sour,
adazzle, dim.
Love isn’t always a carnival ride said the old lover when I finally slept with him. He had
another girlfriend then. Fickle, freckled. The poem ends with praise him but I couldn’t. I wanted to be
so loved and famous that I couldn’t stand the sight of me.

 

 


Kaethe Schwehn is the author of the postapocalyptic novel The Rending and the Nest (Bloomsbury) and the poetry collection Tanka & Me (Brain Mill). Her memoir Tailings (Cascade) won a Minnesota Book Award, and she teaches composition and creative writing at Saint Olaf College.

 

 

 

Photo by Olia Gozha on Unsplash

Image depends on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today.

+ Click here to make a donation.

+ Click here to subscribe to Image.


The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Receive ImageUpdate, our free weekly newsletter featuring the best from Image and the world of arts & faith

* indicates required