• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MAYDAY

  • Culture
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Nonfiction
    • Contests
  • Translation
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • About
    • Submit
      • Contests
      • Contest Winners
      • MAYDAY:Black
    • Open Positions
    • Masthead
    • Contributors

When He
by Remi Recchia

July 13, 2020 Contributed By: Remi Recchia

 

When he takes the other woman to bed, does he

think of his wife? Her goodness trailing soot, eyes

 

ringed and fringed in black? She stays up all night,

clips coupons from old letters, unlicks the envelopes.

 

They are weathered and damp. A waste of postage.

Shoes untie themselves in his absence. Ring thaws.

 

The press is unkind. She is too gracious or too cruel,

a social-widow whose children study economics.

 

Where does the cow low, sudden?

 

A blackbird shell scrapes the sky. Her husband’s bomb-

threat comes true for a moment, a yellow eye in storm.

 

Newspapers unfurl themselves like chickens hatching

backward. He keeps the other woman warm each night.

 

His wife hires a plumber and an electrician, builds

two moats. She will do anything out of necessity.

 

Family dog guards the door early, falls asleep on the job.

Her husband calls three times, hangs up four more.

 

 

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: July 13, 2020

Further Reading

As If
by Alice B. Fogel

When I realized I’d drifted deep into those riveted, river-resistant lily pads big as masks, I was reminded of how when you’re trapped   in insistence that it doesn’t matter that surely means it does. My oars slicing down on them through the water thick with sticky greens and ropy stems   made the sound […]

My Life as an Eastern European Art Film by Scott Tucker

First, there is the long—still—opening—shot—of freeway traffic outside my office window, flowing in one direction, heavy, and menacing, and gray, like flood debris carried on a strong current through the central business district. Over this, a white expanse of sterile sky dreaming in the color blue. The scene speaks to us all of the human […]

Queer Fiction Writers:
Lydia Conklin Interviewed by Raki Kopernik

In this delightful collection of prize-winning stories, queer, gender-nonconforming, and trans characters struggle to find love and forgiveness, despite their sometimes comic, sometimes tragic mistakes. With insight and compassion, debut author Conklin reveals both the dark and lovable sides of their characters, resulting in stories that make you laugh and wince, sometimes at the same time.

Primary Sidebar

Recently Published

  • Caterpillar by Dragana Mokan
    translated from the Serbian by John K. Cox
  • Year-End Wrap-Up: The MAYDAY Editors’ Books of the Year, 2022
  • Warrior
    by Lane Falcon
  • Inside the Kaleidoscope
    by Jane O. Wayne
  • Two Poems by Luis Alberto de Cuenca
    translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat

Trending

  • Eight Contemporary Female Irish Artists to Fall In Love With Immediately
    by Aya Kusch
  • Year-End Wrap-Up: The MAYDAY Editors’ Books of the Year, 2022
  • George Saunders on A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
    by Brianna Di Monda
  • Sellouts 1970: Love Story: The Year a Screenplay-Turned-Novel Almost Broke the National Book Award
    by Kirk Sever
  • I Know Who Orville Peck Is
    by Robin Gow
  • Warrior
    by Lane Falcon
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Business


Reprint Rights
Privacy Policy
Archive

Engage


Open Positions
Donate
Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · New American Press

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.