When my wife ran away
with the milkman, I didn’t notice
for days. Just assumed
she was busy at work – rising early,
returning late. I had seamlessly
stepped into the breach – assembling
superfood lunches from berries
and bugs, ferrying the kids to lacrosse
and astrophysics, and debating
Sartre and Schopenhauer way past
their bedtime. So it was only
the third day, as I stumbled
from the fug of sleep,
that I was struck by the empties
building up on the step.
Tag: infidelity
Medea’s Wedding Gift to Jason’s New Wife by Marie-Therese Taylor
It was always me took care of things
– he should have remembered –
the bulls, the dragon and the tyrant kings,
and as we escaped a brother dismembered
She wanted him. She wanted this gown
a gift from the gods. A little bemused,
sweet Glauce accepted the dress and the crown,
they knew were my best. He was confused.
but for only an instant, as each tiny spore
soaked through her skin through each tiny pore
my curse distilled in the warp and the weft
each organ aflame till nothing was left.
He then thought of me to whom first he had vowed
as she lay extinguished in a black bridal shroud.
Marie-Therese Taylor draws on everyone and everything… no one is safe. Her short stories and poems have appeared in The Glasgow Review of Books, Soundwaves, Mixing the Colours, Nutshells and Nuggets, and The Stare’s Nest. She lives in Glasgow where she has also been known to perform.
Stopping By by Marcus Bales
Whose wife this is I think I know
He’s not due back til Tuesday, though;
By her enthusiasm here
She wasn’t sad to see him go.
Still, she makes it pretty clear
She wants a part-time chevalier —
It does her good to shout and shake;
I hope the neighbors cannot hear.
Later, kissing me awake,
She says it made a lovely break,
Then indicates which tangled heap
Of clothes is mine, and no mistake.
Once more, then, lovely, dark and deep,
But, after, says she needs her sleep;
She has her promises to keep.
She has her promises to keep.
Not much is known about Marcus Bales except he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not appeared in Poetry Magazine or The New Yorker.