“Amongst a-many terrible bright scenes, / in the submarine’s sick-bay a fire began / which we all fought in the aisle, / pillowcases exploded into flame, & fiends / swept the length of the great ship of man / cleaning out the good & the vile.” John Berryman (DS, 317)
no shy realization
through the night being abandoned
my father precious dark expanses i had not
before actually it was guilty answers
i was the guilty answer i was guilty at being away for
confident hours every precious day
turning away
it was guilt before
actually it was guilty answers
i wasn't anger i was away from
i was guilty for the night
guilt at distant bedlam actually
i felt like
i had gone
to stay
it was guilt at being away
it wasn't anger at not being
it wasn't anger at being son set
not being away from a father
it was guile sprung the net
You have your skinny pants that you never wear
but that are the barometer. You have your fat pants
that you wear more than you need to. You have your
period pants that are dark and thick and forgiving
and comforting.
You have your period panties.
I have a new resolution not to wear my period
panties at non-period times. I have gotten into the
habit of wearing only my period panties and pretty
much never wearing my other panties, my nice
panties. My resolution is to wear nice panties every
day, even the days I don’t think l’m going to have sex,
even on the days when l’m going to ride my bike.
Once, in the locker room at the YWCA after tot
swim class, I saw another mom who was wearing
beautiful, chic mocha panties and a matching bra
even though she had just come from swim class and
had a kid. The panties and bra looked French, and so
did the mom. I swore right there and then to wear
my nice panties every day, even though my nicest
panties aren’t as nice as those panties were.
But then I got pregnant again and never felt like
wearing nice panties.
So that was three years ago. Exactly three years and
I am finally hoping to make good on my promise of
nice panties.
Thus far I have kept my nice panties promise for
about a week and a half. It’s been difficult. Almost
every day I reach for my period panties but I haven’t
relented. It does feel good to wear nice panties,
though it pains my heart to get on a bike or go to
sleep without sex when I am wearing them.
Even when the nice panties are not two-hundred-
dollar hand-washable silk tap pants, nice panties
are a conundrum.
If you enjoyed this poem, please support the poet and purchase Arielle Greenberg’s fascinating, honest, nuanced and insightful book “Locally Made Panties”.
wool as if from a grant
come
use us
if
you so
wound an apple curl
i arrow situations
but dislike curls
i
pause so if the doing
does
then when where i am?
i seem odious-juggling orderlies
oops choke all simultaneous on bended née
handmade fingers said perhaps originally
the
wall experiences you
what a babe
branded to his remembering my
blood w
their meaning it is plural here meanings
trust me
instead attempt arson
police of
skinny
medial solace
instead attempt a pear
anime girl is not
looking
at
this covering ribbon of
or
she's so
saved so tiny so precisely modified
violinish in
this meaning
nonchalance,
maybe I am
certainly worth melt an
inanity,
something
visits to share
Delphi a
least younger articultured across could have health slight
I wanted matterstock
Madison’s.
In high press. When I
began her withering head, run
Shutter.
In my success country: our
part
often cited maybe I knew environment an averaged
head, running
worlds been
I was
their
beauty, we've always
been
weighing a break fortunately, some many college
seem failure-fearing
personality and I knowing my
time stud
so, where was silence in slow saffron sleeves falling slaughter, the cracking skin of syllables when i had nothing, no one, no more. where was she then?
