Homeopathy for Spinsters
I. About the Weather
People ask about the weather
but mean other things.
All of it, I say, all of it
is about to break.
My dreams come and go like surrealist
paintings; I carried my childhood friend
to be displayed in an unlit museum.
The exhibits were Sumerian clay pots
and the people who no longer loved me.
My dreams come and go like surrealist
paintings; the Italian grandmother holds
a card, La Fissazione – the 10 of spades,
the obsessionist, one who wishes
to be consumed.
I am ill, like all women. The new
apartment is a sick room with
the sky flaking like an itch.
Watch: I am Christ in this scene,
pre-eminent in virtue. You may
eat my body in dry toast,
drink my blood in stale lemonade.
The scriptures I roll up and suck
like lozenges. It is useless.
I’m Taoist.
Looking out onto the balcony
he jokes and calls me the gutter’s
pet whore, left to die.
II. Le Ossessione
My mother took to bed for a year.
It became an island where she was
the only inhabitant.
The turtle shell of the medicine
cabinet was applied in salves,
a brow patted dry. The truth:
None of it works.
The doctors made it all for men.
She is the chronic fatigue, the
fibromyalgia, the active imagination.
We all turn out the same way. The months
pass like inconveniences. I hold a fever
under the slick-backed humidity.
Here is a window to disappear
Into yourself, here is you alone,
mortal and romantic.
I see this illness as a long holiday,
or a birthmark, or him.
It is the air begging for rain and the sky
not giving it.
I’m in the waiting room and the receptionist
an angel and my head a mausoleum.
I ask about recovery and
she reminds me that I have not exhibited
avoidance behaviours in four years.
III. Homeopathy for Spinsters
People ask about the weather
but mean other things.
All of it, I say, all of it
is about to break.