ISSUE: Winter 1981
she was walking the two white Spitzes
in the dusk of College Circle
three wraiths
dreaming absently of that female babe
the chairman forbade that she adopt
she was waltzing into class late
wobbling
under a giant amaryllis urn
rotating it on the desk egging it on
lost in its angles
where to turn?
shelled with cancer
faded hair sheeting the bellied
pillow in the veiled ward she wakes
to her old students
glows
cherubic
go long! you girls oughtn’t be kissing me
we kiss her again
I have reaped where I have not sowed. . . .
(night nurse running her soft legs off elsewhere)
we linger still
grayly
amaryllis
a little woozy the bedpan please
the white duck shirttail the lifting hard
and the balding vulva the shell of daughters
looms in this fleeing light
this manless ward
