Her Writers

Writers. They never
take care of themselves, always showing
up on her doorstep in too-tight
dinner jackets, the soiled white cuffs
of their shirts hiding bruised knuckles.

Oh, how he pounded on her door
one night, howling about Red Rose tea,
howling with his head thrown back,
his throat long, adam's apple
rocking under his skin like a boat, until
she let him stagger into her warm, bread-smelling
kitchen, so that he could stand by her stove.
Half a soaked manuscript fell from his loosening coat,
and scolding him, she stooped and stacked
the pages of his life, gathering them up
against her sagging breasts, feeling their wetness
like rainyday leaves.

They never feed themselves and are incapable
of the simplest household duties. They display
the indigo of their veins and call it royal.

The poet was sick. All day, she picked
away at scabs on her inner arms, the last
of yesterday's burns, the scraps and scars,
licking her taut, starved lips, until the screen
door opened, and there stood the woman
with her hard hands and soft breasts, dust
motes framing her head like a halo,
bringing clean towels, bringing the outdoors in,
lifting the poet's sagging head, dabbing
at the cracked corners of her mouth, saying
Come home now, and you can be well.

Their art aside, writers have no loyalty
to anything besides pleasure and the easy
path. Family and friendships are convenient
trappings for holidays and tax season.

She paused and adjusted the strap
of her purse, glancing to check
her reflection against the fogged window.
There was a group of them inside the caf;
it was raining. She would have liked to sip
coffee from a thick lipped white bowl
alongside her writers, but when she pressed
closer to the glass, they turned from her
smoothly, like a flock of birds in their black
clothes, closing against her, their eyes dark
with feigned ignorance. She had known
each of them during the most fetid hours:
the novelist, the poet junkie,
and all the wan-faced ones pretending
to study an unsigned painting on the wall.

It is the natural order. Writers come
to her just as stray cats appear
in the doorways of old women; they come
and take and go, and come again, or
not. No matter. With one long sweep
of her hard-bristled broom, the sick and soil
follow her writers into the street.

 

© Jenniffer Lesh