"Confined" (new poem from "Eating the New Species" series)
CONFINED
Honestly, Charles has worn me out.
I won't be sorry to find my bed.
He can whine more than fat little William.
With his misery of headaches and chills,
how did he survive Rio Negro
and Cape Horn? His father was deadset,
"No!" The sea looks shiftless on a resume.
Charles claims our house is ugly, brags
about 15 acres, quinces, plums, Spanish-chestnut
and old larch, nine miles from Knole Park.
Cook says I'm carrying a girl. We'll name her Anne.
Neighbors drop carcasses--dogs and cats--
in our foyer, and Charles cheers them on.
I dreamed Annie was a ruby, burning to the touch.
Marilyn Kallet
copyright Marilyn Kallet, 2008
"Eternity is in love with the productions of time."”
—William Blake
About Marilyn
Marilyn Kallet was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and grew up in New York. She is the author of 16 books, including The Love That Moves Me (poetry); Packing Light: New and Selected Poems, Black Widow Press; Circe, After Hours, poetry from BkMk Press; The...
Connections
Causes Marilyn Kallet Supports
Southern Poverty Law Center, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, ACLU, Amnesty International, Save Darfur.
Love the breathless flow of
Love the breathless flow of this with its gasping halts at the poem's beginning aned then somewhat turgid movements forward through anxiety, memory, and exhaustion, resting at long last inside the low-burning lights of a cautious dream.
Aberjhani
author of The American Poet Who Went Home Again
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File)