FINESSE
How did your day go? First it twiddled nine
of its knots loose, then tripped off. Hurry
home by midnight or the chimes strike stone-
&-stubborn dead, I said.
Be nice, an alter ego prompts.
Try it, you’d be surprised? Might I entertain
any such actual spook? No. I squirm
along in the leaves to take outwits one
after another each by its own surprise.
Are we over? When did we last care?
Coax me into your plump folds, if you dare.
I’ll purr. I countercalculate every
& each of my moves to end me up exactly there.
*
Martha Zweig’s four full-length poetry collections include GET LOST, DHP Oregon; MONKEY LIGHTNING, Tupelo, and WHAT KIND and VINEGAR BONE, both from Wesleyan University Press. Her chapbooks are POWERS, Stinehour Press, Vermont Council on the Arts, and A SKIRMISH OF HARKS, Jacar e-book. Zweig’s recognitions include Hopwood Awards, a Whiting Award, Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominations, and a Warren Wilson MFA. She lives in Vermont where she worked ten years as an advocate for seniors, after ten years handling garments in a pajama factory where she served a term as ILGWU shop chair.
