The Electric Lady

The grief counselor told me that widowhood is an amputation.
A part of me, cut away. I must learn to live
as a fraction of before. It had been a moon and a half
since you died. As she stared at me, a third eye
grew on her forehead. It had no lid. It never blinked.
She told me not to sleep too much. To take walks.
Do you like to garden? she asked. This made me think
of the cemetery. The way we planted you like a bulb.
I told her I feel like The Electric Lady. Who’s that? she asked.
It’s the nickname I gave to The Statue of Liberty, when I learned
that she is struck by lightning six-hundred times a year.
He wanted a son, I said to her third eye. The Electric Lady
was sculpted by her son. He used a hammer to strike copper,
until he re-shaped the shiny metal into his mother’s face.
She is one-hundred and fifty-one feet tall. She lives in a river,
but never gets to swim. Her insides are hollow. She is always tired,
but can never rest. At any moment the zig-zag light
will come for her, to set her nerves on fire,
for just part of a second,
and then again,
and again,
and again.

*

Widow Couture

They think I let myself go over the anguish of it all.
They don’t know I wanted this: black hair recycled
into silver wires, coiled antennae, conductors
to contact the afterlife.

I know my clothes are old. I don’t buy anything new
because these textiles lived in the same house as you.
They are passion relics, daily cassocks I nurture
as if sultan’s silk. I wash them with holy water.

I am ill-fit and shapeless on purpose. I am hiding
this body so no one can see how my skin moves
like train tracks, how I am made completely of teeth.

* 

The Evil Eye

On my sixteenth birthday, Nonna squeezed
three drops of olive oil into a blue water bowl.
We leaned over it, becoming hawks.
We watched the slick golden orbs float,
like alien ships, toward each other.
They merged into one almond shape:
Ah malocchio, she hissed, The evil eye
is watching you. Nonna poured salt
on my shoulder, hung a shiny horn
around my neck, and tucked garlic
underneath my breasts at bedtime.
But the headaches found me, my belly got sick,
and bad luck roared toward me like a parade.
She set my pillow on fire, got onto her knees
under the moon. Every day at breakfast
she held my hand under the kitchen table,
and told me that my skin was like silk.
She made us arrive at church, two hours early,
to sit in the very first pew. She rubbed holy water
on my neck, insisted we pray four rosaries
before mass began. Her shaky fingers,
bead-by-bead, prayer-by-prayer, begged Jesus
to let the curse in me find its way
out of my blood. She spent all of herself
trying to save me. I know I killed her.

*

Most of the People in the World Eat Rats

Most of the people in the world eat rats, he said.
We had just finished sex. Smoke was still rising
from his pelvis. They eat them on every continent,

he continued, rat-on-a-stick, rat stew, rat pie,
rats in cream sauce. It’s a delicacy. Most of the people
in the world don’t have electricity. So, they eat

their rats in the dark. Most of the people
in the world don’t put their wet clothes in a machine.
They use a rope. They hang their pants like flags

and let the wind take over. They go outside to pull
each flat arm and each flat leg off the rope, and then
someone who loves them calls them inside for dinner.

The dinner is rats. Most of the people in the world
don’t own an oven that plugs into a wall,
they use real fire, like I do. They ignite raw flame

to cook that day’s fresh batch of rats. If we lined-up
all the rats in the world, it would form a band of rats
that wraps around the planet forty-five times.

See how small we are? You and me? With all
of our big, hard decisions. See how slight
our two bodies are, here in this bed,

compared to a civilization of rat-eaters?
And yet, we found each other. And now,
I am certain there is no one else on Earth

that can make me roast and wither,
the way you do.

* 

Fever Dream

The ghost of my husband,
by now a heptagon of years dead,
was there, in the bed with us.
As that dog-eyed, extra-alive man
rushed through me like a river,
my husband’s shadow
perched on my shoulder.
His spirit-self wasn’t interrupting us,
he was guiding me. He was there
to remind me that this is the most
carnal part of having a body,
the mightiest bounty on Earth.
The rest of it is pain. This is all there is.
The tender spot. The quick.
In time, nerve endings expire. Fibers break.
The sensory pathway is interrupted,
a fallen bridge that once connected
a life of heat, and cold, and itch–
and then, no more neurons, no more
deep pressure, or fine touch.
His dissipated-self moaned
as we made love. He ordered me
to do everything he can no longer do:
trigger the involuntary muscles,
allow the unsacred parts to spasm.
Do not misspend your minutes.
Be greedy. Pirate every lick, every
grope. Before you evaporate.

*

Erica Miriam Fabri is a Brooklyn-based poet and the author of two books: Morphology (Write Bloody Publishing) and Dialect of a Skirt (Hanging Loose Press). Morphology was the winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Award and Dialect of a Skirt was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and included on the bestseller lists for Small Press Distribution and the Poetry Foundation. She teaches writing at Pace University and College of Staten Island. ericafabri.com