The Bad Wife Handbook. Rachel Zucker

at evening.

      To wish the best for someone

      I love might mean leaving

      or leaving him alone. To wish for

      him. Wish for him to—

      It looks like rain means it’s not raining.

       It Took 24 Hours to Make the Moon

      I forgot to think of him today.

      Made of carbon, oxygen, calcium: you, him, I, stars.

      When a Mars-like body and Earth collided

      within hours was a protoplanet named Moon

      and a planet moved away.

      For days

      I forget.

      Mantle, core, ocean, air, I

      am made of our

      —air, air, air and air—

      carved-out crater of impact.

       Alluvial

      They say God’s voice in the city

      sounds like a man but in the desert

      sounds like a woman. His voice, the spine

      of nighttime, sounds like water.

      Rock grazed by streamlets long enough

      will sunder. One word against my sternum and

      I unzip.

       Monogamist

      I’ve fallen ________ with him, stupid

      cliché, with his dark blue

      officewear. Maybe

      I just love my little boy too much—he

      looks like him—itself a grievous treason.

      Just ask my older son. Ask

      the husband. Ask anyone. Ask

      the language for one decent synonym

      and watch it stutter: perseveration,

      obsession, attention to detail

      aren’t love exactly nor is

      chastity enough punishment.

       My Beautiful Wickedness

      Someone dropped a house on me

      and stole my blood shoes.

      The girl with her skipping and singing

      comes to kill me. What then will become

      of my spells, sole treasure I possess?

      What I see when what I see

      is not there—I know he feels it.

      Looking at him like this

      isn’t a spell to make him

      love anyone

      but might. All the good wife

      wants is to go home.

      When no one watches

      I teach the dog to fly.

       Floating Wick in Petrol

      I am too happy to see him.

      Someone must be blamed. Perhaps

      the therapist or my marrying young.

      Say, are you really this beautiful?

      I dream a woman puts a gun in my mouth

      to make me choose—lustrous, sleek, sexed.

      Next a jade green sandal from a bottom

      drawer. Suede wedge with straps

      that wind around my shin. My foot

      in the smooth cradle is lavish, ignitable.

      Please, say you are a dress I can put on for tonight,

      say you are a gun or untouched leather

      purse, a beaded belt or denim

      patch or felt-bottomed box or basted hem, say

      you are a spiral binding or photo of a forest

      framed in beeswax, say a hat pin, say a buckle

      say a gun or polished knob, say anything

       Bridle

      I promised to stay steady,

      but who knew the rage

      of arbors?

      Forests, groves, flagpoles,

      Stand, we told them. Stay.

      When we set up the blocking,

      marked my toe-stops with tape,

      I can’t describe it—

      how my shoes abrade,

      fit, like casket.

       Thought, Antithoughts

      I’ve nothing to hold him,

      suspect I’ve been dreaming—

      a woman awake, her

      husband breathing—she wants

      to be anywhere.

      He’s a man

      who happened to notice

      I made him want

      to play guitar

      but he didn’t. This is the winter

      the husband started snoring

      and science said free will

      is a feeling we believe in.

      Post hoc confabulation.

      I must get up and attend

      the microorganisms.

       Sex

      Wane, wax, wobble.

      My mind is a map of hunger.

      They say Abulafia could stop his heart

      with one letter. Alef

      lodged in his semi-lunar valve.

      Small e after breath is what I do to keep living.

       What Is Not Science Is Art Is Nature

      I am dreaming a hole right into the voice of God.

      Straight into the dark place where my children were made

      but can’t follow me back to. Right into the room

      whose windows are too high up to see out,

      though the sloped roof is too low for me to stand up.

      In New York snow is unusual, arrives like childhood

      memories that might not have happened, disappears

      without changing anything. But do we say,

      when it snows, because some countries

      don’t believe in snow, I dreamed of snow? No, we say the news was right or wrong.

      We say this strong desire for a window—huge square

      glass through which a child standing up in a crib

      at night alone in a room at the bottom