monday poem #214: Sandra Cisneros, "A Man in My Bed Like Cracker Crumbs"
Given how much I love House on Mango Street, it's kind of embarrassing that I haven't read Loose Woman before. Now that I've read it, I love it too. These are sexy, witty poems, sometimes funny and sometimes knife-sharp and sometimes both, about love and sex and women and men and flirtation and grief. They have titles like "I Am on My Way to Oklahoma to Bury the Man I Nearly Left My Husband For" and "I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won't Because I'm Thirty-Eight and Not Eighteen." Highly, highly recommended -- especially "Loose Woman," the brilliant final poem.
A Man in My Bed Like Cracker Crumbs
I've stripped the bed.
Shaken the sheets and slumped
those fat pillows like tired tongues
out the window for air and sun
to get to. I've let
the mattress lounge in
its blue-striped dressing gown.
I've punched and fluffed.
All morning, I've billowed and snapped.
Said my prayers to la Virgen de la Soledad
and now I can sit down
to my typewriter and cup
because she's answered me.
Coffee's good.
Dust motes somersault and spin.
House clean.
I'm alone again.
Amen.
- Sandra Cisneros
from Loose Woman
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth
A Man in My Bed Like Cracker Crumbs
I've stripped the bed.
Shaken the sheets and slumped
those fat pillows like tired tongues
out the window for air and sun
to get to. I've let
the mattress lounge in
its blue-striped dressing gown.
I've punched and fluffed.
All morning, I've billowed and snapped.
Said my prayers to la Virgen de la Soledad
and now I can sit down
to my typewriter and cup
because she's answered me.
Coffee's good.
Dust motes somersault and spin.
House clean.
I'm alone again.
Amen.
- Sandra Cisneros
from Loose Woman
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth