Fear of Domesticity
(after reading Plath and Sexton)
Eyelashes did their job:
they lengthened the afternoon,
like a dress-hem.
Then that night the hem began to rise, in stages
revealing
scenes from my shameful life.
— Those calves
up which the hem reproachfully rasped,
catching,
lingering over whatever scene
(the higher the younger) arose
on those calves
knees, thighs, those
woman-segments
or were they mine —
I hid my eyes.
I wouldn’t attend to
the walls either
endless walls, slowly
basted
with suicide.
The eyelashes did their job.
But I, who could neither sew
nor cook groped and groped those long legs
stubborn, afraid to look.