Today's poem is by Lisa Lewis

Feminist Wife
       

My secret was I was trying to be a feminist
wife. I wanted to be the lady of the house.
I wanted a clean counterpane for the marital bed
and sex that wasn't boring. Not the phone call
the night he left the headlights on
and I had bronchitis and drove across town.
My secret: smear on the window.
My greasy hair marked the spot in my brain
that wouldn't forget the fire in my cheek
where he slapped my face for screaming.
It's still there. The window isn't,
the gas station isn't—he could've walked
there for cables—and he stopped
showing up anywhere after I left him
and his next wife left him too.
When the body was found she called
to talk about birthday party prostitutes
and how he couldn't get it up.
Maybe she meant that was my fault
for making fun of the porn and martial arts
movies. My secrets nested like birds, buried
breast-down in twigs and straw, twisted
small into larger. They lived because unseen.
Some years I bred canaries and sold them
to strip mall shops. I always cried
when we picked up the checks because
the birds were gone, but like people
the parents made more. I was stuck
with selling and feminism.
Feminist wife's secret is she's the one
who buys the porn. Feminist wife's secret
is she buys more when he's bored.
Feminist wife's secret is nobody wants
to hear about it when he doesn't know
how to stop. Everyone said we were
a great couple. But I can still boast
about a party where I threw everybody out.
I bought a dress designed to be torn
in passion and it never was. I thought
about babies that were birds. I was
smarter than I knew and I knew. I refused
to masturbate to the Prince poster
in the bathroom. Prince was my husband's
age. Prince outlived my husband
by more years than matter now, especially
in the case of my husband. I did not weep
for the death of Prince, but the kohl-rimmed
woman-eyes—I don't care what my husband
looked like. In the car that night, my face hot iron—
I could believe his fist was ash with a smell
like crushed cabbage, which, if you read
how it works in nature, attracts the abased
pollinators, stoneflies and scavengers,
which he desired to feed upon his beauty,
as he knew it. But I was bigger,
feminist, soaring into the future
which, like the past, would not satisfy.

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Copyright © 2023 Lisa Lewis All rights reserved
from Free State Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission