STRIPPING                     The Larcom Review , New England 2001

You slap your keys on the kitchen table,

cuff free your work shoes,

pour yourself a glass of chardonnay.

After a pause over the day’s events,

you wiggle out of your dress and slip, step out

from your panties, your bra tossed in the laundry basket.

                            *

Such luck you were to be bathed

by a mother’s sea, borne without testimony,

all the words it creates, save the groans

of the woman who bore you,

her lips bitten to ease the pain of your passage.

                            *

With Pear’s transparent soap, you rub

the terry wash cloth hard enough to peel off skin,

as though that too dressed you.

Standing nearby, in their hapless way,

words consult amongst themselves,

their cellular phones braced on their shoulders.

                            *

Rub soot into your skin the wind rasps

as it wraps around your house.

Strip yourself of vanity, the mirror admonishes.

And the lights, pretending they are stars,

a luminous place in the dark, ask:

What crow caws to assure herself

there are more than crumbs in her mouth?