A Woman (Purgatory Poem)

A woman is traded behind her back to a man in a red Chevy on the interstate somewhere between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. She is given away by her boyfriend who has no words to say, he just stands there, thinking about the map. The farmland slopes away from them as if it knows, and the road ahead is like the brain of a perplexing animal, forked turns that lead to darkness and an emotion like empathy but teethed. The boyfriend’s silence is enough for the man in the Chevy, who picks the woman up and places her neatly in the passenger seat. She feels herself become a memory, a sensation like sweat cooling in an air conditioned room. Soon they’re speeding with the windows down, wind in her hair like a music video. He gives her magazines to read and turns the radio to a pop station; he wants this to be comfortable for her. Where are we going? She says but no words appear. So she takes a quiz titled “What kind of flirt are you?” and answers mostly B in her head. It turns out she’s the playful kind. You’re confident, sexy, and you go after what you want! Her man grins like a boy petting a large dog in a family photograph. She raises a hand to her throat but can’t move her arm. He’s tied her to the seat so she won’t fall, with a white ribbon that she could break with her teeth, the same white as the dress she wore to junior prom at the Camden aquarium, when they asked her if she was getting married and she said no, and they said come here, and she gave herself away against a wall of requiem sharks.

A Woman (Cookie Poem)

If you give a woman a cookie, she’ll ask you for the wings of a magnificent bird. Give her a Cobb salad instead. If you give her the Cobb salad, she’ll want the garden where the salad was made. In the garden, she’ll want you to water her. If you water her, she’ll get cold and you’ll give her your sweatshirt. Then she’ll want you to take her picture. If you take her picture, there’s no telling what she’ll do with it. Don’t take her picture. If you take her picture anyway, she may invite you over for dinner so you can look at the picture together and share things about yourselves which you wouldn’t normally share with other people and might regret. Like that you don’t really like women who look at pictures of themselves and you can’t remember the last time you said anything to anyone and meant it. When you arrive, she’ll expect you to give her something symbolic, a bottle of wine or flowers. If you give her flowers, she’ll want the garden where the flowers were made, so give her the bottle of wine. If you give a woman a bottle of wine, she’ll want you to pour her a glass. If she touches glass, she’ll think about the lake where a girl transforms into a swan in a fairy tale we all know by heart. But if you give a woman a lake, she’ll want you to take her under. And then she’ll want you to give her your sweatshirt and we know how that goes. What can you give her instead, you ask? Well, if you give her more wine, she’ll ask you to tell her a bedtime story. If you tell her a bedtime story, she’ll ask you to make her a promise. If you break the promise, she’ll turn into dust. If she turns into dust, scatter her around the apartment and get out before anyone notices you there. Weeks after you’ve gone, she’ll live again, just not as a woman. A girl, perhaps, or a swan.