to the pigpen I have prepared for you. Come
and settle your fumes over the couch where
I have lain myself among my books awaiting your
arrival, O Grievance and Resentment, you well-worn
pair, with your inspirations. You, the comfy old shoes
of my voice, what has happened to us? Haven’t you
always been here to march my swallowed sarcasm
across the page? Didn’t you always make yourselves
handy when some slight or infidelity rankled my memory?
Hasn’t your purpose always been to lace yourselves snugly
around my desire for revenge? Suppose I had an entire day free
to brood over the thesaurus of my mother’s disappointments.
Didn’t you hover, tongues a-wagging with tropes and ironies
and sockloads of gallows humor, to carry my poems’ burden
for me? But now, parents and husbands dead, sibling rivals
too far away to connive for crumbs of moot approval,
what’s the matter? You can’t search your stash of Dr. Scholl’s
for a little Gel-Cushion of Grudges to ease the way for a pal
who yearns to get moving and write something?
Ellen Wright is the author of the chapbook In Transit (Main Street Rag, 2007). Her poetry has most recently appeared in the New Ohio Review, The Ilanot Review (online), Ellipsis…Literature & Art and Fifth Wednesday. The recipient of a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from New York University, she makes her home in Brooklyn and her living as a musician.